Americans have no idea how high the cost of living is in Europe relative to wages.

Median sale price in Seattle is $560/square foot, which is almost exactly $6000/square meter. With minimum wage at $18.69/hr, that's 320 hours of minimum wage work per square meter.

For comparison, average price per square meter in Paris is over 10 000 EUR ($10 700), whereas the minimum wage is 11.50 EUR, giving you a ratio of 870 hours of min wage work per square meter, almost 3 times more expensive.

When you compare them by median household income, Seattle is around $110k/year, which is $55/hour, giving 110 hours/square meter for median family. In Paris, for comparison, median household income is 44k EUR/year, which is 22 EUR/hour, resulting in 454 hours/square meter, which is 4 times more expensive than in Seattle for median family, even worse than for minimum wage.

These were before-tax figures, and doing after tax makes the situation even more lopsided: US tax system is much more progressive than European, and so taxes for median and below are extremely low compared to Europe. At Seattle minimum wage, the effective tax rate is around 15%, whereas in France, at minimum wage you're still paying 25% in income tax. To top it off, in France, the VAT is 20%, compared to 10% in Seattle.

You can do the same calculation for most of Europe, and you'll find the same: pretty much all large metros in Europe are almost universally less affordable than most expensive metros in US, including NYC and SF.

Not sure if Paris vs. Seattle is a good comparison. The former is the crown jewel of France and a historic world-class city. The latter is one of the smaller cities on America's West Coast and is fairly unremarkable.

If anything, I'm stunned that the price for square foot in Paris is only 180% of that in Seattle.

Not to take anything away from your post but Seattle has roughly half the GDP of Paris with less than a third of the population. The past is the past, if you wanted to place a bet on the future, I wouldn’t take Paris over Seattle. Seattle isn’t just tech, it is one of the major deepwater ports on the Pacific Rim and with a famously diversified industry. It is still on the upward part of its trajectory.

Seattle is not a cosmopolitan global city, this is true, but Paris wishes it had Seattle’s economic dynamism by almost any measure. Like many European cities, its status is the accumulated capital of a prior era that is not being replenished at replacement rate. I have my qualms about Seattle but European cities are largely worse when looking forward.

> The former is the crown jewel of France and a historic world-class city.

How is this relevant to my point, which is that in Paris (and most of major European metros), the prices-to-incomes ratio is much worse than in Seattle, and pretty much anywhere in US? In what way it is a crown jewel, if, by US standards, 3/4th of the population barely makes the ends meet?

Prices per square meter:

Marseille: 4300 EUR

Birmingham: 3000 GBP

Bremen: 3000 EUR

Liege: 3000 EUR

Antwerp: 2500 EUR

València: 2200 EUR

Poznan: 2000 EUR

These are all major, but not the biggest, cities in their respective country. I'm not saying they are representative (for what, anyway). You'll find major cities that are much more expensive (eg Munich) or cheaper.

As for income tax, at first glance, PWC disagrees:

https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/france/individual/taxes-on-pers...

https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/germany/individual/taxes-on-per...

OK, let's do some of them, say Poznan (because I'm most familiar with it). It's hard to find median household income figures in Poznan, but you can find that average individual income in it is 22000 EUR/year, and average household income typically is something like 150% of average individual income, so let's take average household income in Poznan to be 33k EUR/year, or 16.5 EUR/hour. This gives us 120 hours/square meter, which is comparable to Seattle.

However, this becomes much worse if you look at after-tax situation. In Poland, at this pay range, your effective tax rate is 27%, whereas in Seattle it's 16%, and you have to then apply 23% VAT to your purchases, compared to 10% sales tax in Seattle.

> As for income tax, at first glance, PWC disagrees:

What specifically does it disagree about? It is well known that the effective tax rate on lower half of the population is much lower in US than in almost all of Europe, as my example comparison between US and Poland or France shows. In Europe, the middle class pays the bulk of the tax burden, whereas in US, taxation is much more progressive, and it is the wealthy who pay most of the tax.

Perhaps the high minimum wage is the reason people are on the streets instead of working in low-paying jobs.