not trying to prove anything, just thinking out loud about stereotypes.

usa – strongest economy.

serbia – quite a fucked up economy.

lets compare salaries.

i asked a chicago based architect i about her salary: 50,000 usd a year.

an architect in serbia can make, lets say, around 15,000 usd a year.

but…

in serbia, health service is free.

education is almost free, or at least cheap, for sure one does not need to pay any debt for years after.

pension payments are obligatory and are not included in the salary, employer pays that on top of your salary.

most families i know got apartments for free in socialist era.

now you have to buy a place to live and this is culturally still not sinking in.

there are no taxes on top of serbian salary also.

the chicago architect is young and she is still paying off education dept.

there is always health insurance and i am not sure how pension works.

there are also personal taxes.

expenses are moved to the individual’s responsibility and are not managed by government.

still total annual amount still sounds impressive.

i am not sure about details. i am writing this really in a hurry, did not do research.

perceptions are interesting:

serbian architect might feel underpaid, poor, unmotivated and not respected.

this could be a predominant impression of serbian young professionals.

usa architect might be motivated to keep on pushing.

also the annual salary will keep on increasing, maybe few times before they die.

what is the real difference on quality of life: i do not know.

comparing africans living in a township with anyone normal in western world is more clear.

media focuses on extreme comparison as they create clearer impressions.

but when we get inside top 20% of people in the world it is not so easy to figure it out.

nationality and citizenship are possible but hard to change so we can say that for most it is about what you get when you are born.

serbs however have shown amazing ability to change their nationalities and citizenships.

this is motivated by their perception they can do better elsewhere.

americans seem not to escape their country as much.

they either do not care or invest energy in changing usa.

some of those changes are questionable?

usa is a big country bordering with only few other countries which are not very different.

serbia is a small country only few hours from very different countries so people wish to try something else.

at the end of the day i do not really care about these things.

i have tried to organize my work to be totally independent of wars, nations or anything.

half of my professional life was done from a country engaged in war.

my natural reaction was not to depend on turbulent and unpredictable changes.

(no, i do not own a porn server in bermuda.)

architects aside, tennis players, no matter from where they are, will most likely pay taxes to the prince of monaco.

why?

because monaco hosts formula 1 and that super cool circus show.