I know guys who have retired to Brazil. They are socially adventurous experienced world travelers, who are not deterred by the high crime. I’ve heard that Chile and New Zealand are also increasingly popular ex-pat destinations for Americans. I’ve also heard that Phuket, Thailand, is host to significant ex-pat communities of both Americans and Russians. Maybe a good location for a Trump/Putin summit.

Why so many from Florida and Texas? Maybe because they are Latin Americans to begin with. How long until Democrats vote illegal immigrants who worked here their entire lives Social security benefits? We’ll really see some outflows of SS money then.

Take a look at

and you will see that Quito and Cuenca, Ecuador, which are on the Pacific coast of South America, are at very nearly the same longitude as Buffalo, NY:
Buffalo: 42 deg 54 min N, 78 deg 51 min W
Quito: 0 deg 14 min S, 78 deg 31 min W
Cuenca: 2 deg 54 min S, 79 deg 01 min W
That is, Buffalo is farther west than Quito. People tend to forget that South America is not south of North America, but southeast of North America.

I wonder if any American senior citizens live in El Alto, which is a million person suburb of La Paz, Bolivia?

Elevation 13,615 feet.

I read the article about US retirees in Cuenca Ecuador that Drudge links to at the Charlotte Observer.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/nation-world/world/article154209369.html

My BS detector pegged about half way through:

-Better healthcare in a small turd world town of Concha Ecuardor than in the US.
-Ecuador’s Socialist President poured the country’s oil wealth into healthcare and infrastructure.
-The irony of Capitalist gringos flocking to Ecuador to take advantage of Socialized medicine
-Unlike the US where that Devil Trump wants to undo Obamacare
-Unlike the US where seniors are uncertain about their future because of looming cuts in social services

The author of this piece needs to be sentenced to a few decades in the Gulag where he can get remedial education in writing believable Marxist propaganda.

NASA Astronaut Brian O’Leary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_O%27Leary retired to and died in Vilcabamba, Ecuador https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilcabamba,_Ecuador :

Located in a historical and scenic valley, it is a common destination for tourists, in part because it is widely believed that its inhabitants grow to a very old age. Locals assert that it is not uncommon to see a person reach 100 years of age and it is claimed that many have gotten to 120, even up to 135, which would make it an area with the oldest inhabitants in the world. It is often called the Valley of Longevity.
[…]
The researchers speculated that the villagers had originally exaggerated their ages in order to gain prestige in the community. This practice appeared to have been occurring for generations, long before academic researchers had arrived in the village. Additionally Dr. Leaf speculated that the international publicity, and subsequent rise in tourism, may have encouraged the villagers’ exaggerations to grow more prolific.
[…]
Although the Vilcabambans did not enjoy greater longevity than the rest of the world, researchers noted that the Vilcabamban lifestyle, which included hard work in a high altitude combined with a low-calorie, low-animal-fat diet, did seem to keep the villagers healthy and vigorous in their old age.

Why so many from Florida and Texas? Maybe because they are Latin Americans to begin with

The excerpts from the article suggests they are Anglos.

Parts of those states are so heavily Latin American already that moving to Latin America itself isn’t much of a difference culturally.

So Europe’s taking 84 years to win a World Cup in South America can’t be blamed on jet lag.

Note that Europe’s first extracontinental Cup win was in South Africa, which is in the same time zone as Greece.

Ballerino Leaps Onto Subway Tracks and Lifts Man to Safety

Most remarkable thing about this story– the dancer has a wife.

It’s a really, really long way from Los Angeles to Rio de Janeiro.

Using Google Maps’ ‘Measure distance’ feature, it looks as if it’s roughly 6,300 miles from LA to Rio. That same distance gets you from LA to Rome or Beijing, or even to within a couple hundred miles of Auckland, New Zealand.

Yes, it’s a long way.

The creator of Sex and the City, Candace Bushnell, married a Ballerino. And Baryshnikov is famously straight. I wouldn’t be surprised if most were straight, but I don’t know.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/style/weddings-vows-candace-bushnell-charles-askegard.html?referer=

My fave bookmark for these instances is Great Circle Mapper:

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=lax-rio&MS=wls&DU=mi

Most of Florida is not very expensive either.

A lot of expats get their social security checks deposited to an American bank and then just download cash at an ATM. That wouldn’t be included in the above statistics.

My degree-of-separation number from Bill Gates is 3, in two ways: first, Gates’ wife is the daughter of one of my former co-workers; second, and relevant to this story, the daughter of another former co-worker took care of the saltwater aquarium at Gates’ Rancho Santa Fe home?

Just a curious coincidence…

Are there even any direct flights? Last time I went there from New York it was via Houston then São Paulo. Maybe 12-14 hours all together.

Huh.

Tehran is closer to New York City than Rio is to Los Angeles.

My longest flight ever was direct from Dubai to Toronto. At least 12 hours.

I chugged a bottle of Nyquil after boarding and woke up at my destination. The elderly Jewish couple I sat beside marvelled at my ability to not go to the bathroom.

How long until Democrats vote illegal immigrants who worked here their entire lives Social security benefits?

The Democrats I know certainly won’t be limiting it to illegals who worked here, entire lives or not. What are you, racist?

Meanwhile, I wonder how many American ex-pats consider the cost of medical care. You could live in Mexico near the border to cut expenses, and visit clinics in the nearby USA for Medicare coverage, but you’d have to love really hot weather, slums, and questionable quality of care (except maybe San Diego).

There are some real doozies on this list

https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/nonstop-flights-20-longest-flights-in-the-world-ranked-by-mileage

but the longest current regularly scheduled non-stop flight is from Doha,Qatar to Auckland. 9032 miles. I was just reading that United has ordered some specially built 787s (fewer seats, more fuel) for a proposed flight from the US to Singapore that is even longer. Singapore is becoming a popular hub for long distance flights to the Orient that were previously routed to Hong Kong.

The manufacturers are increasing the air pressure to simulate a lower altitude of 6000 feet on these long flights too. I guess they don’t want elderly tourists to expire before they arrive at their destination. I hear tell that Emirates is the best airline but their first class fares cost as much as a good car.

My wife is Lithuanian, and I have visited Lithuania with her many times.

I am 64 years old, and I have felt for many years that retiring to Lithuania would be a good idea. I know Lithuanian Americans who have retired there and live well on their Social Security benefits.

There is no way, however, that my wife would agree to go back and live in Lithuania. She likes it here.

Medicare doesn’t pay if you are outside the US which is a deterrent to retiring abroad.

I spent part of a winter in Argentina. I liked it. Its a classic and chronic underachiever, and it’s development is referred to as the Argentinan Paradox. It’s also not cheap. In the 1920’s, it’s standard of living was roughly that of Canada. They were able to profiteer from two world wars and failed to make much out of it. And can’t believe that they are no longer the leading economic power in Latin America.

In fact, if someone wants to live like an American, the cheapest place to do it is America. On the other hand, to the extent that a person is interested in living a more native lifestyle, there are tradeoffs. In general, stuff costs more and services are cheaper. If you want to own a car, its hard to beat the US.

As far as health care? A lot of places have free health care that no American would be interested in using. Argentina isn’t a place to run a profitable business. When I was there, they had stringent currency controls and I exchanged $US on the black (blue) market. The Herald used to publish the daily official and ‘Blue Dollar’ exchange rates.

I liked the people.

From LA to Tipperary?

Did you check to make sure you still had your kidneys?

They use the American dollar as their currency in Ecuador.

There are some real doozies on this list

https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/nonstop-flights-20-longest-flights-in-the-world-ranked-by-mileage

I’ve done the Newark-Hong Kong flight (and also Chicago-HK, which isn’t much shorter, i.e. 15 hours+), and many many flights in the 12-14 hour range.

I find that after about eight hours, the length of the flight becomes less and less relevant; one enters a psychological state akin to Homer’s in that Simpson’s episode when he’s eaten the super-spicy peppers and Johnny Cash is his spirit guide.

I’ve flown UAL155 several times: GUM to HNL via TKK, PNI, KSA, KWA and MAJ, close to 12 hours flight time on a 737-800.
Not non-stop, with down time on each island, and kind of fun, with an eclectic assortment of passengers — some of whom seem as if they came straight out of a Somerset Maugham short story.
It’s a long, long haul and you get to know your fellow passengers pretty well. The longest leg is from MAJ to HNL, about five hours. Everybody sleeps, except for those leaning their heads together, whispering secrets to strangers.

I am semi retired to South Africa, alternating a Cape Town southern suburb six months of the year and Canada’s Laurentian Mountains for the Boreal summer. The 18 hours in the air twice a year is a bit of a trial, though a Kindle and an iPad preloaded with movies make it easier.

They speak English in Cape Town. There’s a symphony orchestra, huge public library, often plays at the university, and surfing daily is something one can do over 60. There are modern shopping malls and cinemas, food is much cheaper, and one can always get away to the Knysna Oyster Festival, or camping at Up the Creek (a sort of annual Woodstock), or camping in Namibia or the Okavango Delta (if you don’t mind being around lions).

There is less to worry about when it comes to crime than I found living in Chicago, where just riding the L after dark was nerve wracking.

I once did the Newark to Singapore 18+ hour flight, now discontinued, that used to be operated by Singapore Airlines.

While the inflight service was superb, and the flight itself very comfortable, I experienced a certain degree of cabin fever and impatience after the 15 hour point. These ultra-long flights have become easier, especially with the improved in-flight entertainment options, but your personality really has to be suited to it. Mine isn’t. I’m the annoying guy who paces up and down the aisle during the night portion of the flight!

I once did the Newark to Singapore 18+ hour flight, now discontinued, that used to be operated by Singapore Airlines.

That is an epic flight! But if I had to pick one airline to make it bearable, SA would be it. Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong’s flagship carrier, used to rival Singapore Air, but no more.

I’ve been doing regular long-haul flights since the early 1990s, and I agree that advances in personal entertainment options have made these flights a whole lot easier. Individual movie systems, phones with podcasts, Kindles instead of carrying several books — all help.

Veering back toward our topic: coincidentally, in the past couple of days, i.e. before Steve posted this article, my FB feed was full of expat retirement ads, including some for Latin American destinations. Odd.

“The city is trying to combat local fears that the retirees are both driving up land prices and bleeding the public healthcare system, she said. And the language barrier has become a source of local irritation. Some restaurants and even neighborhoods seem like English-only spaces.”

For me, that’s the money quote. I’ve lived in a few places around the world, and many will be tolerant of Americans in low doses when permanent residents, and larger transient doses for the money. Ecuadore is a rather pleasant place, but I wonder how tolerant the locals will be if this feeling that they are being overrun starts to really bubble.

Don’t knock the value of longitude … its somtimes very convenient to be a half-day away from the home crowd.

I’ve spent several months in Cuenca. It’s really a very nice place and extremely cheap, unless you’re a local and have to compete with Americans for apartments and the like. Some of the foreigners aren’t happy. They’re there because a spouse dragged them down to South America or because it’s the only place they can really afford to live. A lot of others seem to be loving it, but I did note that very few people had been there more than four or five years. Eventually, I guess they need to go back home.

During the election, the local Gringo coffee shop had a big banner put up by Lasso, the non-socialist candidate, that read in English “Give Gringos a Voice.” I can only think they were targeting the Ecuadorian wives of Gringo expats. You see a fair number of 55-65 year old foreign guys with 30-40 y.o. locals women.

One possible downside that occurs to me is the possibility that the people there’ll kill you.

I am surprised that nobody mentioned Uruguay yet as a Latin American bug-out or ex-pat destination. It’s not just that John Derbyshire has mentioned it multiple times, which could be read here on unz. I was reading on it a couple of years back after I noticed that it is 90% white. That’s greater than the US of A by a long shot. Now, these white people are not all Englishmen and Americans, but many of German, Italian, and Spanish ancestry.

I came upon Uruguay when I was looking for out-of-the-way places, starting with the Guianas. Those are a big no-go demographically, and the climate would be tough on some. All most people know about them is British Guiana from Jim Jones of that Kool-Aid crowd (not OUR Jim Jones), and French Guiana from Euro rockets and Papillon. Surinam, or Dutch Guiana, hardly ever pops up in any story about anything. That sounds really good sometimes. However, again, look at the demographics. It’s cool to look at these places via google-earth and just imagine who the hell is living down there. Cayenne, capital of French Guiana looks to be a town of no more than 10,000 people from the map.

Anyway, I had hoped it could be my secret, but between Derb and me, now it’s not. No, I’ve not been there yet.

14 Lot > Most of Florida is not very expensive either

but not too many SocialSecurity retirees in FL are shacking up with 19 year old Latinas. Whose overall maintenance runs, say, $200-300/month

Quite easy to do, in Central America.

Most expat American retirees continue to receive their money through American banks.

Here’s what I really wanted to write about first on this expatriate thing, and have already. First, it is a much better idea for single guys. The family will have a hard time adjusting, and the wife will be forever complaining about what’s missing and you can’t get this here, etc…. Single men are much more adaptable and undemanding, and may want places with foreign women who not only treat them very nicely, but are cheap to support.

That being said, this life on the SS check or small pension or decent savings from the world back home is a GREAT deal for now. It will ABSOLUTELY NOT BE when the US dollar falls in the coming, inevitable financial crash. Americans in these countries love it because the almighty reserve-currency almighty dollar make them rich men down there. They will not like living in Ecuador as and Ecuadoran* Keep in mind, during hard times, you will be looked at harshly in any country in which you could be picked out by face as a foreigner (think Uruguay).

I would hope “DC Sunsets”, as another guy in-tune to the financial situation, could back me up where there any questions.

Jimmy Buffet sang about this expatriate life the best (though it’s a Steve Goodman song):

Some of them are running from lovers
leaving no forward address.
Some of them are running guns in.
Some are running from the IRS.

Down to the banana republics
things aren’t as warm as they seem.
None of the natives are buying
any second-hand American dreams.

* Maybe an engineer or other technical guy could find a place in the economy even when things get rough.

I don’t know why the 1st video of the thread didn’t show up embedded. Do it for the Parrotheads! However, this Steve Goodman was such a great songwriter (as is Jimmy Buffett) that I gotta put all the lyrics in:

Down to the Banana Republics,
down to the tropical sun,
go the expatriated Americans
hopin’ to find some fun.

Some of them go for the sailing,
called by the lure of the sea,
tryin’ to find what is ailing
living in the land of the free.
Some of them are running to lovers,
leaving no forward address.
Some of them are running tons of ganja <— Oh, I did get this wrong.
Some are running from the IRS

Late at night you will find them
in the cheap hotels and bar,s
hustling the senoritas
while they dance beneath the star.s
Spending those renegade pesos
on a bottle of rum and a lime,
singin’ give me some words I can dance to
or a melody that rhymes.

First you learn the native custom
soon a word of Spanish or two.
You know that you cannot trust them.
They know they can’t trust you.

Expatriated Americans, feelin’ so all alone,
telling themselves the same lies
that they told themselves back home.

Down to the Banana Republics,
things aren’t as warm as they seem.
None of the natives are buying
any second hand American dreams.

Late at night you will find them
in the cheap hotels and bars.
Hustling the senoritas
while they dance beneath the stars.
Spending those renegade pesos
on a bottle of rum and a lime,
singing give me some words I can dance to
or a melody that rhymes

Down to the Banana Republics,
down to the tropical sun,
go the expatriated Americans
hopin’ to find some fun

From Buffett’s 1977 album “Changes in Lattitudes, Changes in Attitudes”

OK, now I gotta do this:

… London was a superb relocation spot and many parents of friends went to live there … now though, as the mohammadan population has risen above the red line of 3%, the situation is untenable …

I didn’t want to screw up the video embedment, which is very, very sensitive, apparently, so last comment here for the time being.

How appropos are these lyrics still!

“I went home with Ann Coulter (in my dreams)
the way I always do.
How was I to know
she was with the Russians too”

Then comes that great guitar riff! I never knew this guy’s music much when he was alive – only “Werewolves of London” of course. RIP Warren.

… and soon, Quantas nonstop from LHR to Perth – with no distasteful stop in any distasteful Mid East hell hole…

even simpler than “cultural conservatism”: seeing your kids/grandkids on the reg

… avoid all those Mid East carriers for heaven’s sake … especially Qatar after today’s long delayed diplomatic severances … these predatory airlines are funded by bottomless government funds and using them, arguably, helps fund terror across the West…

One can see a lot of the retirement choices of expats on House Hunters International. It seems like everyone’s favorite retirement destination is Costa Rica. In my opinion, Panama wouldn’t be a bad place to retire until the very end when you are immobile.

These retirement choices seem like great ideas until major social upheaval occurs. At that point you are probably going to lose your property and possibly your life.

… an abode in old Siam surrounded by shouting Russkies ?
Another sort of hell …

Left unsaid is: how is the golf? If I was retiring at altitude it would be Lookout Mountain Georgia or Roaring Gap North Carolina. Seth Raynor or Donald Ross?

All my retirement research was done by a DINK couple we know. Lake Chapala, Puerto Vallarta, San Miguel de Allende, Queretaro, places in Ecuador, Costa Rica and Panama add onto that Bermuda, Grand Cayman and Turks and Caicos. Final decision: Bonita Springs, Florida.

There you go.

All of SA is east of Miami.

And for most of Steve’s readers, rural FL will be just as foreign as any place in SA. Except we do speak English.

When the US sends its people they’re not sending their best people. They’re old. They’re monolingual. They’re wealthy. Some, I assume, are good people.

“High elevations are good for life expectancy, though. If anything might be worth favoring such places. ”

Interesting contention. Intuitively I believe it, but what are the reasons exactly?

I am fond of many foreign cuisines and of cultural novelty and experimentation, but when in foreign lands I do enjoy going to American chain restaurants. They are always different than what one would find in the US, both in ambiance and in gastronomy, generally for the better. One “MacDonald’s” I visited in Buenos Aires was on par with the nicest cafés one could find in NYC or Chicago.

Brazil is a very large country and simply cannot be easily generalized. Some parts of Brazil have less crime than the US average, and obviously most of Brazil has less crime than the worst cities in the US.

“People tend to forget that South America is not south of North America, but southeast of North America.”

Back in the 1500s, the Spanish and the Pope didn’t realize that fact either, when they drew that longitude line dividing the world between Spain and Portugal. The original idea was Spain would get all of the New World, while Portugal would have claim to Africa and all the islands of its coast. Imagine the pleasant surprise to the Portuguese (and the shock to the Spanish), when it was discovered that a big chunk of South America extended east of that longitude line.

Reading the comments it has become quite evident that the people here are old as dirt

This explains the retrograde opinions and ignorance

Baby boomer darlings have dreams about retiring in Latin America and living like a king? British baby boomers have the same desires, except they move to Spain. We all know that the asset bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate have been re-inflated to benefit the baby boomer generation. The pensions that the baby boomers are receiving and expect to get would have been vaporized if not for the extraordinary exertions of global central bankers.

Once more unto the monetary policy. Baby boomers have been kept financially afloat by the use of monetary extremism and other debt tricks. Kevin Phillips calls it financialization. The monetary policy party that the baby boomers have enjoyed is about to end.

White Americans born after the year 1965 will soon call bullshit on all this baby boomer globaloney horseshit. They will say BASTA to the baby boomers.

President Trump has been the one baby boomer, on the national level, who has called bullshit on globalization and mass immigration. President Trump has attacked baby boomer politicians for their immorality and irresponsibility in regards to their immigration, trade and foreign policies.

The baby boomers should expect a dramatic diminution in their pensions and assets coming soon. The baby boomers will not escape the curses of those who come after.

bored identity is reading snowflaking passengers whining & bragging about Fake Phileas Fogg experiences during their white collar priviliged flights to Dubai, Singapore, Hong-Kong….

Bwaaaaa,…

Why don’t Y’all try Ft. Polk-Indianapolis….on a Greyhound fare, with 3 transfers,1 book, 1 crossword puzzles, and 0 gadgets , as a foolishly inexperienced bored did it in 2000 AD ?

https://www.rome2rio.com/s/Fort-Polk-South/Indianapolis

I find that after about eight hours, the length of the flight becomes less and less relevant; one enters a psychological state akin to Homer’s in that Simpson’s episode when he’s eaten the super-spicy peppers and Johnny Cash is his spirit guide.

You feel like the plane crashed on takeoff, and you’re now a ghost circling the planet forever, like a modern Flying Dutchman.

If you’re going to spend your old age being taken cared by latino workers in a latino city, might as well do it for half the price in Latin America.

Don’t underestimate the profit motive and competition. REtirement communities in Florida are a lot like summer camp for grownups–there is a full menu of activities, excursions, etc to keep you as busy as you want to be. My father bought a place for about $70,000 (roughly $50,000 for the land, $20,000 for the double-wide trailer*, plus about $5,000 for the realtor to furnish it) in a community, and signed up for (and narrowly escaped being made officers in) the IRish, Italian, German clubs, VFW, Legion (Friday clam bake, I think). Day trips to activities in Orlando, Miami, Tampa (each a 2 hour drive or so.)

There is an extensive choice of things to do, and a bunch of people to do it with. He was advised to lock his doors at night, or wake up to find a widow in his bed.

I don’t think retiring to a foreign country has the same package.

* Yes, it is technically a trailer park. But as I learned as an adolescent watching Boyz N The Hood, and seeing the same houses and yard plots that you’d see in nice 1940’s built white neighborhoods in the northeast, it’s not the architecture, it’s the population.

(which might be why Hawaii hasn’t ever really taken off as a place for the wealthy to live while still conducting their business).

About 30% of Hawaii’s population is (1) small town and rural and (2) in loci where the one city in the islands is inaccessible except by cumbersome and expensive means. That’s not for everyone.

One of the oddities about Honolulu is that it’s a city of middling size with big city housing costs. I had a relation who lived in Honolulu for a decade. He never bought any property because it was too expensive. The condominium he rented from an absentee owner was in a high rise constructed in 1968 which has since been torn down. The one he rented was their cheapest floor plan (a modest two bedroom unit: kitchenette, living room, lanai, utility room / wc, master bedroom with bath, small auxilliary bedroom). The asking price for those units was > $400,000 ca. 2006. You could get a handsome old 3-story home in a smart neighborhood in Rochester for that price at that time. Detached housing is atypical in Honolulu. Madelyn Dunham, once a vice president at the Bank of Hawaii, lived in detached housing only briefly during her 48 years there and never owned such a place.

In any city, you’ve got value added from the trade the residents have with each other and you have value-added from export trade. The thing is, the opportunities for agriculture are quite circumscribed due to physiography and soil quality, shipping costs put a damper on manufacturing, and there isn’t much to mine. The export trade would be in services: tourism, finance, and transit. Honolulu is not Brisbane. It does not have an ample hinterland endowed with agricultural land and skilled labor. It has about 500,000 people in its hinterland and not a lot of margin to add more at non-metropolitan densities. What’s interesting about Honolulu is not that that its growth is stunted. What’s interesting is that it has as many people as it does.

One other thing about Honolulu that would put a damper on its appeal to many among the wealthy as a retirement destination: it’s tacky. If you don’t mind tacky, why not Florida?

We had a co-worker who retired to the Yucatan for a while. It’s the most tranquil part of Mexico. They came back after a while. You’re old, you benefit more from 1st world medicine. Two elements of their decision to go there were (1) the wife’s nonagenarian mother died and (2) their children (2 sons) were in the Navy and not in any fixed location. I think most people when they’re out to grass want to be near the younger generation in their families and face a certain ambivalence when considering whether to remain near friends or settle near children. (And it stings when you discover the younger set find you a nuisance or an item on a to-do list).

It’s not difficult to live outside crime in Brazil. All these “experienced world travelers” must do to live in big cities, if they have money, is to buy expensive apartments or gated communities in the big cities that risks are really diminished. Since risk is still there, just learn to drive in your armoured car (if you don’t have, don’t worry) straight from home to work or wherever you go without taking detours and you are okay.
.
Or you can just go the countryside or the southern region into the more homogeneous european immigrant towns. It’s all about money in all these cases. But then, many if not most of people who immigrate to Brazil in order to retire or live there thinking about their “educated white privileges” end up ashamed of their choice, since they won’t be able to escape from being permeated with all the socioecomical problems and even cultural chaos there.
.
.
In relation to the article, this tendency to move to Latin America sounds a real big hypocrisy. All these Baby Boomers or even people from recent generations wanting to retire or make career in South America clearly because everything will be easier, an cheap and easy-going like which they will be well received because they’re “moneyed, educated americans” or “europeans”. I mean, it doesn’t lack good places to live in the US or Europe, where they are well among their equals. It’s even bad when nationalists complain about migrants in their countries, but decide to “run away” or retire to these countries if things doesn’t end well for them, believing they can hang in any closed group of people in some “peaceful” South American country and better it by themselves, no matter how much untapped potential might have.

>Parts of those states are so heavily Latin American already that moving to Latin America itself isn’t much of a difference

This exactly. If you’re going to be a foreigner in the country you grew up in, surrounded by people unlike you speaking a strange different language then why not go be a foreigner in a country you didn’t grow up in that’s cheaper and has a better climate?

Hawaii was a retirement destination for F. M. Davis, who, during his adventurous time in Hawaii, wrote an autobiographical novella called “Sex Rebel.” You should read it, Mr. Sailer. I started reading you because you were a truth seeker. Read it.

If you don’t mind tacky, why not Florida?

Hawaii has waaay better surf!

$1500/month sounds like a pitch to the non-early Boomer demographic. Born after 1950, they are the Dudders. Look at the Presidents and Vice Presidents who were Boomers and you won’t find Dudders until Mike Pence. I don’t count Obama for reasons that should be obvious. Many Dudders lost their retirement to the financial crisis if they hadn’t already lost their retirement to the influx of cheap labor, divorces, outflow of manufacturing, etc. They’re on Social Security and that’s pretty much it. Well, OK, a lot of Dudders are on opooids, dead or rapidly heading there….

So — what happens when the US loses its reserve currency status and the Dudders are living in a ‘developing country”? Well, the Dudders will be Deadders.

The city is trying to combat local fears that the retirees are both driving up land prices and bleeding the public healthcare system, she said. And the language barrier has become a source of local irritation. Some restaurants and even neighborhoods seem like English-only spaces.

Am I the only one that notices the rather extreme irony here?

Instead of relying on your broken BS detector you could try crawling out of your cave and travel the world, including the dreaded Third World, and then you might realize that many parts of South America are quite safe, quite inexpensive and populated with easy going, hospitable people.
Cuenca is actually a beautiful city, and certainly not as dangerous as Baltimore or Chicago.
In fact, the worst that would probably happen to you in many parts of South America is pickpocketing .
Some of you guys need to get out of the house a bit more.

High elevations are good to grow up in – you end up with extra lung capacity due to your body compensating for the thin air. Plus it’s usually unpolluted air, you have a simple plant based diet (maybe supplemented with some goat and goat’s milk) and since there are usually few roads you run from village to village (BTW, why are marathoners from Ethiopia and Kenya and not from Peru and Ecuador?). BTW, some of the longevity reports are exaggerated – even before researchers took an interest, a lot of older SA Indians had a tradition of exaggerating their ages. When people report that they are 140 years old, you can assume that it is false.

But if you are a fat ass Westerner with pre-existing CPD, high elevation is the last place you would want to retire to. OTOH, I could see fit retirees from Colorado selling their condos and switching to a place where their retirement checks would go a lot farther.

All important phenomena are best understood by those with a good understanding of Italian Opera.

Why would anyone want to live abroad? Don Magnifico explains it in his first act aria in Cenerentola (Rossini’s Cinderella opera). As he explains in song “Servo, servo, servo”. He wants lots of servants.

I have three Latin American maids who are due to come to my house tomorrow (and God knows with a new puppy I really need them). They will however only be here for about an hour or two. I would prefer one maid on a full time basis. I also need someone to pull the weeds in my yard. But local maids are well organized and expensive.

I have a little Roomba like device that sweeps the floor but at the present state of technology there is no substitute for a human servant.

When you see trailer parks blasted to splinters by a tornado (which you often do) it’s not because tornadoes are magically attracted to trailers, it’s because trailers are shoddily built. I am familiar with construction costs and there’s no way you can build a 1,500 sq. ft house (about the size of a double wide trailer) for $20,000 or even close to it. The only way they are doing this is by taking severe short cuts in the construction. Anyway, I assume that $20,000 buys you a used trailer – trailers are more like cars that depreciate rapidly than they are to normal houses which tend to retain their value.

Lake Chapala used to sound interesting, but I’m not sure I could stomach Fred Reed holding forth in the local diner about how Mexicans are god’s gift to humanity and to not want 30 million of them in your local emergency rooms is just so gringo privilegist.

They’re in a flood area, so the expectation is that you’re going to be rebuilding every 10-25 years.

There’s no accurate way to measure the phenomenon, but the Social Security Administration was sending payments to 380,000 retired U.S. workers living abroad in 2014 — up 50 percent from a decade ago.

no one who lives outside the country should be able to get welfare. if you can afford international travel you’re not poor.

I would imagine that the locals are also sick and tired of the invading Gringos inviting themselves. First a trickle, then a torrent, of blue hairs lamenting why the townies are at siesta when they should be opening up their restaurants to serve up the early bird specials of the day.

Why did you do that? I did something like that once when I was really poor and struggling. I ended up making it where I was going to, but it wasn’t a pleasant time in my life – though a memorable one.

Who are these low income retirees? My guess is public school teachers and other government/military retirees. My speculation is based on the fact that private sector wage surfs can’t affort to retire, military healthcare aka Tricare seems to be international, ect.

Observations:

Government workers are probably less loyal to the US as they fully expect to retire abroad and don’t want any problems. Increasingly the US military retirees and even works abroad. You can sense that from reading mainstream media where talk is of letting various parts of traditional America die. See: Kevin Williamson

http://www.focusonmexico.com/TRICARE-The-Military-Health-Plan.html

This could mean that Mexico is undervalued or the US is overvalued.

Although the implication is that Americans are using medical care that would be available to Mexicans, the reality is medical care in Mexico is probably expanding due to the presence of foreign retirees.

BTW, the joker in the deck is the pension crisis. See pensiontsunami.com for details. It is my understanding that federal pensions, including SS, are 0% reserved, 100% ‘pay as you go’.

Steve once pointed out that in Eastern Europe, a ballet career is as much or more about class aspirations than about letting one’s butterflies flutter free.

Nureyev was bi– he was introduced to “the art of male love” by his girlfriend’s other boyfriend. Speaking of class, few celebrities were willing to appear on The Muppet Show at first, but after Nureyev agreed to, suddenly every other A-lister wanted to as well.

Baryshnikov sired a pony– okay, a Pony. His daughter with Jessica Lange went to Stillwater Area High School while living with Jessica and Sam Shepard. Misha has three other kids elsewhere.

http://wikivisually.com/wiki/Shura_Baryshnikov
http://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/jessica-lange-article-032006

There are no direct flights from LAX to Shannon but both Aer Lingus and Ethiopian Airlines(!) do fly non-stop to Dublin several times a week. 10 hours and 5200 miles.

Back in the ’90s, the Minneapolis/St Paul-to-Hong Kong route on Northwest was the longest route in the world, but it didn’t last long. The service, that is, not the flight. Two years, I think.

Don’t know about the onboard service, but since Northwest’s flight attendants were Teamsters, you didn’t want to cross them. One of them gave a toddler Xanax in her juice. On a short flight, no less.

Why would Jewish people go to Dubai?

Social Security is not welfare, at least not until it is means tested in the future (which I personally would be ok with).

I actually know someone who retired to Cuenca. Here are some observations he told me:
1. The food is bland–I would have thought it would be hot and spicy, but that’s not part of the native diet there, for whatever reason.
2. The retirees there really try to sell it to others.
3. It’s super cheap.
4. There’s a sort of benign lawlessness to the place. People, if they get in car wrecks, will just walk away and leave the car on the side of the road. He said it’s not uncommon to see this everywhere.
5. It’s never super hot or super cold–so they do have a nice climate.

Because of the victory of feminism here?

http://roguehealthandfitness.com/higher-altitude-means-much-lower-death-rates/

I found a single Icelandair Economy Class Special roundtrip ticket from PDX to MAN on Expedia for $301.08 a couple of weeks ago.

Because we all grew up and got real jobs?

I’ve already shared this, but my husband was a ballet/broadway dancer who took classes with Baryshnikov in the 80’s. He claims women paid Baryshnikov money to try to get pregnant by him.

He also said about 2/3 of the male ballet dancers were queers.

In our teen/child ballet world the males all claim to be straight and the few who are likely not wind up leaving ballet. You have to be really, really confident of your masculinity to be a straight male ballet dancer.

Still about five years to go to early retirement for me, but I’m thinking June – August in a rental on the NH coast and Sep. – May on the FL east coast.

Everybody sleeps, except for those leaning their heads together, whispering secrets to strangers.

• That’s Beautiful: Jenner Ickham Errican

Spain is the standard retirement spot for Brits, I am surprised more Yanks don`t consider it – only a short hop across the Pond.

Movie star Natalie Portman is married to a French ballerino.

Drugs, clubs, porn and beautiful Russian girl and boy prostitutes.

Re Honolulu – a couple of acquaintances that travel every other year from the east coast advise of huge numbers of vagrants milling around the public spaces and beaches. The City of Honolulu even offers full-paid one-way tickets to mainland US for any vagrant. The NYT has covered this quite a bit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/us/hawaii-homeless-criminal-law-sitting-ban.html?_r=0

https://www.google.com/#q=%22new+york+times%22+AND+%22honolulu%22+AND+%22homeless%22

Germany is full of American military retirees and their German wives.

Hawaii has waaay better surf!

Yes, but the water is cold year-round.

That TV show NCIS had two characters retire to Mexico: Gibbs (temporarily) and Gibbs’s predecessor (whom Gibbs went to live with).

Of course, even when retired both of them came back to the U.S. a lot to do stuff. The underlying theme was that retirement to a foreign land sounds nice, but there’s a reason why it’s so cheap to live in a villa in a sleepy Mexican village: it’s friggin’ boring. No one’s around, the local TV is crap, there’s nothing to do.

I’ve never really understood people who work and live and raise a family their entire adult lives in one state only to move to another on retirement. Leave everything you’ve built and known just for warmer weather? What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you just move there in the first place, if you thought it so wonderful?

Then I realized most people who permanently do it are either Jews or the kind of “rootless cosmopolitans” who hang out with Jews (e.g. Joe Kennedy, Sr.). So, really, if you don’t give a crap where you lived but used it to make money and don’t have any deep human connections, yeah, it makes sense. But most goyim ain’t like that.

Personally, I like where I live. That’s why I live here.

Oh, I was poor and a strugglingas well ( military subcontractor’s subcontractor ) ; but, fortunately, that’s all an ancient history, as for nowadays bored identity is mostly… poor.

Too poor to afford any cheap Greyhounding experience.

https://internationalliving.com/ has an interesting look at living as an American abroad from a practitioner/advocate POV.

Rancho Santa Fe, or has Gates created some Hank Scorpio Cypress Creek-type place in the desert somewhere with a similar name to throw the rubes off the trail … ?

… and soon, Quantas nonstop from LHR to Perth – with no distasteful stop in any distasteful Mid East hell hole…

… except for that one stop in London. Maybe it should just take off and keep getting refueled in-flight until the business class passengers’ credit cards get maxed out. It’d keep em out of the 3rd world for a while, anyway.

Of course, you’ve got to come down for blue juice, ice, and the hot-section overhauls.

Co-worker took care of the saltwater aquarium at Gates’ Rancho Santa Fe home

OK, that’s not quite up there with the guy who spent his apocryphal working life carrying ice to the polar bear at Hearst Castle, but it’s close. I thought Gates stood for something much nobler in the history of American capitalism: increasing the population of Africa to 5 billion by 2100.

And then you’ll always have to look behind your back, worrying about some banana republic Chavez type confiscating and expropriating everything the gringo-invaders have, because power to the people.

Straight male ballet dancers? Well, they do get to dance with pretty women and lift them up by their nether regions…

Think of all the rehearsals! “I think we need to practice that lift again.”

I bet straight ballerinos have a really entertaining life, surrounded by super girly, super fit women and with like 3/4 of the natural competition gay.

Back in the 1500s, the Spanish and the Pope didn’t realize that fact either, when they drew that longitude line dividing the world between Spain and Portugal.

This is great stuff to learn here on unz, Cassidy. Thanks.

Here’s the problem these explorers had in determining longitude. a) To get good numbers you need accurate clocks OR b) something to measure that happened at the same time everywhere in the world.

Yeah, the sun and stars are fine for latitude, as you just need the angle of the pole star (gives you 1 deg error max, even if you had no idea of your longitude) at night, or just the highest angle of sun-above-horizon in the daytime – cloudy nights and days, tough shit. For longitude, you may use any star, including ours, planet whatever you want (well, a decent ways from the pole), but you need the time of day too. The development of a long-term-accurate clock was the big key to getting accurate position (as described in a well-readable book called “Longitude”).

except…. the astronomers came through with some workarounds based on celestial events like eclipses, positions of the moons of Jupiter (you can see these even with 7x binos) such as an occulation of a certain moon by the big planet or a entrance of exit of a transit by one of them, stuff like that. You had to have something that you could predict accurately, unless you wanted to back-calculate position info after the fact (i.e. when the ship got back, the info from the logs could be compared to that in Greenwich, the capital of all astronomy). Real time on-the-spot knowledge of a celestial event’s coming was much better though. The main thing was you had see something happening that, of course happened, but could be seen at the same time in Greenwich. The time it happened (or was predicted to happen) in Greenwich WAS the clock. Cool stuff, and it explains why the early explorers knew a lot about astronomy – it wasn’t just a scientific part of the mission.

We had some smart people in those days. Is it any comparison between these astronomers and explorers of these Royal Societies vs. guys like Gates and Zuckerberg?

OT: Sorry if this has been mentioned already, but Eric Turkheimer has written a new piece over at his Genetics and Human Agency blog (sort of) responding to Steve and others. He even links to Steve.

In the post, he lays down the gauntlet to Steve and others.

http://www.geneticshumanagency.org/gha/origin-of-race-differences-in-intelligence-is-not-a-scientific-question/

It is the hereditarians who are trying to reach a strong and potentially destructive conclusion, and the burden is absolutely on them to demonstrate that they have a well-grounded empirical and quantitative theory to work with. So, if you are out there and think that group differences t are at least partially genetic, please explain exactly what you mean, in empirical terms. Do you mean that some portion of the IQ gap will never go away, no matter what we do environmentally? Do you mean we will discover genes with hard-wired biological consequences for IQ, and their frequencies will differ across groups? Are polygenic risk scores going to do it somehow? But don’t let me mischaracterize your position: explain it yourself.

Ironically (or not), you can’t leave a comment. 🙂

Turkheimer seems to be saying that the hereditarians and anti-hereditarians can’t prove their case scientifically so it’s all just an argument about how many angels you fit on the head of a pin. (Not sure what that means for his own research.)

The third reason why this argument never gets anywhere is the most important: there is no valid scientific basis for answering the question in the first place.

I predict that in a relatively short period of time, contemporary race science will seem just as transparently unscientific and empirically untrue as the race science of the early 20th Century now appears from our modern perspective.

Mind you, Turkheimer doesn’t explain why, but promises to do so in the future.

Frankly, the entire post was odd, confusing and somewhat cryptic. He kept promising to explain himself in later posts.

Anyway, Steve, you have been challenged.

My anecdotal knowledge of this is they are not hot 19 year olds. More typical is mid-50s American man with early 30’s foreign woman who is average looking and argues.

Do those countries have good internet connections? Phone service? English language TV?

But then very few men think that overcoming their aversion to dancing is worth it. I bet 95% of straight males hate dancing
It’s a girly thing.

For some strange reason, my wife is obsessed with Hawaii. We went there for a second honeymoon in 2013 and she was hooked. Keeps talking about retiring there. I told her only the Big Island, because its relatively less expensive than Oahu (but still way pricey compared to CONUS).

She will have to come to grips with the fact that I was born in the US of A (in the heartland, Missouri); I served and fought in the Legions of the US of A; so, for better or worse, I will die in the US of A (notwithstanding my kin go as far back as the early 1700s in this country). Besides, that is what our affordable retirement scenario is looking like, sans a lottery jackpot win. There are plenty of decent places to retire in the US, fairly cheap and pleasant, though for how long is anyone’s guess. I’m good with my hands and IT so I could make a good living in a post crash scenario if needed, and wife is a superb gardener, which could be her occupation if necessary.

Deep South Gulf Coast has some underappreciated good places (i.e. Pensacola, Fort Walton Beach, east of Mobile), but I’d relocate maybe 100-200 miles inland to escape the worst effects of a bad storm, which have been known to pass through there.

Government cannot even see clearly when an issue is in it’s own interest. When I signed up for Medicare I asked what the taxpayer bill was for my freebie (which I’ve not used after four years) and the reply was 10k. Some of these expats are paying a few hundred, if that, for full services, and Medicare doesn’t pay. If government were privately run we would be paying citizens to vacation in the places they were to receive otherwise expensive services.

Yours and AmRen’s descriptions of the life of white people in South Africa are in total disagreement. You’re saying whites are not targeted for extinction?

I have visited Lithuania and it’s a great country to visit… in the summer. Clean, relatively low crime, part of the EU, cost of living low but modern conveniences are available, etc. In the winter (approx. 10 months of the year – I only exaggerate slightly) not so much. Usually people like to retire to places with less snow and ice and more sunlight in the winter.

The other problem is the language which resembles nothing else (except Latvian) and is devilishly hard to learn (it’s one of those languages with a million different tenses and in which you have to inflect EVERYTHING, not just verbs.

I’ve visited Uruguay as a tourist and it’s nice. Very American looking and feeling, so you don’t have to be an adventurous ex-pat.

the language [Lithuanian] which resembles nothing else (except Latvian) and is devilishly hard to learn

I’ve gone through a textbook three times, but I don’t keep it up. I intend to try again.

When I was younger, I had much more persistence in studying foreign languages.

Amen. Irony or chutzpah?

The guys I know are not wealthy, just middle class and they gravitate toward Rio, Salvador de Bahia, Recife, etc.; not the much more European extreme south. Some have been victims of robbery but to them it’s just another adventure to be recounted. They don’t live in anything like fortress gated communities or ride in armored cars. They usually travel by bus or taxi. They are all single guys with a taste for Brazilian women, music and culture.

Thanks for the info, Kirt. Did you get there via boat from Argentina or fly in directly? I know there’s a direct flight from Miami, Florida.

Except for the wearing of a ball-cap (MAGA!) or flip-flops and being seen bitching about weird-tasting food at McDonalds, do you think an American would fit in there and not be noticed visually as a foreigner?

There are those who don’t think the Portuguese were surprised. There is a theory that Portuguese mariners had already made landfall in Brazil, but it was kept a closely guarded state secret pending the treaty for dividing the world and the subsequent adjustment of the treaty to push the dividing line hundreds of miles west. After that Brazil was conveniently “discovered” by the Portuguese.

You are probably right on this one. I’m in my late forties and I’m probably one of the youngests regulars here.

I’ve joked elsewhere in these pages, but it is a true observation: I see more hijabs, naquibs and headscarves in London nowadays than I saw in Beirut in 1983.

OT (nothing to do w/ retirement)

Refugee Resettlement Watch — Costa Rica: Are US taxpayers supporting HIAS office?

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society has opened an office in Costa Rica (how many Hebrew immigrants needing aid are there in Costa Rica?) — they are one of the contractors the State Dept pays to dump refugees onto local taxpayers resettle refugees.

“What we’re doing here is unprecedented in the current system.”

I believe it.

Uh- oh, James, you’re awfully close to the 3rd, 400 V-DC electrified rail here! What you wrote about sounds a lot like, …. OMG, a free market!

Please don’t say that too much, as there are some very sensitive people on here who may faint in the middle of reading your stuff. Then they’d have to call 911 and get their only friend, the US Government, involved to pay for transport to the ER to wait in line after the Mexicans.

A free market in health care, you say? Sacre Blue!

I flew from Buenos Aires to Punta del Este, which is a big tourist spot, very popular with Germans and other Europeans as well as Latin Americans. So no, an American would not stand out there visually, but I don’t know about Montevideo and other places. I spent some time in Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata in Argentina as well. White Americans do not stand out there visually either and I think Argentina and Uruguay are very similar ethnically. Blacks really stand out. I remember seeing only one in Argentina and none in Uruguay.

We own what is considered a good apartment/condo in my wife’s obscure, Eastern European home city. It is apparently immune (thus far) from the demographic disasters happening in Western Europe and America. People aren’t PC there, they don’t like invaders, and they don’t care for “diversity.”

There is fresh food at the old outdoor markets within walking distance, and there is a real, honest-to-goodness opera house that ordinary people go to like it’s no big deal.

I half seriously think of the place as a possible bug out retirement location if we ever need it.

OT (but I am reminded of a ‘banana republic’)

Harvard Rescinds Acceptances for At Least Ten Students for Obscene Memes

Harvard College rescinded admissions offers to at least ten prospective members of the Class of 2021 after the students traded sexually explicit memes and messages that sometimes targeted minority groups in a private Facebook group chat.

I know several retirees at my job (all white men) who have retired happily to Puerto Rico. A couple of them owned land down there when they were still on the job and used to go there in the winter for a week or two and then moved there for at least half-time after retiring. There are apparently several large tax benefits (no capital gains is one) to living there at least half the time http://puertoricotaxincentives.com/. Also PR is part of the United States and you won’t be an expat or anything like that. My impression of the island having visited a few times over the years is that a lot of their trash (human-wise I mean) has been imported to NYC, Allentown, Reading, North Philly etc., and the people on the island are far whiter (both in appearance and behavior) and more genial than you would expect. This is especially true outside of the San Juan metro which is a big city environment similar to Miami. In fact I would consider the majority of the people in the Western portion of the Island (Cabo Rojo, Central Cordillera Mountains, Yauco, San Germain, Rincon, Boqueron etc) to be descendants of Europeans and majority-white.

I don’t know, there are plenty of people here that have no qualms about violence against the elderly.

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/elderly-woman-burned-beaten-in-her-home-dies-weeks-after-attack/430968502

My dad grew up in Alabama and my mom in Louisiana. They met in Philadelphia when my dad was in medical school. He joined a practice in South Jersey and lived there for the 35 years. When my dad retired, my mom wanted to move as “Gloucester County has been ruined”.

The population doubled from 1970 to 1980 alone. In the full year they were in NJ the property taxes on their house were $15,000.

And this was before the opiod epidemic. The county has one of the higher OD rates in the country. I biked through there 2 weeks ago and saw two women in their 50’s dazed and stumbling down the sidewalk. My Mom was right to get out.

So they returned to the South and retired to the Shenandoah Valley where they play lots of bridge. My mother figures by the time they ruin The Valley she’ll be dead.

I’m 60, retired fed, working for a private university because I want to. Considered moving to South America until this Easter when my daughter told me she was pregnant. Now, no way. That’s more powerful than McDonald’s.

Having said that, does anyone think that Puerto Rico’s financial troubles present an opportunity to buy a nice vacation place?

Wasn’t like that ca. 1975.

Since their export trade is crucially dependent on their amenities, they need to be very vigorous about reducing the number of vagrants to a feasible minimum.

I have wondered that about Latin American retirees as well. What do they do all day and who do they see on a regular basis? The Florida or Arizona retirement community makes a lot more sense.

Wow, with all respect to your friends, they must have very low standards. Or, although I partly disagree with the other anon on some things, to be really satisfied with the conditions there coming from abroad, they must be living, at least, with really good conditions. Even the most humble person living in these cities complains a lot about the current problems. Public transportation is horrible, the police is really inept, people are “used to” violence and robbery since they still have to get out to work, but there’s always the fear something might happen.
Rio, for example, is in a broken state and there’s nothing that guarantees recovery any time soon. Recife and Salvador are full of robbery and just recently São Paulo is getting better treatment, but still a long way to go. IMO, Brazilian culture itself is really shallow and woman in these big cities aren’t that beautiful as it is usually promoted, although the remnants of the old immigrant culture and imperial times is very interesting.

Montezuma’s Revenge?

I don’t think that his age he’s a prime target. But if you’re an Afrikaaner, you’re pretty screwed.

Why so many from Florida and Texas? Maybe because they are Latin Americans to begin with.

I’m from Florida (Miami, in fact) and my mother is from Texas. My anecdotal experience suggests the bulk of the retirees in question are either Anglos or wealthy (and white) Latin Americans – mostly Cubans – who have been in the States for decades and have their lives pretty much set Stateside. The real culprit is 1. the spike in coastal real estate prices and 2. the major setback for a large number of pension funds in 2008-09: snowbirding it in Florida or Texas suddenly became out of the reach of a large number of middle-class boomer retirees, in contrast to the lot of their Greatest/Silent generation forebearers.

How long until Democrats vote illegal immigrants who worked here their entire lives Social security benefits?

In France medical care requires a copayment for most people, but illegal aliens get 100% coverage from the moment they set foot on French soil. And that is official policy.

One of the London slashers was profiled on TV!

Butt had been known as an extremist in his east London neighborhood and was featured last year in a documentary on Britain’s Channel 4 called “The Jihadis Next Door.”

Several thousand … you don’t trip over military retirees in Germany unless you are near a still extant base. What you do find a lot of is accountants and lawyers.

English language TV?

English-language TV is the greatest force for evil the world has ever known. It is the wellspring of multiculti worship, Trump-bashing, and all such unholy bullshit.

Smash your television and free your mind.

Speaking of technology, Ecuador has restrictions on the number of electronic goods that a traveler can bring into the country duty-free. There may be a tax on items over the limit.

1 new and 1 unit used the following portable items: photographic cameras; imagesetter; PDA or PC tablet (tablet); Portable global positioning system (GPS) ;. Laptop and peripherals (mouse, headphones, cameras, keyboard, and the like); Video games console (portable or not); Electronic calculator ;

1 new or used unit, of the following goods: Player image / video or portable sound; TV (up to 24 “); Desktop computer and its peripherals (mouse, headphones, cameras, keyboard, scanner and the like); Binoculars; Projection apparatus and screen; Computer monitor up to 22 “; Printer; and, telephone or fax.

If found two or more units of the items in the above list regardless of the second unit is new or used, it shall be deemed taxable goods.

http://ecuadorresources.com/what-can-you-bring-with-you-to-ecuador/

Portugal is popular with French retirees. Morocco was once, and may still be, but I think more people are nervous about the political situation there.

Highly inflected languages are very difficult to learn. I’m studying Russian and there’s nothing more frustrating than being unable to find a word in a dictionary, or even in the 501 Russian Verbs reference book.

At least we’re younger than the rocks inside your head.

Show some respect for your elders, boy. Children should be seen and not heard.

Off-topic,

Critic reduced to tears by Wonder Woman:

I did not expect to cry during “Wonder Woman.”

Specifically, I did not expect to tear up during the fight scenes. OK, maybe if Gal Gadot’s Diana, Amazon princess, had given some terrific speech, or if a character I liked had died, but I certainly did not expect to get all misty eyed during the battle scenes.

But that’s exactly what happened; when Wonder Woman started fighting, out came the waterworks.

It started on the beach, when Gen. Antiope (Robin Wright) rode into battle with a smile and Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) leaped off her horse, spinning into the air to wipe out two armed men with her sword. As the battle raged on, it became clear that the scene was not window-dressing, 10 seconds of Amazon showtime before the real movie started. This was the movie — female warriors kicking ass.

They were fierce and powerful, highly trained soldiers who knew what they were doing, and the film took that, and them, seriously. It was overwhelming.

I felt like I was discovering something I didn’t even know I had always wanted. A need that I had boxed up and buried deep after three movies of Iron Man punching bad guys in the face, three more movies of Captain America punching bad guys in the face, a movie about Superman and Batman punching each other in the face and then “Suicide Squad.”

Witnessing a woman hold the field, and the camera, for that long blew open an arguably monotonous genre. We didn’t need a computer-generated tree or a sassy raccoon to change the superhero game; what we needed was a woman.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/herocomplex/la-et-hc-wonder-woman-crying-20170605-htmlstory.html

Worth noting that Turkheimer linked to both Steve and Razib in that post.

I’ve thought of eastern Europe too, but my experience in trying to learn Russian has convinced me that trying to learn one of those languages would be an exercise in purposeless frustration. If your wife is a native speaker, or course, or if you learn languages readily, this negative factor would not apply.

A good internet connection goes a long way towards covering the other two. Well, not cell phone coverage I guess, but the landline aspect.

This was my general impression after visiting PR several years ago. I’ve lived in NYC for 30 years and thus have worked with and been exposed to large numbers of Nuyoricans, as PR’s living in NYC refer to themselves.
There was a world of difference between Puerto Ricans in NYC and the natives on the Island. I was pleasantly surprised by my visit, and realized Puerto Rico has regularly offshored it’s worst elements to NYC/Chicago/Miami for decades.

I’ve been told many times that an American is always easy to spot in a crowd. (A big maple-leaf sticker on one’s backpack is a dead giveaway.)

Which is why I mentioned Steve’s post being linked. 😉

But, yes, I’ll give Turkheimer credit for acknowledging the heretics.

Still Turkheimer’s post is odd to my very layman mind. He seems perfectly fine with the idea of the existence of race, IQ existing and IQ being heritable on individual basis, i.e. smart parents tend to have above average IQ kids. But then he says that the possibility of genetic differences among races is crazy and can’t be proved anyway.

I don’t see how those go together. But, again, it’s not my field so maybe he has perfectly sound reasons.

Harvard once rescinded a girl’s admission offer after finding out that she had murdered her mother:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Grant_college_admissions_controversy

And we all know that folks who trade “explicit memes” are the lowest form of scum – far worse than matricidal maniacs.

I do think that PR’s current financial troubles present an opportunity to buy a nice vacation place. I was in Vieques recently and saw “se vende” written on houses everywhere. If I didn’t have responsibilities up here, I wouldn’t mind having a place down there for myself

You say:

– I think Ecuador is in the same time zone as the Eastern U.S. (although, being on the Equator, it doesn’t have daylight savings time). It’s convenient to be in the same time zone as most of your contacts so having a second home at a different latitude but not longitude

My property investments are in NZ, but I live in Cyprus. The working day in NZ starts at midnight Cyprus time. It’s the only real drawback to being here. People are really bad about reading emails carefully and you often have no choice but to phone.

However, I really do recommend life without winter.

Retiring abroad may not have taken off in the US, but 60,000 POMs live here and the quality of life is ridiculously high.

Also, Cyprus may not be as efficient as Switzerland, but it is very, very far from being a Third World country. It shows how nice the Middle East might be if it weren’t filled by Muslim religious zealots who marry their cousins.

The thing to keep in mind about people like Turkheimer is that they aren’t, at heart, scientists. They are, instead, lawyers– lawyers arguing for a position dictated by ideology.

When the facts are against you, pound the table. Turkheimer is pounding that table with every ad hominem he can think of.

My main gripe with Latin America is the superficiality of the culture. Greek Cyprus has amazing cultural depth and fascinating and easily accessible geology. Malta and Spain are also popular places for POMs to retire to.

One suspect named Shanquavious. Uhhh…

(*＾▽＾)／

Fair, this is a valid reason. I have no doubt that many old Detroiters did the same when they tried to retire in the 1970s and 80s. It must have saddened them personally that the Arsenal of America became the ultra-ghetto it predictably did when blacks took over.

But that’s an emergency exception.

Agreed. As well, table-pounding doesn’t deserve a response, either.

He has no argument. It is in essence a lawyer’s statement of claim: prove your case to my satisfaction–otherwise you are wrong.

Silly.

Not to argue with your point, but you responded to a comment about socialized medicine with a comment about crime.

Yet, the more extreme elements of the alt-right seem to be markedly youthful. If his sock puppet persona doesn’t like retrograde ignorance he sees here, he’s really not going to like where things are headed.

The Western Cape is the most functional part of the country and indeed quite pleasant. That doesn’t change the fact that crime is rampant and much of it is violent and racially motivated, nor that racial tensions continue to intensify.

Need it be asked?

Since Fred Reed was mentioned, he’s blogged specifically about living in Mexico more specifically in Lake Chapala. I have a work colleague who is taking two weeks vacation there this summer with his wife to see if it might work for them in retirement.

https://fredoneverything.org/expat-mexico-arroz-by-any-other-name-would-smell-like-rice/

Fred has mentioned in other blog pieces that someone considering this should already have experience living in other countries such as ex military, state department employees etc.

I was in Buenos Aires once with some American business colleagues, one of whom was black, and the locals assumed she was from Brazil.

The homicide rate for the island as a whole is 25 per 100,000, more than 5x that on the mainland. Imagine what it is in sketchier neighborhoods in San Juan. The place is as dangerous as Brazil.

I twice worked in Columbia rebuilding the country’s lone blast furnace. The nearest town, where we stayed was Sogamosa , at an altitude of 8500 feet. I was in my early thirties and a heavy smoker, but even the non smokers felt the effects of the high elevation. I still vividly remember the sight of hanging meat at the market covered in a blanket of flies and the pungent smell of diesel fuel, that how they heated, mixed with charcoal smoke and donkey shit.I doubt that most of these retirees have their own cars and truly what level is the health care? For what it’s worth, plenty of Canadians like spending half of the year in the states, regardless of their endless protesting about how terrible America and Americans are.

If one of, you are a decade older than me approximately. And there is “27 year old”, who probably is 30 now but I can’t keep track.

OT: with the numbers of comments in this thread, these terrorist attacks sure are good for comment numbers and likely, page views. I wonder how much of that is astroturf. Have we broken a grand in comments before?

So they returned to the South and retired to the Shenandoah Valley where they play lots of bridge. My mother figures by the time they ruin The Valley she’ll be dead.

The Valley could hardly be more dissimilar to the Gulf Coast.

They’ve had quite rapid urban development in the Valley conjoined to wretched town planning. The results could not be more charmless.

Not as cold as the Pacific Ocean north of Point Conception! It does keep the crowds down to a minimum though.

Jimbo, Puerto Rico is a beautiful island home to some of the best resorts in the Carribbean. As soon as all the Puerto Ricans have fled to the States, it will probably be a great place to live.

Wow, 9,000 miles! It does have the disadvantage of traversing the entire length of Iran though.

Reg, they are both nimble and strong. Doesn’t matter that the ballerina weighs a hundred pounds, they still lift her and prance about the stage. Whoa, prance, bad choice of words. Rahm Emanuel was a ballerino

There’s a sort of benign lawlessness to the place. People, if they get in car wrecks, will just walk away and leave the car on the side of the road. He said it’s not uncommon to see this everywhere.

Sounds like the San Joaquin Valley!

I flew from Rio de Janeiro to Buenos Aires on an Argentinian airline (about a 3 hour flight). They were very retro when it came to their flight attendants, who were thin and beautiful.

I didn’t realize you were a woman. Interesting.

I can top that:

Harvard College rescinded admissions offers to at least ten prospective members of the Class of 2021 after the students traded sexually explicit memes and messages that sometimes targeted minority groups in a private Facebook group chat.

AA Harvard student submits (c)rap album as senior thesis, graduates with honors

Obasi Shaw made Havard University history with ‘Liminal Minds.’ Obasi Shaw, a 20-year-old senior will be graduating from Havard University with one of the highest honors after submitting a 10-track Hip-Hop album entitled Liminal Minds for his final thesis.

I know a couple who retired there from Canada about a year ago. They can see the Rock of Gibraltar from their patio. It’s still quite inexpensive despite a real estate recovery, however anything with an engine costs an arm and a leg.

My impression is that traditional cultures, including surviving ones, are full of men dancing. Call it “folk dancing’ if you like. I suppose the aversion is to the hip-thrusting, negroid twerking that’s called “dancing” these days.

True, but don’t forget that the island is a hub of drug trafficking activity between mainland South America and the US so I would assume that many (most) of the departed are involved with drug trade. Also related, there are some pretty nasty caserios (gov’t housing projects) in San Juan area and Ponce that lots of crime is isolated to. Places that you’d have no reason to be. I’m not saying it’s a Utopian place by any stretch just that it has a huge upside.

I understand it is very common for college students to use student loans for travel, including overseas vacations.

People’s bodies acclimate to altitude within a few days or a week at most, regardless of age.

I can easily generalize. The South is predominantly white and white pleasant. The rest of the country is less pleasant and more stabby.

“I would imagine that the locals are also sick and tired of the invading Gringos inviting themselves.”

The “Gringos” aren’t invading anyone. They are merely taking advantage of their host country’s immigration / tourist / foreign retiree laws — just like immigrants who move to America take advantage of OUR laws.

If the citizens of the country to which the “Gringos” have moved don’t like the fact that the “Gringos” “invite themselves” into their land, they are free to change their laws accordingly.

Until then, the citizens of said country don’t have any right to complain

After all, if a country has laws which permits Gringo retirees to move to and live in said country, those laws are really an “invitation” for such Gringos to arrive and take up residence, no?

You’ve made this argument so often yourself (only if favor of unlimited Muslim immigration into the U.S.) that it’s an integral part of your shtick when it comes to immigration.

So, Corvinus old boy, consider yourself — hoist by your own petard.

And feel free to consider yourself a hypocrite as well.

Fred should know that booty bandits are not looked upon too highly in Mexico.

People get the wrong idea from some Amren postings about South Africa. Or from Gavin McInnes interview with South Africans on the Anthony Cumia show.

It is like reporting on the weekly murders in Chicago (where I used to live) and then thinking that that describes Vermont (where I go for the weekend). In South Africa I have never even been to Gauteng, and in the safer western provinces (I have been to them all) I don’t go to the bad neighbourhoods in the cities at night.

I used to live in Santa Barbara, and I simply looked up the crime stats by zip code if I wanted to visit LA. Same thing in Cape Town. I don’t go to Philippi at night – or ever, for that matter.

One difference between Chicago and South Africa is less guns, and they don’t have cars. They’d have to walk 2o km, riot, and walk 2o km home. Not going to happen, except once a year on Boxing Day. For some reason there is a tradition of them invading the beaches where I surf. They rent buses or take minibus taxis to get to the train to come. A hard core are left after dark, drunk and loud. But that is only once a year.

As for “targeted for extinction” well no. Demagogic, psychopathic politicians, and the black underclass might call for that, but whites, though a tiny minority have half the wealth of the country. And they make wealth for employed blacks, and they pay the taxes that pay for social services. What with the flood of migrants coming from the north I have lost count of the population of South Africa, but it is more than 50 million with five million taxpayers. On the other hand my own country is something like 30 million with 20 million taxpayers. So in South Africa the more sensible members of the ruling party know what would happen if they drive more whites to emigrate to New Zealand and Australia. Financial collapse.

I am not saying that the nuttier elements of the ANC won’t bring us to that, but there are whites, coloureds, Asians, and yes, even blacks who are trying to run the country properly.

The farm murders are sickening, but then so are the home invasion murders by blacks in the US that the faggoty main stream media don’t report on.

I’ve also heard that Phuket, Thailand, is host to significant ex-pat communities of both Americans and Russians.

If there weren’t too many SWiPpLes there, I’d retire there, Phuk it.

Do those countries have good internet connections? Phone service? English language TV?

In central Mexico, I pay about $45.00 US a month to a cable company that provides internet, cable and phone service.

The internet is 20 mbps, which allows me to work online. I get around 200 cable channels, about half of which are HD including 20 pay movie channels. All English language entertainment and sports channels are available in English. The phone service is unlimited calls for Mexico, the US and Canada, including cell phones.

I could get Netflix and stuff like that, but I really would rather watch less tv. Most big US and European films will play down here with Spanish subtitles. I do miss some of the smaller independent or foreign films, but I sense fewer of these are being made. At any rate, I check movie review sites weekly and make notes on any films I might want to see and order them from Amazon or look for them when I go up to the US once or twice a year for weekly trips. Pirated dvd’s cost about 75 US cents and will pretty much cover all films released in Mexico.

No one in the Gates family wants poor people to have more children. Bill and Melinda Gates are pro-contraception and pro-abortion. Bill Gates Sr. served on the board of Planned Parenthood. LINK

After Trump cut funding to international organizations that provide abortion information, an international group called She Decides was formed to replace the loss funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation promised $20 million. “The money will go to five agencies to pay for contraception supplies, counselling, safe abortion services in countries where abortion is legal and other family planning programs, primarily in Africa and other regions of the developing world.” LINK

In response to the abortion-related cuts, Melinda Gates wrote a strange opinion piece for CNN.

Less than 1% of the US federal budget goes to aid, and the dollars spent abroad reap dividends for our country, too. …

The money we spend on foreign aid is a long-term investment in Americans themselves. …

When the United States invests in strengthening health systems abroad, it also makes deadly epidemics less likely to land on our shores. …

Investing in global health and development also helps keep Americans safe. When people in the world’s poorest places have the chance to support their families and contribute to their communities, they are less likely to resort to violence. …

What’s more, by helping countries lift themselves out of poverty, we also create markets for US products. …

Another US investment that yields enormous returns for the global economy is contraceptives. …

Smaller families mean women are better able to work outside the home…

For all these reasons, I will spend my time in D.C. this week making the case that if we care about keeping America healthy, safe and prosperous, then we must prioritize foreign aid. The cost of these cuts is far too great for our country — or our conscience — to bear.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/20/opinions/melinda-gates-the-best-investment-america-can-make/index.html

His daughter with Jessica Lange

I guess science has scarily advanced over the past 40 years…

In fact I would consider the majority of the people in the Western portion of the Island (Cabo Rojo, Central Cordillera Mountains, Yauco, San Germain, Rincon, Boqueron etc) to be descendants of Europeans and majority-white.

The crime rate in Puerto Rico is higher than it is in Mississippi. In San Juan it is higher than it is in Detroit.

I can’t speak to Ecuador specifically, but because the US was the earliest adopter of cell phone technology and because of our tendency toward unregulated oligopoly carriers, the US in general has among the worst and highest cost cell phone service in the world. Ditto for internet service. We think of the US being ahead on this kind of stuff but sadly when you go abroad you realize that we have fallen behind on a lot of things. Most 3rd world countries would be ashamed to have an airport like La Guardia. We have spent all of our treasure on wars, on welfare, on security theater, on unnecessary college degrees, on all sorts of BS and have badly neglected our infrastructure

English TV – this can be satisfied with streaming services if you have good enough internet or cell service, which you probably will. You can also get a satellite dish of some kind.

Phone – most 3rd worldish places never had good wireline service to begin with (usually run, badly, by the local post office) so most people switched to cell long ago. Wireline phone service is a relic – I know a lot of seniors are used to having it and it is not without its advantages, but it’s somewhere up there with carburetors and tube TVs on the list of obsolete technologies.

It’s not that simple when you’re talking about seriously high altitudes. Give me a call when you’ve been up on Mt. Rainier (14.5 thousand ft.) for a week. Atmospheric pressure is about 60% of that of sea level. That means you’d be getting 60% of the Oxygen into your bloodstream as you would at sea level. If it ends up being hard to talk for you, just text me about it.

I assume you are talking about ballet dancing. When it comes to social dancing, this has traditionally been a pair activity so there has to be a 1:1 sex ratio of partners. Perhaps this is like the # of sexual partners where men report having more than women. One of the genders has to be lying.

In the past, dancing was considered an essential part of the matching process but I guess people now just swipe on Tinder and go right at it like dogs so that men can skip the dancing.

“while Bill Gates’ summer home is in Redmond, WA and winter home is in Ranch Santa Fe, CA”

Why is it that those who are publicly shoving their finger in everyone else’s face demanding they repent from their climate changing ways are the ones making the biggest carbon footprints? Could it be that they care less about the issue they so vociferously proclaim than they do about virtue signalling?

No, I was mentioning all kinds of dancing. The sole reason men used to dance socially was to meet girls. I’ve never met an heterosexual man who liked dancing at all, not to mention ballet dancing.
You can hardly call the grinding and humping that nowadays happen on the dance floor of clubs “dancing”.

My friends who investigated Latin-American retirement had the following relevant observations:
– Poor Spanish skills will make life difficult for you
– You will stand in line for hours
– “Come back tomorrow” actually means “I don’t want to do it today” or “I don’t know whom to ask”
– The electric bill consumes most of your budget, and it’s amazingly unreliable
– Not everyone is happy to see you
– Instead of admitting they don’t know the answer to your question, locals will tell you some long-winded story that is complete B.S.
– Pioneer skills and a can-do attitude really help

These are typically things that will result in many retirees throwing in the towel after a couple of years.

The southern state of Santa Catarina has a GDP per capita on par with Puerto Rico, but a homicide rate about a third lower, per Wiki (I’d have assumed it was a lot lower).

Rio de Janeiro has a few pleasant and pretty safe neighborhoods, but a lot of sketchiness outside of them, and you’d probably want to avoid public transportation.

So glad to see Harvard affirm snitching as one of the pillars of the academy.

I’m not sure I could stomach Fred Reed holding forth in the local diner about how Mexicans are god’s gift to humanity

It’s OK, eventually he’d have to go and serve another table.

I guess those were the last ten conservatives that accidentally passed through the admissions office’s political filter.

Not that many Puerto Ricans are really ‘white’; maybe by Latin American standards, but not by American standards, which is what most of the readers here are thinking in terms of. They tend to be clearly mixed, with a good bit of African and native in there. It doesn’t take much coffee in your milk to spoil your nice cup of milk. There’s plenty of redbones in ghetto college for 5-20 who can attest to that.

“Citizen of a Silly Country”

We all are, at this point.

It’s funny that because Mexican cuisine uses a lot of chili peppers (though even Mexican food is not as relentlessly hot as some people imagine it to be) somehow people assume that this carries over to the rest of Latin America and even Spain. The climate of Ecuador is not really suited to growing chili peppers, especially at high altitudes. Potatoes are more like it.

As for climate, it’s a good idea to look at places where you can grow high quality Arabica coffee beans. Coffee thrives in mild rather than hot temperatures but cannot tolerate any frost so it grows mostly on mountains in the tropics.

I’d never consider retiring to Mexico, much less Ecuador. I value American rule of law (yeah, what’s left of it but that’s still a lot) way more than any conceivable cost of living advantage those places offer. I like my police policing, not running protection and kidnapping rackets.

I’d rather live in a hovel in West Virginia, than in a luxury villa at Lake Chapala.

I also wouldn’t want to live in a place where people can tell I’m a stranger just by looking at me.

“I did not expect to cry during “Wonder Woman….It started on the beach, when Gen. Antiope (Robin Wright) rode into battle with a smile and Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) leaped off her horse, spinning into the air to wipe out two armed men with her sword. As the battle raged on, it became clear that the scene was not window-dressing, 10 seconds of Amazon showtime before the real movie started. This was the movie — female warriors kicking ass.”

Yeah, when I was 5, I shed a tear or two while watching ‘Watership Down’. Pure fantasy disconnected with reality can do that sometimes.

Uh huh. And what do the slums of San Juan have to do places 2 and a half hours away on the opposite end of the island? Thats like telling someone to stay away from Amish Country because crime in North Philly or something. And i addressed upthread that the island had a higher crime rate than you’d expect because drug traffickers kill one another mainly in San Juan area housing projects.

I did UAL Chicago-HK on an ancient 747 – the “in flight entertainment” was a CRT hanging from the ceiling every 10th row.

Luckily I had brought some books (don’t have to worry about the batteries dying on those – needless to say there were no power outlets). As far as I could tell, the Chinese all took massive doses of Ambien and slept the whole way. This is probably because they work 23 hours/day when they are not traveling and are badly sleep deprived.

Speaking of ancient, the “stewardesses” were all surly old ladies (flights get assigned by seniority due to union rules and I guess this flight is considered desirable) who had been flying longer than the plane. For one of them it was her last flight before retirement and the rest of the crew kept parading her around with balloons and songs and such, as if I gave a damn.

My next flight after that was Dragon Air HK to Shanghai – the stewardesses were all attractive 20 something females, the plane was brand new, they kept coming around with booze and hot towels. I felt like I was in an Asian version of Mad Men – the only thing missing (which I did not miss) were the clouds of cigarette smoke.

Most of Florida is not very expensive either.

Yeah but the problem is … you’re living in Florida.

(The ocean waves felt terrific this morning. Saw several pretty bikini clad girls–without tats! There are some pluses. But man the geography is deathly boring.)

I think that what you are missing (and actually the same thing is true to some extent in the US) is that there is a big difference in crime, police corruption, etc. between say the slum areas of Tijuana and an upscale expat area in the mountains such as San Miguel Allende. In the latter you would be much safer than in say the ghetto of Chicago.

That’s okay, I don’t look too kindly on Mexican booty in general.

Right in all counts, sir. This source states that the typical Puerto Rican has TWENTY percent subsaharan african DNA:

http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/07/25/genographic-project-dna-results-reveal-details-of-puerto-rican-history/

Explains a lot about their more violent and volatile nature, which I have personally experienced and observed (mostly in NYC and NJ).

Latin America is an awfully big place – I think it varies a lot by country and region. There are places where the power goes out a lot and places where it’s very reliable. There are places where you can get by in English and places where you can’t (though I think it’s pretty presumptuous to move to another country and not expect to learn the local language at at least a basic level). Etc. Utilities may somewhat costly (the locals don’t run the A/C full blast 24/7) but if you are paying $500/month for a lovely furnished condo then so what? The whole point of moving to a place like this is that people are laid back and no one is in a big hurry. If you want snappy service, move to Zurich.

LOL — you’ve nailed down the most salient differences between flying an Asian airline and a US airline. That retirement flight sounds like a nightmare.

Dragon Air is now Cathay Dragon; the quality differential between Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon has now diminished to not much.

I did that UAL HK-Chicago flight a couple of times, but never again. We Calvinists swore off United about 1o years ago after an inexcusable series of customer service debacles on a trip from HK to the USA, and we’ve stuck to it. Actually, that trip included the O’Hare-HKG leg, which was bad enough, but the real problems were in — thread theme? — Florida, Orlando, specifically.

Funny. I was in and around the dance world for a while. Lots of gays of course but lots of gays in all the arts. However there is a certain percent of male dancers who are alpha. Often these guys learned as kids and are soloist or higher. So they are both high status in the ballet world and have lots of young girls to hit on. Essentially they are foxes in the hen house. Btw I had to google ballerino to see if it was real as I had never heard it used. I guess I never met many Italian dancers.

Warren is very underrated- his first , self titled album is a gem, as is Excitable Boy. He has a lot of great later stuff- “Mr Bad Example”, “Transverse City” just to name a couple. The Dead used to do “”Werewolves” as an encore, with the Wolf guitar!

Although the Vilcabambans did not enjoy greater longevity than the rest of the world, researchers noted that the Vilcabamban lifestyle, which included hard work in a high altitude combined with a low-calorie, low-animal-fat diet, did seem to keep the villagers healthy and vigorous in their old age.

There is, or was, a hypothesis kicking around the ageing-research community that chronic, low-level exposure to stressors like heat or radiation might actually prolong lifespan.

The idea was that it triggers a very ancient stress-response mechanism at the cellular level, analogous to very hardy, extraordinarily long-lived states of spores, or virtually ageless, defensive ‘dauer’ states in roundworms, etc.

The suggestion was that living long-term at very high altitudes, by exposing one to chronically somewhat higher (though not high) radiation levels (eg cosmic rays) might be triggering such a state, and might even be tied to the widespread anecdotes about exceptionally long-lived mountain peoples.

There’s some evidence medical workers chronically exposed to higher levels of radiation live longer, for example, and get less, not more, cancer.

Calorie restriction appears similarly promising (and might be working via similar pathways).

Edemas in various forms can hit low-landers hard. When brains swell and lungs begin to fill up with liquids then dropping down to lower elevation is urgent for those expecting to function somewhat normally, even live. Acclimatization takes a longer time than tourists may imagine, and life at 7,000′ is much easier than 11,000′. If people have to try, visit Leadville, Colorado and see how long you want to hang out with the locals beyond an afternoon.

I suppose my overall reaction to this topic is: why the HELL should I have to leave my own country to be able to retire in a reasonably nice place at a reasonable cost? Why does an 85 year old Chinese grandmother fresh off the plane get Social Security? How are these two things connected?

I want my country back.

That’s because ballerinos have extremely well developed pelvic muscles. Pelvic muscles are the muscles that Kegel exercises target. Ballerino training and routines involve intense use of the pelvic muscles. It’s like they’re constantly doing Kegel exercises. In other words, these guys have phenomenal stamina. That’s why they do very well with the ladies.

Perhaps this is like the # of sexual partners where men report having more than women. One of the genders has to be lying.

What about hookers?

Sure they’re the same, Steve, but you can find that same chord progression, 5th, 4th, tonic (x2) in loads of other songs too. Skynyrd* made it great with so many guitars, and Warren Zevon with his piano playing, great energy, and fun lyrics.

* Ha, the spell-checker does not even know Lyrnryd or Skynyrd – what kind of damn yankee software did Unz put on here (or is it local to my machine… ummmm, never mind.) Or was it programmed by Neil Young.

As someone (or maybe multiple commenters) mentioned above, it’s one thing to live your life at high altitude. There may be other, bad effects (lots of UV), but I can’t see that being anything but good for your cardio and pulmonary parts. Imagine coming down to sea level after a life in Bolivia at 12,000 ft. You’d feel like you’d been reborn, or at least that you are in an oxygen chamber.

The other way around could be very bad for old people or anyone who already has some problems with cardio-pulmonary stuff. Whatever you have will feel much worse up there. Even my V-8 Camaro had a hell of a time getting up the Molass pass on the way to Durango way back – it wasn’t old then, but it had a carburetor, non-adjustable, at least by me.

Ha! We already live there.

22 James Richard > I was just reading that United has ordered some specially built 787s (fewer seats, more fuel) for a proposed flight from the US to Singapore that is even longer.

be super careful if/when you book a Singsapore Airlines First Class seat from SG to California.

some of the flights are codeshares with United. You pay the ridiculously high price, but you don’t get the ridiculously high level of outfitment & service-rendered on Sing Air aircrafts by S-A crews

It is always best to buy the ticket at a real S-Air office. However, evem they will not mention the fact of codeshare unless you ask….

Retiring away from family and living (or at least trying to live) independently into advanced age is more of a WASP thing. Elderly Jews might retire to Florida but they’re known for constantly pestering their families.

Regarding the numbers of sexual partners: there is not as much dishonesty as you may suspect: the women with many partners are all riding a smaller carousel of so-called “alphas….”

53 Dr Kill > Except we do speak English

Ostensibly, so do blacks in deep-rural Parishes of Louisiana.

They’re so much alike that future Michigan Senator Kid Rock merged the two songs into his hit “all summer long”.

Writing from central Mexico, I’d say most of what you say is true except:

The standing in lines for hours is now less of a problem. The only time Mexicans stand in really long lines is waiting for cash withdrawals that can’t be done thru an ATM machine. And even this is not too much of problem if you avoid going to banks around the first and the 15th of the month. There are usually ways to avoid long lines in other situations, but you might have to pay a small fee (50 US cents) that many Mexicans consider an extravagance.

I have no idea where this high electric bill stuff comes from, unless you’re talking to ex-pats with Olympic sized pools and AC in beach climates. A typical power bill, once you get above 5 or 6,000 feet, is less than $25 US a month. I have a small house, and my bill is less than $1o US a month. My power goes out much less frequently, and for much shorter periods, than when I lived in the S.E. US.

You don’t have to go all the way to Ecuador to see this. Once you get south of Guatemala, the food is very distinct from Mexico. No tortillas and very little use of hot chiles.

Why does an 85 year old Chinese grandmother fresh off the plane get Social Security?

The answer is that she doesn’t. Generally speaking, you have to pay in for 10 years to draw Social Security. There is a separate welfare like program called SSI (Supplemental Security Income) that elderly (legal) low income immigrants may be eligible for. Social security (technically OASI – old age and survivor’s insurance) pays out around $800 billion/ year to 50 million recipients (average benefit $16,000) . SSI pays $60 billion to 8 million recipients (average benefit $7,500).

Unless the kid has some horrible disease, it’s much more likely that you’ll have a problem than your grandkids. Kids are very resilient.

I’m in my early 20’s do I not count as a regular?

High electric bills comes from coastal areas like Roatan or Bocas del Toro not the high Andes.

20% is the average but not necessarily the typical amount. Puerto Ricans come in many shades. While it’s true that very few (except for recent arrivals) are 100% white, there is quite a range from say 35% white (the rest being African and Amerindian), which reads as black or mulatto, to 95% white, which averages out to 65% white. A Puerto Rican who is 90 or 95% white could pass for an olive skinned Italian like Ariana Grande (or vice versa).

The sole reason men used to dance socially was to meet girls.

You mean when my father danced with my mother at nightspots he was trying to meet girls?

Lot > My anecdotal knowledge of this

quoted without comment. Next you’ll be quoting CNN documentaries.

> is they are not hot 19 year olds. More typical is mid-50s American man

If they are mid-50’s it’s not very likely that they are actually retired

> with early 30′s foreign woman who is average looking and argues

In this world, you get the kind of government you deserve, and the kind of pussy you deserve..

Expensive Londonistan aside, surely there must be small towns and villages in the English countryside that are inexpensive by greater Los Angeles standards, while having the advantages of a lower cost of living and a congenial culture?

For that matter, surely there are small towns in America that offer the same advantages? I know that many metropolitan types decry “flyover” country as being opioid-addict infested in their stereotypes, but Sailer’s crowd surely doesn’t think like that?

I understand Cottonwood Falls, Kansas is very nice, from my brother, who is looking to hole up someplace nice after living and working in New York City for the last 45 years.

If you are talking about an entire population, it takes 2 to tango so the total number of male (heterosexual) sex acts is equal to the # of female sex acts (never mind that some men or women are getting a lot more action than others). If a population of men reports that they have sex on average 2x/week and a population of women reports 1x, then someone is lying. This BTW is what happens when they do surveys.