You are comparing pre-tax income (USA) and post-tax (UK)! You also mixed your units. TO use net-adjusted disposable income, USA has 41k USD and UK 28k USD. Also, you'd need to adjust for the benefits you get from your government/employer (Health insurance) for a fair comparison. While American workers earn more than UK workers, that does not necessarily imply that the total cost of employment for UK employers is lower than total cost of employment for USA employers. I don't have that data handy.

> you'd need to adjust for the benefits you get from your government/employer (Health insurance) for a fair comparison

Indeed. My out of pocket for medical care this year is $19k (and that's with one of the "gold" plans)

But how much is it compared to your salary? I pay 33% of my income just for Healthcare. Or well, government just takes it :)

I won't give exact numbers, but somewhere between 10% and 33%. :-)

But for a typical developer, that would be in the neighborhood of 20%.

Where? UK is 0-10% of taxable pay depending on how much you earn.

A lot of people don't have guaranteed retirement benefits, education is expensive and sickness can cost you a lot of money any time. When things go well you can live well in the US but things can go bad quickly.

That's also true in many other developed nations in regards to education, such as Canada, Japan and Britain, which have between moderately and very expensive education systems. Britain for example now has arguably the most expensive university costs:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/nov/24/uk-has-hig...

"Britain has the world’s most expensive public university tuition fees, surpassing the average in US equivalent institutions. While student fees can be higher at many ivy league and other top colleges, the £9,000 annual charge for attending an English institution pushed the British average above the US’s public colleges for the first time, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said."

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/62a1d4e0-9213-11e5-bd82-c1fb8...

Are suggesting that the US does not have a minimum wage?

I assumed so given all the comments I've read about people getting paid $2/hour. I stand corrected!

It is minimal, though: $7.25/hr federally.

Wages aren't doing so hot vs cost of living, and they're quite bad vs productivity. If we're better off than other developed nations, that's a dubious consolation.

We have a minimum wage. It's $7.25/hr at the Federal level, so that's the baseline.

I don't know why you're being downvoted, this is accurate.

The idea that this was ever downvoted at all is very strange. What is happening to HN?