With that said: my net salary may be less than half of my American counterpart, but my quality of life is certainly better here. At the moment, I would be more interested in getting "German" salaries but to be able to live in Southern Europe than to get US-salaries in Germany.
The other thing the safety net doesn't seem to provide is happiness, much to the chagrin of American democratic socialists. Overtime, unchecked depression results in the crumbling of society as well.
What you are describing is one of my many objections to the EU.
Those are your beliefs, not facts.
The Welfare State exists because some politicians genuinely care about people and want to help those who fall ill or have a divorce and no where to live or lose their job etc.
Not all politicians are calculating sociopaths.
> You can not think of it as something that has a ROI,
Say that to the people in the US dying from cancer because they cannot afford the expensive treatments. Or a researcher 70+ years old, but who cannot retire (although he's 70+), because then he couldn't afford his medications.
Or youths without money to study at University.
Quite odd beliefs and ideas you've ended up with, from my perspective.
In other words: insurance.
> Suppose it was easy for all of those high performers
A bit of a nitpick, but an important one. High performers and high earners are not the same thing.
When the Socialist government increased the marginal tax rate to 70% for millionaires, there was a huge capital flight and they lost revenue.
Moreover, this law was actually pretty fair : it was applied on marginal annual revenue over 1M so it meant that you had to be actually a multi-millionaire to be concerned.
Also, to call the French government socialist I'd completely laughable. Maybe in comparison to somewhere like Hungary, sure.
And I may be wrong about it, but I think that he increased taxes all across high-income brackets, not just the absolute top. And that certainly leads to a game-theoretical equilibrium.
To me (and I assume others) the following calculation comes into play:
- for what I pay in taxes, do I get a reasonably good public services back? I am not saying that I want to account for every euro, but I don't want to feel like I did in Brazil, paying 38% effective tax rate and receiving virtually nothing back in public services and still having to pay again for private healthcare, private education for the kids, etc...
- how much money do I have left in the bank after I paid all my expenses and taxes, i.e, what is my saving power?
If I had a 250k€/year brutto income, it wouldn't be too difficult to show that I would be better off in Switzerland (higher CoL, but way lower tax rate) or in Greece (similar tax rates, less return on public services, but way lower CoL). If Germany decided to increase the effective tax rate, this threshold would go down significantly.
I was more responding to that idea: everything is more expensive, and everyone is making a lot less (not just the top quintile). Seems like a bad trade, but that's just my $0.02
[0] https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/parmigiano-regg... [1] https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/sainsburys-parmi...
No shit, it’s literally an import from Europe. It’s like comparing California wine prices in Las Vegas vs in Sydney.
> veg. I helped a friend do his grocery shopping in a trader joes
Trader Joe’s is not a grocery store for middle class people. It’s a high end convenience store. Unless you’re really well-off, you only buy a few select items from there occasionally.
If you want to see prices the working/middle class pays, look at the prices at Walmart.
Also, you want to compare the quality of products and you can not base yourself on Walmart for that. The average American eats horribly compared to the European counterpart.
Not anything of quality. Most good wines in California that aren’t nasty blends are California wines at $10/bottle range.
> want to compare the quality of products and you can not base yourself on Walmart for that.
Yes you can. The milks, meats, vegetables, and fruits are fine quality-wise. “Walmart == bad quality” is a meme based on their cheap home goods. The food is fine.
> The average American eats horribly compared to the European counterpart.
Having lives in both places (uk, France, and Italy), the supermarkets in the US are vastly superior. The only reason an American would eat worse is if they chose frozen meals, snacks, or just straight up fast food over what’s in the grocery store.
European food costs more and is of more limited variety. The quality is consistently decent though.
The people who I'm comparing myself to in the US strive to buy imported European food, so that's the comparison I'm going to end up making.
Even basic things like fresh vegetables and fresh meat far more expensive than they are in supermarkets here.
That’s a dumb comparison though. Americans generally eat American cuisine. It’s just as dumb as comparing to imported Chinese food.
Maybe a few men here who would want to maximize their income, save for the future? Seems like a good idea,
Still, they're a bubble and not representative of people in general.
Have a look, happiest countries:
The first question I ask is what would I do with the extra money. I don't _want_ to retire at 40 to pursue my dreams, I like what I'm doing and the pace that I'm doing it at. If I had the choice, I would choose to be where I am doing what I am doing. Why would I move somewhere else for 10 years to make money only to come back and do what I'm doing right now? [0]. I have friends, family, a life here. I don't want to uproot all of that (I have no kids and have already moved country, I don't want to do it again unless it would improve my quality of life). My partner would likely need to find something to do, as it's unlikely she would find a company willing to sponsor a visa for her line of work. Health care being tied to my place of employment is a total nightmare - I can only imagine what happens if I'm in a car accident and I end up at the wrong hospital, or treated by an anaesthetist that is out of network. It's also not just me, the injustice of it boils my blood, and I don't really want to contribute to that system.
I own a car, but it spends 5 days a week parked outside my door, and is only used for "adventuring". The idea of movin somewhere to live in a large house that I have to drive for groceries, drive to the doctors, drive to the bar after work etc, is not appealing to me.
The annual leave situation is commonly far superior in Europe - my current job has 40 days PTO per year, and I take them all. My previous job, the American employees had unlimited PTO, and I don't think my boss ever took anything longer than a long weekend in the 3 years I worked there. It also seemed many of them were banking on a "European trip of a lifetime" with their families, which I can do on the train from where I live (also I live in one of those bucket list countries to boot).
> It seems like non-Americans in this thread are unhappy that their ceilings are lower.
Grass is always greener. The Americans in this thread are complaining that it's so much more expensive to live in the US and are unhappy that it costs so much. Of course it seems the "ideal" situation is work for an American company, on an American salary and live in the UK, but having worked with Americans for the last decade, that has it's tradeoffs too - my workday starts at 10am and ends at 7pm (whereas my partner works 9-5). The "culture" of American work spills across, etc.
[0] https://www.becomingminimalist.com/recognizing-happiness/ - it's not a perfect comparison, but the point stands!