What's more though, median disposable income per capita ALSO places the US at the very top in the world, which is super impressive.
All of this is to say that the US is actually a very wealthy place for the white collar worker demographic, so companies need to pay high salaries to attract employees.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
I’ve been trying to compare an offer in the US and one in Montreal. The raw number for the US blows Canada out of the water, obviously, but adding in healthcare and childcare really starts to close the gap. That’s at least sort of calculable, especially if you ignore their option values, but it’s harder to price in other intangibles, like living somewhere walkable or with good public amenities (parks, schools, events). Basically no amount of money will buy you a walkable neighborhood in parts of the US: we looked—-hard—-in Houston!
The disposable income figure that boc quoted includes things like healthcare.
Even so, I’m not convinced that these numbers are actually that meaningful. They might tell you how many new Macbooks someone can afford, but do you think the median person’s quality of life is actually 50% worse outside the US? That seems implausible to me!
High value workers in the USA are the best compensated in the world by a wide margin. Other places are better for low value workers.
Their companies figured out a way to make Ford pay millions to be the first result for "Ford" when a user searches for "Ford" instead of users getting a result for "Chevy" (tiny ad disclaimer and recent court cases overseas notwithstanding). https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/why-businesses-have-...
Other successful ones (often the same companies actually) charge (even after their expenses) a higher fee than federal taxes to be part of their store, compelled by a series of hidden ecosystem costs to the consumers, monopolization tactics, and network effects. That company in Europe with the low profit per employee is potentially paying out 30% of their gross (taxes are at least only on net) to one of these.
Basically many of these jobs are "bullshit jobs," working on problems the companies themselves create to rip people off.
The disposable income figure that boc quoted includes things like healthcare.
US listings have plenty of houses for about 150k, which is unheard of in my low income area. And any blue collar american is making way more than me or my peers.
Services in most EU good, groceries are cheaper and better average quality for what everyone who's done shopping in both places, and some other stuff too. But in general I'd say that unless you go to Switzerland most euroa have lower disposable income and harder access to housing.
Even flats for 150k are old and in bad shape. You'd have to get very far from the city to get something nice for 150k and good luck with Internet and having services around.
Barcelona is absolutely a steal in comparison (and the food, transport, and weather are better, and the public healthcare is just as good).
So even if you manage to save money sharing a flat or living with your parents, good luck.
And plenty of houses for 600k around here by the way.
You can, but need to move elsewhere within the US. I know it's not great situation though.
Infant mortality in the US is more common and indicative of problems that affect a lot of people. Namely, inequality in access to high-quality prenatal health care, and obesity. If you’re coming to work as a software engineer in the US, you are going to get good health insurance for yourself in your family. Obesity is potentially more relevant - lots of wealthy professionals in the US are obese. Not sure how much this tends to affect people who immigrate from healthier countries.
There are other, more serious topics which somebody from ie Europe who isn't desperate for money should consider. Overall workoholic culture and much less free paid days and vacations (no, 20 days per year isn't that great rather bare minimum, 30 begins to be interesting if you actually want to have great life before retirement, on top of plenty of public holidays). Overall crime rates are important though, and thats very high in US for an european. Your taxes are (well repeatedly were, and definitely will be again) used to kill some poor civilians half around the globe for no moral reason whatsoever, bravo for making the world a better place. Low food/produce quality, the amount of NOK chemistry and procedures for growing and raising cattle that is banned in EU is staggering. Most of the country apart from big cities is remarkably full of backwardish fanatical christians, I mean isn't teaching evolution still banned in most schools? Abortions topic?
Healthcare is a topic on its own. There were many posts here before that even with good insurance, you pay hefty sums and very well earning folks were desperate to save enough for high quality healthcare for retirement, especially once you know you have some long term issue for the rest of your life (which we all end up having unless dying way too early). What about when you are between jobs? Or if you retire, since obviously this is when you need good medical system the most? If you had big accident/serious long term illness and employer fires you?
Raising kids - TCO is ridiculously huge, mainly due to University fees that in Europe you often simply just don't have, or they are rather token sums. Public schools are often crap with heavily underpaid teachers (the salary part is probably true everywhere though).
So you end up with higher income but you can lose it very easily if you have bad luck / ignore your health, or simply have few smart kids. Not even going into the topic of being treated as sub-human by US government, since you are not US citizen and somehow doesn't deserve basic human rights when it suits them.
Of course there are many positives but that's another topic.
There’s two ways to look at this. The first way is the shallow way, the raw numbers. The other way is that Europeans have a better social ethics and don’t need the gaudy numbers. Americans do. We don’t have a real culture of social welfare. We value capitalism unlike any other country in the world.
My hope is the USA changes the law so doctors from Western Europe countries can freely emigrate to the USA and practice for significantly more money. There’s no reason the USA shouldn’t drain Europe of this talent by offering far more money to these workers.
Moreover, if EU tech companies are not willing to pay the best software/hardware engineers what they're worth, where do they all go? Not everyone wants to live in the US or work remotely.