Despite the general online sentiment, it's important to realize that the average American makes an absurd amount of money compared to their global peers. Even adjusting for PPP and other factors, average disposable household income for the US - a nation of 340M people - blows the doors off Luxembourg, Switzerland, Norway, etc. [1].
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.
That “adjustment” is really tricky to do convincingly.
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!
>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.
The disposable income figure that boc quoted includes things like healthcare.
You need to look at the adjusted disposable income to include “social transfers in kind”. The US still leads there, but not as dramatically.
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!
Kingwood is the closest thing, because you can at least go for a nice nature walk or have your kids safely bike to school, but there is zero 'walk to the corner store' infrastructure. It's a shame becausse my mother grew up in a much more walkable houston but now this was the best neighborhood she could retire in.
Yeah I guess so but we (americans) also have to worry about healthcare and having (basically) no parental leave etc so always kind of figured it wasn’t as good as it sounds. Open to interpretation maybe.
Was under the impression Australians are paid very well in comparison? Like pretty good minimum wages and holidays - in addition to lucrative trades work. Just have personal experience to vouch for his though.
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.
Mmm, but housing is usually more expensive around here, except for SV and some other hot spots in the US.
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.
Top of the developed world in infant mortality and school shootings too! Us outside the US, who had the option to come and joining a FAANG; call it danger money.
School shootings kill dozens of people per year in the US, it’s a similar magnitude risk as lightning strikes or train crashes.
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.
School shooting is bad example, it gets a lot of headlines but means nothing when averaged for whole US population.
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.
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...