Uh, I do understand how socialism works.

The point is that, from an individual financial perspective, you're much worse off in the EU. I'm not making a normative judgement, just a financial one.

Arguing why "people trot out" socialism from a purely individual financials POV is in large part a normative judgement. In any case, I certainly don't expect a tech visa in France to hope to attract people whose life goal is to retire in 10 years, so on that we probably agree.

> Arguing why "people trot out" socialism from a purely individual financials POV is in large part a normative judgement.

You don't seem to understand what a normative judgement is. I'm not saying whether socialism is good or bad, just that it objectively does not balance out with the less compensation. The OP literally framed it as you getting "these benefits" in compensation for the lower salary and they are simply wrong.

> I certainly don't expect a tech visa in France to hope to attract people whose life goal is to retire in 10 years, so on that we probably agree.

If France isn't hoping to attract people who are hoping to make enough money to retire in 10 years, I question how they'll get any good founders. Successful founders are almost always in a position to retire within 10 years.

It sounds like you're arguing that a socialist state will have trouble attracting capitalists. On that I agree. I don't really see how you imagine startups being built without capitalists though.

Well, you can't make an individual perspective and use the plural "you are much worse off in the EU" at the same time.

Some individuals will fare better in the US, but on average, you'll fare better in France.

Now I agree with you, financially as a tech engineer, you'll come out with more money working in the US.

I disagree that the extra money will lead to a better quality of life, but QOL is very personal. Some people find pleasure in life from very different things.

This entire discussion is scoped to engineering salaries, I'm not trying to make arguments about everyone regardless of career.

For any given engineer, they are definitely financially worse off in the EU.

I'm sympathetic to QOL arguments. Personally, I really don't like SV. NYC is fairly nice though. Plus, the real secret is that after working here for a few years you can switch to remote work in an even higher QOL city.

Ah, sorry if I generalised your argument, ya in the case of tech engineers I'd have to agree with your statement. If you're a decent engineer, you wont find the kind of financial prospect you do in the big tech cities in the US anywhere else, not even close.

You don't understand, you can't entice people who have it better with something worse.

You can't entice EVERYONE, but you can definitely attract or tip the scale for some or many. Your ideas of "better" and "worse" seem rather limited.