cyminum
2. There is a long long long distance between the average case and the worst case that you are describing, especially for engineers. Sharing a room with 3 people or living in a van is very very very far from the average case. Pretty much no engineer needs to do this. If they are, they are doing it to save to the max or doing something very wrong.
3. Same with health insurance. You don't need FAANG for good health insurance. 92% of people have health insurance. Granted, that is of varying quality but being uninsured is far from the average case.
My sense of the US vs. western Europe is that the US is quite a bit worse if you are in the bottom 30%, slightly better in the average case, and much better for the top 20%. And engineers easily make it into the top 20%. So perhaps the peace of mind is worth it since rock bottom is so awful in the US. But there still is a big difference between average and worst case, and the media hyper focuses on the worst case.
2) An average of three children die per year in school shootings, giving odds of roughly 1 in 800,000 (hard to tell with such tiny sample sizes). Your child is more likely to be struck by lightning and far more likely to die in a fire or car accident. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/11/lockdown-...
3) That is just not true unless you live in a rural area. I don't know where you get that from. Denser cities have groceries often within walking distance, and most suburbs will have plenty of grocery stores within a 5-10 minute drive.
4) Unlimited PTO is extremely common for tech companies in the US. It's not uncommon for me to see people taking 7+ weeks.
There are issues in the US of course, but I really would not completely trust low-effort media narratives. There's a reason people come here.