I think this is what makes US politics so difficult for outsiders to understand. (And many insiders as well.)

There are a lot of people making 100-200k salaries.

There are also a lot of people making subsistence wages in a system with no universal public health care and meager government benefits.

Those are two very different voting blocks. The first group doesn't want to do anything too radical to rock the boat and mess up the good thing they have going. The second group wants radical change but has trouble organizing against the high paid lobbyists and campaign donors.

And then the really mind bending thing is those two groups often vote for the opposite party you would expect, considering their economic position.

It would take quite a bit of effort, but if you get a visa and are confident you can get a job at Amazon, there ya are. I've got a couple Central / South American coworkers that started at tech companies down there and eventually got jobs up here. It was a combination of luck and persistence with the US immigration system.

money is one thing, you also need to take into consideration how much work US tech expects, how little vacation is provided, and how things like Health Care isn't universal.

The only people who say this are those who don't work at the major tech companies. I worked at Google and Microsoft and know plenty of people who work at Facebook, AirBnb, Uber. Neither myself or anyone I know is overworked, or is unable to take plenty of time off for vacation, or doesn't have access to absolutely amazing health care plans.

It's not Goldman Sachs we're talking about here.

That's a very broad brush statement. Many US tech companies have pretty reasonable work/life balance, less vacation than is typical in Europe but still in the 3-4 week range, and you'd probably be hard pressed to find a large or even not-so-large employer that didn't offer healthcare (albeit you may have to pay half the premiums or so).

I have worked at many companies in the US where my take home pay was $140,000 + bonus. I got 4-6 weeks of PTO every year, the company paid for my high deductible insurance plane and kicked in an additional $1000 to an HSA. This doesn't include the dollar for dollar safe harbor match on my 401k that was up to $8,000 and more after that at a reduced rate. There as no stock or anything like that. I worked on average 40/hr a week and we played a lot of golf.

Is this the norm definitely not but there are a lot of good companies out there paying well.

Point me to a US company paying 150k that doesn’t cover your health care. The majority of companies also have very generous vacation (unlimited in a lot of cases).

You have to account for out of pocket maximums, which are up to $17k per year for a family, and increase every year, plus the risk of losing your ability to earn income, especially in your 50+ years.

Currently, a family of 4 would spend $35k plus or minus $5k on premiums, plus the $34k you need on hand for out of pocket expenses because it’s per calendar year, so if something happens at the end of the year, you need to be able to pay for 2 years worth of out of pocket expenses.

And that is today, so account for quite a bit of inflation if you are starting a family in your 30s, you need to be able to providing until 55 to 60, when the kids should be able to provide for themselves (at your expected quality of life).

Plus education prices, and insuring yourself from legal expenses. I know, 90% of Americans are not and will never be insured against these risks, but once you are in the $200k to $400k income range, you can actually achieve it and come to expect it.

You realize that’s before taxes, right?

You realize that it's incomprehensibly high in most of the countries in the world regardless of how it's taxed?

I don't think it's quite that simple. Cost of living has to be factored in, at least. Buying a bog standard middle class house in my city is $850K. And this isn't California, obviously.

If we are comparing to the rest of the world, a bog standard middle class house in the US (and the accompanying land) is quite a few deviations from the middle.

It is indeed incomprehensibly large compared both the rest of the world and compared to the cost of most necessities (food, clothing, electricity, whatever electronic gadget...)

Yet, everything changes if you consider housing, medical expenses, childcare, pensions: ta-dah the ratio between income and expenses is worse than in Europe.

Then count your real working hours over a 30-years period and redo the math.

Perhaps health insurance costs FAANG employees several hundred thousand dollars, but if it doesn't then it's hard to imagine it being better elsewhere.

In my part of Canada, a decent dev salary for a new grad is about 45k USD. After taxes you'll be left with about 32k USD. Rent for a 1 bedroom apartment within a half hour drive of the city is about 1k USD, food for one person for a month is 200-250 USD if you don't eat out but do eat reasonably healthy (frozen vegetables, ground beef or pork chops, pasta, stuff like that). After internet, power, car expenses, telephone costs, etc. come out, you're maybe left with 10k USD to spare each year.

If a new grad in California making $180k+ is left with that little after the same expenses in the USA, I'd be impressed.

Granted, other things become more expensive later on. No doubt childcare is more expensive in California, as is housing. But it's not cheap here - a cheap house within a 30 minute drive of the city here costs about 500k USD, while that might be, what, 1-2 million in California? But a senior dev salary here is about 80k USD, vs 300k+ in California. And sure, the ratio might seem not too bad - 80k vs 300k is like a ~4 times difference, 500k to 2 million is like a 4 times difference. But after you deduct living expenses, you're looking at a much different ratio - unless every living expense is 4x more in California. But I'd be shocked if, for example, 1kg of medium ground beef that costs $10 USD in Canada costs $40 USD in California. Or if a $100 internet plan for 100 Mb/s up/down here costs $400 in California.

That is a general problem in most of the US too. The desirable ~25% of town is mostly unobtainable for people who aren't in the top couple percent of the income structure because so few properties come up for sale in those areas that their inflation rate outpaces wage growth in the area. In growing towns and areas that are generally desirable enough that outsiders move there its probably more than 50% of the city is out of reach for say ~80% of the population for the same reason as above, combined with the fact that people moving from high cost of living areas eat up another few percent. You see this in town after town in the US. The younger local population is forced to live an hour drive+ outside of town because the older generation is sitting on properties that are outside of their price range.

The theory says that once those older folks start to die off their children will inherit the windfall, but I'm not really that sure. Its definitely not true for my parents which for various reasons didn't manage to benefit from the real estate/stock market booms over the past ~50-60 years. I know a couple people like this (they have middle class jobs and live in apartments while their parents have tens of millions), while others are like me because their parents burned up imense amounts of money in their later years with travel/health care/etc.

>Yet, everything changes if you consider housing, medical expenses, childcare, pensions: ta-dah the ratio between income and expenses is worse than in Europe.

this is a gigantic cope. it may be true for lower middle class earners, but in the tech sector american workers really truly are staggeringly more affluent than their british and european counterparts even after you subtract the tuition money and healthcare costs and all the other shit americans have to put up with.

Citation needed.