Not every adult experiences such extremes like that. Let's not be so dramatic.
It's not that I don't like my own country. It just means I dislike certain groups, especially those that have "domestic employees" in what they consider a 3rd world country, unfortunately forcing them to live somewhere where they hate the food. (really? Americans complaining about food in the steak capital of the world? Too ironic to handle...)
That's all
Maybe I'm mistaken, but so far no one's really convinced me otherwise..
Good bye...
I moved out of the USA fourteen years ago today. Since then I have owned several apartments and houses (one was in Mexico). I have never had a domestic employee, nor have I lived with anyone who performed household chores for me. While it's true that many of the expats living in Central and South America have domestic employees that they probably could not afford if they were still living in the USA, they were not
forced to live "somewhere they hate the food" for this reason. (Yesterday the reason was a "country that they seem to hate because it's cheap for them.")
Did it ever occur to you that
paying someone in Argentina to perform domestic work is actually
beneficial to the employee and, in a socialist paradise where the laws truly favor the worker, including setting minimum wages, that the employees might not consider themselves as being "exploited" (the term you used yesterday)? As others have noted in this thread, Argentina is not a "third world" country and I doubt that any North American expats living in Argentina consider that it is. Even where I (the only North American) live, municipal services are very good, trash collection is performed regularly and the streets (which are not paved) are graded as soon as possible after they become rutted and/or bumpy following a heavy rain.
The only food I've eaten in restaurants in Argentina during the past four and a half years has been pizza (four times). The quality of the pizza had declined along with the economy as vendors have started using cheaper ingredients (cheese and flour). My Argentine friends and I have stopped eating pizza in restaurants and now only make it at home. Using the best flour and mozzarella we can buy, it is still cheaper to make high quality pizza at home than have it at a restaurant. We also have asado at our houses rather in restaurants. Even when I lived in Recoleta, I rarely ate in restaurants, but I've never hated the food in Argentina. That's undoubtedly because I know how to prepare my own meals and enjoy doing so.
Regarding steak, the quality of beef even from the best carnercerias has declined in the past four years as the best Argentine beef is exported. The beef that is sold at a controlled price is almost inedible. I recently bought some tapa de asado at a supermarket and it was so tough that I couldn't eat it (after it had been grilled on the parilla) until I cut it in cubes and let it simmer for several hours on the stove in a pot with onions and veggies, making an "asado" stew. Argentina may produce some of the best beef in the world, but Argentina is far from being the world's "steak capital" today.
I can "relate" to your goal of moving here and speaking only castellano with the locals because that's exactly what I've done. The difference is that I did not move Capital Federal or to my present location because I wanted to avoid contact with "filthy rich North Americans" any more that I wanted to exploit cheap domestic employees. I did move to Capital Federal as a "cheap" alternative" to Paris and four year later I moved to my present location as a "cheap" alternative to living in the French countryside. I doubt that I would have had any domestic help in France, either. I grew up in a middle class US family without any sisters and my mother had a heart condition so I'm used to performing household chores.
Disliking certain groups because they have something you don't have or don't want (in this case domestic employees) is the hallmark of class envy or class contempt. it is something that is created by the "socialist" mentality which has been spoon fed to the youth of America (as well as the rest of the world) for decades. Moving to another country because the cost of living is less than the one you're in is not an "imperialist" act. Paying the prevailing local wage (which, in Argentina is dictated by law) is not an act of exploitation any more than buying property is an act of theft, but that concept can be left for another discussion.
