>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.