Yes, This is the main difference. In Germany the education is free and medical insurance not something to worry about ( I have no idea about what deductables, deletables etc mean). This is where the difference lies.

As simple rule of thumb an employer in the EU has to pay roughly double the net salary amount, so on top of the salary pocketed by the employee yet another similar amount goes to taxes. The education/insurance aren't "free", they're just managed better and give more direct benefits to the taxpayer.

It depends. When I was a student, I did not have to spend a penny on medical biils, my wife got paid by the government for some courses (+ cost of rent etc) that would have costed us around 20K € at that time. Now that we are earning enough, I have no problem in paying back, so that others who need it will be also be able to achieve their dreams.

Deductable is a scary word but a simple concept, it represents the amount of money you must pay before your insurance begins to pay bills for you :)

That is scary. When my child had to stay in the hospital for a month, the main costs for me were the parking tickets.

I know the difference to the cost of living in the US in silicon valley, of course not everyone lives in areas like that.

But I'm talking from the employer side, not the employee and why they would employ US devs who cost twice as much

The employer pays roughly the same amount. It's just that the employee sees much less in Europe due to all the taxes.

In the United States, you can spend 6k on health insurance and 12k out of pocket for unlimited family health care.

So as long as a US job pays 18k more, it's pretty similar.

People talk about vacation, but my job pays so much I'll take months off between contracts. (Engineering)

Also it's hard to compare lifestyles in the US vs Europe. Homes in the US are gigantic, often newish, and have Air Conditioning. Cars in the United States are more feature rich and have higher safety standards (when I was an airbag engineer in 2015)

I'm sure in terms of money, working in the US as an IT person is a good deal.

But you have to think not only about you but also the others. I don't know whether you have children or grandchildren , but if you do I'm sure knowing that they will never have a bad situation is pretty nice. You can't expect all your children and grandchildren to have a well paid job and you can't finance all of them forever.

Workforce mobility means people can always move for a system that makes more sense for them. If grandpa was a good IT engineer and made some nice money in US, but the grandchild is the village idiot then moving to Germany or France is a solution. Germany has an open door policy to foreigners (there are millions of Turkish descendants of "guest workers" invited after WW2 for reconstruction), East Europeans and now "refugees" from all over Middle East and Africa. No idea how immigration works in France, but there are huge Magrebian communities and lots of other foreigners as well, so I think it is doable.

Well if your child can't make it in USA, s•he will not make it in Europe either. You can't just land in France and become a citizen without a job.

But do you want your child to immigrate because you live in a country of selfish people? I'm sure you would find the situation difficult.

By the way, the communities you are mentioning in France are French since a few generations and not foreigners.

One can live in Western Europe on welfare. Most of my colleagues in France are not born in France, they are foreigners. The trend is growing in Germany too, in our department there is no German in Germany but people from Brazil, India or Eastern Europe.

> In the United States, you can spend 6k on health insurance and 12k out of pocket for unlimited family health care.

Where? How? I... this total is about what I’m seeing for shit-tier covers-nothing insurance. Like, there are plans out there that are HCA non-conforming and not that far under $18k/year just for the premiums. Who do I talk to to get total max healthcare spending of $18,000 without an employer-provided plan, in the US? Who’s offering $12,000 annual max-out-of-pocket family plans for $500/m?

Just ran some rates in my area for an EPO with reasonable copays and zero co-insurance:

$3,600/yr individual, $0 deductible, 8k OOPL

$9,600/yr self + spouse + kid, $0 deductible, 16K OOPL

$12,000/yr self + spouse + 2 kids, $0 deductible, 16K OOPL

Although I don't really think it makes sense to compare costs based on OOPLs. For most people, the deductibles, coinsurance, and copays are much more relevant to actual costs.