My mother alone, as a cleaning lady, was fully supporting me on 30 000 salary in Belgium, Leuven. But as a cleaning lady, earning that money was not easy, or stress free. She was doing 50-60 hours weeks. I know cleaning ladies, my mother colleagues, who as a single mother support their kids and sometimes even manage to spare some money to send back home. I know that there are also people exploiting western social programs to the extend that they manage to live exclusively on child support. My mother has a neighbor who was laughing that she is silly to work, because she has Belgian fiancée and she should live off social support. And, yes, this type of people should be deported in my opinion.
Right now, I'm studying now in Maastricht, Netherlands and I work 1 day a week earning 8k gross a year. I'm living with my fiancée in apartment with one bedroom and I spent around 10k a year.
Most parents I know pay almost 600 for rent (amenities not included, so add another 100, and quite a bit more if it's a colder winter). Fun to note that the minimum wage is currently around 500 euro, AirBnB is a hell of a drug. Add to that up to 400 for childcare a month, per young child.
Tax rate is near 40% at that income level, so let's say it's a net 30k out of the 50k. So that's 2.5k a month.
I will spare a list of the other required monthly expenses but it shouldn't be hard to see that it's hard to save up enough to ever buy property or to be safe against any event that costs any significant amount of money.
Something has most definitely gone horribly wrong in Greece a couple of years ago. I remember hearing that the costs of living in Greece at the time were not a bit lower than then expensive parts of western Europe, whereas wages for young people were quite a lot lower, making it practically impossible for young people to earn a living.
We haven't heard much about Greece in recent years, so maybe things have improved, but this sounds like maybe they haven't.
I have (single living) colleagues from abroad who learn it now the hard way. Hopping from one airbnb to the other, moving al their stuff each time. Doing this for months and they start to despair now. Even local youngsters cannot afford a home anymore.
> The average household net-adjusted income in Greece is USD 17, 700 annually. It is considerably lower than the OCED average of USD 33,604.
https://destinationscanner.com/average-salary-in-greece/
> The Gross Domestic Product per capita in Greece was last recorded at 25140.70 US dollars in 2018, when adjusted by purchasing power parity (PPP). (Roughly €22K)
Numbeo seems to support this based on CoL in Athens: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Athens
Unfortunately, this sort of thinking is very persistent in people coming from such countries that tend to see us as "weak" or "luxurious" people, because such a lifestyle is light years away from where they come from. I don't say this with the "white mindset". It's just that we Western people are talking about reducing the working hours to 30 per week, because we want to spend more time with our family, want to live stress-free, etc. etc., and possibly keep a good salary. This clashes with the old traditional capitalistic way of doing business: let's hire cheap labor from abroad, so we make more money. The main parent comment is right about it. It's proven that this doesn't lead to anything than more cheap labor.
Luxury to myself means luxury goods (status symbols such as cars, phones etc. or even best-in-class functional items with increased cost compared to value-for-money alternatives), frequent travel etc. all of which I can't afford.
I wonder though if this goalpost would move even further if my income ever increased, or this mindset is well, set, from our upbringing.
I have trouble supporting a child in Greece, with a gross household income of around 50k.
I most certainly do not lead a luxurious life.
I shudder to think how this would work out in Western Europe where rents are even higher than the ~500 euro most people pay here for a medium sized apartment.