I think you have to get the actual content from the Wayback Machine now.
Gist was that many Armenian families tended to be miffed at the amount of financial assistance their relatives who had moved to America tended to send back, particularly upon learning of their apparently high salary amounts.
Article then goes on to describe how American society tends to nickel-and-dime its members to death from every direction.
More broadly, the article was a fascinating outsider’s look at our culture and lifestyle.
Things they mentioned as being different from Armenian life:
* You pay federal taxes and state taxes to a myriad of different agencies with different limits or starting points on all of them. Property taxes, vehicle registration taxes, sales taxes, etc.
* The US is more focused on being procedurally fair (you have rights that must be ennumerated to you upon being arrested, etc) but not on being just (he mentions child neglect for latchkey kids, mandatory sentencing, a woman accused of kidnapping for trying to take her child away from his abusive father with a custody agreement)
* Poor federal safety net
* Suburban housing and little mixed-use zoning leads to required cars, homogeneity of America, lack of walkable anything
* Individualism (not knowing all your neighbors; he mentions that in Armenia if you had a test for a tumor multiple friends would take off work to weep in the waiting room with you; the idea of being an automaton in your company rather than a human with emotions)
For example, now I live in the US and although my salary is about twice what it was in England, my lifestyle remains about the same, worse in some aspects, and better in others. I'm almost certain OP lifestyle would have taken a hit living in Bay Area, even with a higher comp.
And this is simply comparing income, not accounting for many other variables (social benefits, taxes, culture...). In fact I'll probably take a big hit in comp to move back to Europe so that I can live a more comfortable lifestyle.