While not every point in the parent is fully accurate, dismissing all of them does a disservice to the point that the hidden costs do add up and generally you aren’t as well off in USA as you would think based on salary alone.
This reminds me of the argument (always given by people in HCoL areas) that it's not bad to earn less in LCoL areas because you might get paid 50% less, but also rent is 50% less. Forgetting that most other expenses are the same, and even if all living expenses were 50% less, that's only equal if 100% of your income goes towards expenses.
Salaries in tech in the US are so far off the rest of the world that a few more expenses really don't matter.
Am I saying it's a good system? No. Would I ever factor it into compensation when moving abroad? Also no.
Filing your taxes is free, but depending on the financial moves you make (selling stocks, rolling over a 401k, etc) you may need to set aside money throughout the year to pay the bill.
In most non-tech jobs you will pay hundreds per month for health/dental/vision/life/etc insurance. Among of required insurances, home/renters/car/etc can be a couple hundred per month.
Agreed on cars - in major cities you may not need them, but they are required everywhere else.
I don’t know anything about net differences so you are probably correctly that earning more in the US is still worth it, but I don’t think your characterization is accurate.
GP was comparing to European Union by stating sales tax in the US "generally ends up being about 18-20%, which is in-line with VAT in most Euro countries"
Most countries in the EU have 20%+ VAT indeed [0], however the average combined sales tax in the US is 7% [1] - a third of that.
[0] https://taxfoundation.org/value-added-tax-2021-vat-rates-in-...
[1] https://www.aarp.org/money/taxes/info-2020/state-sales-tax-r...
isn't this true everywhere in the world? That taxable income from something like selling stocks has to be paid, and money may need to be set aside for it?
Filing your taxes is free. Maybe you can spend $30 if you want to use turbo tax to do it for you.
Any job with these salary differences provides great health care and benefits.
Cars exist in Europe, I know many software developers there that have them. Why people pretend nobody has them if beyond me. And just like in the US, the closer and more convenient to the city center you are the more expensive it is to live there. Cars are also not as costly of a burden as they are in Europe. Also, most European tech jobs are in cities (London, Amsterdam, Dublin) that have similar cost of living to US cities which you don't need a car in (SF, NYC, Seattle). So it's mostly a moot point anyway.
Finally, we get to a point where there is a REAL cost difference: taxes. The overall burden of taxes will be 10-20% lower in the US, which is a substantial difference as it's a percentage on gross, not an additional fixed fee like many of the above expenses.
If you want to pretend all of that justifies a 6 figure salary difference, more power to you. I've looked into making the move many many times with actual figures and it never even comes close to being close.