The thread was posted by Spain-based entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky, who lived in the US for over 20 years.
Varavsky is Argentine-born and has set up numerous companies worldwide. He has over 100,000 Twitter followers.
He was described by Forbes Magazine describe as “young, rich and restless’ back in 1999 in the year 2,000 he was a named a “Global Leader of Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum.
The Local does not necessarily agree with his sentiments and has not fact checked his figures but nevertheless his views have started a huge debate online about the differences between Spain and the US. It’s a discussion that’s always worth having. We’ll let you make up your own minds.
Just landed in Madrid flying from San Francisco and traveling around the USA where I lived for 20 years and I frequently work. The San Francisco vs Madrid change makes me wonder.
Why is health care free even for tourists in Spain paid for by Spanish taxpayers as a human right and so incredibly expensive and cumbersome in California? Our son fell in the bathtub and we had a $12k bill for a few stitches at Stanford University emergency room.
Why does Spain who borders Africa and has a much bigger illegal immigration problem than the USA provides amnesties for those who work for three years and USA separates parents from kids and conducts violent raids? Has 11 million hard working people who it refuses to legalize.
Spain is not perfect, housing costs are high, good jobs are tougher to find, half of Catalonians want out, political corruption is unacceptable, universities produce no Nobel prizes.
But here cancer does not mean bankruptcy, pregnancies come with maternity leave, long vacations available to all, gun deaths, opium deaths are almost unheard of and in 09 when unemployment shot up crime surprisingly went down.
Spain has the fastest growing large economy of Europe. It is a welcoming democracy loved by the millions of foreigners who live here. Looking for an alternative country to live in? Consider Spain.
USA is amazing at solving intricate science and technology problems that no other country has solved but struggles at solving every day life challenges that all other developed nations have solved.
