My partner and I are planning to move to Amsterdam in the middle of this year. We haven't done it yet so maybe this isn't super relevant, but here are our reasons (we're planning to have kids, so lots of these are kid-related):

- There is essentially no gun violence.

- Education is a lot better and more evenly distributed.

- Access to abortion and other reproductive health care.

- Far less dependent on cars (walkable cities, trains, public transit).

- Better legislative regimes--you can see this in sectors like food safety.

- Better balance between employer and worker rights, which leads to...

- Better work/life balance.

- Lower income inequality.

- More diversity of culture.

- So far, no insanely huge forest fires or mega-droughts.

- Stronger anti-discrimination laws (including protections for LGBTQ people and immigrants).

- College is very inexpensive.

- Retirement infrastructure is much stronger.

- The US government and election system is... it's bad.

Here are things that give us pause:

- Depending on how you look at it, a lack of diversity. The US is super diverse; only a few cities in the EU really come close. It is true that the EU is home to lots and lots of cultural diversity, but when you look at like, raw numbers of Black/Asian/etc. people they're worse.

- The rise of nationalism--we mostly think it's less of an issue in the EU than it is in the US, but TBD on this, especially as climate migration increases.

- The EU's response to climate change has been miserable, and they're pretty dependent on autocratic regimes (Russia) for energy.

- The social integration difficulty is hard to estimate, but we assume it's pretty high. Learning a new language is hard, learning a new culture is hard, adjusting to being an outsider/immigrant is hard, and you're doing all this while adjusting to lots of other things.

- Most of our family lives in the US, they're getting older, and we'll miss out on familial support re: child rearing.

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These all sound high-falutin' probably and they are. But like, what does this mean in practice?

- Our kids will probably never experience low-grade background anxiety of "maybe this is the day a school shooting happens".

- We won't have to play the public/private school game, and our kids won't feel that weird class stratification (I know there are still private and parochial schools, but the difference in the US tends to be a super poor school that people of color can't buy out of, and a super rich school that costs a bunch of money).

- Our kids won't ever have the internal debate about reproductive rights: birth control will be a norm and abortions will be available.

- We'll stay healthy more easily with healthier food and a more active, less car-dependent lifestyle.

- Our lives won't revolve around our jobs, we'll be able to be more present for our kids.

- We won't have to solve all of our problems (education, health care, housing) with huge piles of money, driving us to work harder and take jobs that exploit others just so we can stay ahead.

- Our kids will probably not have to spend a ton of money or time taking care of us when we're old.

- Our kids will grow up in a more multicultural environment, hopefully giving them a broader view of humanity.

This is pretty hand-wavy and high-level, and there's definitely more nuance than I'm describing here. But achieving most of them in the US requires lots of effort, and it's pretty fragile. Like you can try to lead a car-free existence in a smaller city, but as soon as the 1 grocery store by you closes, or you get a different job, or the city changes the bus routes/schedules, your whole life (probably) changes.