This month in US politics has been something straight out of an eventful Scandal season with Trump getting shot in the ear, Joe Biden withdrawing from the race, and Kamala Harris launching into a Brat-themed presidential campaign – and some Americans can’t bear to stay and watch how it all plays out. Jen Barnett, the co-founder of Expatsi (helping US citizens relocate abroad), says she and her husband Brett Andrews launched the service two and a half years ago, but 30 per cent of their subscribers have joined in the past month. “We’ve seen tremendous growth since the first presidential debate,” she says. This comes after American influencers like Bryn Elise started spreading the message last year that the “new American dream is to leave” and head to a quiet European town or a poolside apartment in Bali. “Somewhere where we aren’t being poisoned by our food, we don’t need two or three jobs to survive, and where healthcare isn’t a luxury but the norm,” Elise said in her original video. The idea has since spread across social media, with travel vloggers claiming that the American dream does not exist in the country anymore.

Barnett and Andrews are based in Mérida, Mexico. After helping other Americans relocate overseas, they say most of their clients tell them they wish they’d moved sooner. “They’re moving because the US is too divided, too conservative, and too expensive, and to avoid the threat of gun violence,” says Andrews. While Trump pushes for a trickle-down economy, Barnett says the concept of moving to Portugal is “tricking down” to Americans. “The income inequalities set into motion by Reaganomics have reached a tipping point we can’t come back from,” she says. “I think that desperation is at the heart of our political division, and our desire to leave.” And, with Project 2025 (a blueprint by and for some of Trump’s close allies, to ensure that if Trump wins in November, MAGA will hit the ground running) in the picture, the outcome of the next election feels as desperate as ever.

For people who have already given up hope in the future of the country, places like Portugal and Bali, have become a welcome escape. Travel content creator Andrea went on a solo trip to Bali in 2022 after going through a divorce. There, she met with a shaman who told her she was going to live in Indonesia eventually. At the time, she wasn’t convinced. But then, when she returned to America, her youngest son asked to live with his father, so she sold her four-bedroom home in Houston, Texas, in January 2023 and committed to a life abroad. “I figured that really corporate America, white picket fence, and family thing just really wasn’t fulfilling,” she says. “It was all a lie.”

Andrea’s routine in Bali consists of morning juices, yoga classes, eating out, spiritual workshops, and massages three or four times a week. “I work for maybe two to three hours a day, and then by 5pm I’m on the beach surfing or watching the sunset,” she says. “We don’t work 9am to 5pm in America, we work 7am to 7pm and we live to work instead of working to live.” While countries around the world each have a different approach to working culture, the American expat experience (fuelled by US dollars and remote work) doesn’t always reflect the working conditions for locals. In Bali, tourism accounts for 60 per cent to 80 per cent of the economy, and, as of February 2024, the average Indonesian employee could expect a monthly salary of three million Indonesian rupiah (which is around $185 USD). Then there’s the fact that locals in “work-from-home havens” like Mexico City are being priced out of housing by Americans looking for cheaper rent.

When asking if the new American dream is to leave the country, it’s worth considering if a “better” quality of life (for everyone) ever existed in the country in the first place. Sure, some people’s grandparents may have bought their first home for $8,000, but plantation slavery was once a truly American ideal, the US has the highest incarceration rate of anywhere in the world, and the country has undeniably been built on the false notion that an individual’s success is the result of their work ethic alone, not a result of societal structure. Still, it seems to many Americans this year has been the final straw. David McNeill, the founder of Expat Empire, says he had more people contact him in the first 15 days of July than in the entire month of June. “The primary reason currently seems to be anxiety regarding the upcoming election,” he says. “Other reasons have included concerns around access to healthcare, safety, cost of living, and climate change.”

McNeill says the people currently looking to flee the country are, in large part, Americans who “have spent their whole lives working but are unable to maintain a quality of life that feels commensurate with the amount of work that they have put in”. In other words – they are understandably fed up with the American grind so are plotting their exit. “I will say that moving abroad has increased my quality of life significantly, so I strongly recommend it to anyone with the courage and determination to do it,” says McNeill. Only once you land, you might realise the far right is rising across Europe, and there’s a global housing shortage. Still, to many, it’s still worth rolling the dice on another country just to never hear the words “Trump” and “Biden” again (or, at least, far less). And, as McNeill puts it: “The worst that can happen is that you move back or try another country.”