£95k is very decent in the countryside but in London that's nothing to write home about, is it? I don't live in London or even the UK, so my statement is just based on friends living there.

£95k would be exceptionally good for the vast majority of the UK, and unless you’re trying to buy a house in central London or something it would still be a very good wage there too. Take the last bit with a pinch of salt though—I’ve never lived in London but a number of my friends do.

Keep in mind that taxes eat quite a bit of that (seemingly more so than in the US).

US taxes are similar to UK taxes, particularly in california. Putting £95k into Salary Calculator [0] says you take home ~67% of your salary after taxes. £95k is ~$120k today, and putting that into this [1] calculator says you take home ~64% of your salary.

[0] https://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php

[1] https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-paycheck-calculator#...

So the UK is taxed lower than California? And we have more public services?

What do they spend it on?

Mainly military budget if you google it.

A common American complaint is "subsidizing" European defense off of our tax dollars.

America is also a big spread out place so maintaining it is more expensive than small Euro countries.

On my first point, I think we get a rather strategic advantage from being the "Western" police. However I'm just explaining a common critique you'll hear.

California pays for NATO?

Other states might end up having similar tax rates, i was just curious what made Californias so high. If that is mostly federal income tax then never mind!

I've no idea what the breakdown of federal vs state tax is sorry, and I actually don't even know how to find out. I'm just a european engineer that has genuinely looked into moving and picked california as a point of reference purely due to the high salaries and QOL factors.

This is why NATO countries need to work harder to meet the 2% defense investment guideline. US citizens are basically paying for the safety of everyone else.

How does that balance out with health insurance premiums?

Contracting has been a very large component of the London market.

Developers have been contracting at £600+ per day, more than £120k per year income, for 15+ years.

It has historically been very easy to achieve that if you don’t mind working for a bank.

I don’t even think I’m in a bubble with these numbers. I know and have hired hundreds of contractors over the years.

I don't think you are either. It's funny but after hearing about the complete lack of protections for employment in the US, I think I may get better protections here as a contractor.

I've seen some remote architech/tech lead roles offering up to £125k, but this is a very recent development.

Those would also be quite uncommon, but I have seen them. Usually for Oracle or someone I wouldnt want to go with. Most tech lead roles I've seen topped out at £90k.

£100K should be bare minimum for a software engineer with a few years of experience in central London in 2022.

3 bed terraced houses with access to good schools, 50-60 minutes out central, sell for £1M, so if you're entering the area want a family you really want a household income of £200K+.

Something is very very wrong if you need two parents earning over £100K each to live in a 3 bed terrace an hour out of town.

Something is very wrong with the UK housing market. It is completely detached from reality, usually because NIMBYS still manage to block new houses from getting built.

It's changing now as land that was allocated for housing usually gets central government overriding permission to local authorities.

The process is currently:

- Building company submit plans for housing - NIMBYS reject it because it's a flood plain. (They always magically become flood plains) - Building company submit alternative plans that are much nicer, give a lot more to the community and build public services. - NIMBYS get it rejected again - Building firm go to central government and just get approval for massive housing development which is most worse that the original plan.

Hopefully all these additional houses will reduce the pressure on the housing market but we are hundreds of thousand houses short of required stock for our current population. We have people living long term in hotels because the government can't make them homeless.

Second reply, because there is too much information here.

https://citymonitor.ai/government/england-short-4-million-ho...

The UK is short about 4 million houses. We have 4 million families who are homeless without anywhere to go.

If we banned second home ownership it would only knock about 10% off that number.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-...

That's a pretty crappy situation where we don't even have enough houses for people to rent.