It seems very hard to compare the two figures. I guess the interesting way to compare them would be what's the disposable income you have to spend normalised against purchasing power. So gross salary, less taxes (payroll and any others if applicable), pension contributions, student loan repayments, medical insurance contributions (and other out-of-pocket expenses relating to that you may have to pay in a typical year), and then baseline cost-of-living (rent/mortgage payments), but there are so many variables there it seems very hard to be directly comparable.
All I know is if I earned what I did now (which is an excellent UK salary) in Silicon Valley, I wouldn't be able to afford to live by myself in a two-bedroom flat in a desirable area, which is what I do now. I've no idea how much I would have to earn in SV to have the same quality of life as I do in Manchester, UK. (I figured it out for London and it's approximately a £20k premium due to the rental premium in London)
>It seems very hard to compare the two figures. I guess the interesting way to compare them would be what's the disposable income you have to spend normalised against purchasing power. So gross salary, less taxes (payroll and any others if applicable), pension contributions, student loan repayments, medical insurance contributions (and other out-of-pocket expenses relating to that you may have to pay in a typical year), and then baseline cost-of-living (rent/mortgage payments), but there are so many variables there it seems very hard to be directly comparable.
Keep in mind that FAANG silicon valley paid something like $400-500k/year for those with 10 years experience pre-COVID. With top notch health insurance and other benefits (except vacation). Comes out to $250+k take home income after taxes (without deductions, no spouse, etc.). At that amount other considerations essentially no longer matter.
Is that cash, or is a significant amount of that stocks/shares or other non-cash reimbursement (which I assume is subject to tax at the point it's realised)?
It's generally 50% RSUs which are stock but equivalent to cash for all intents and purposes. Only difference is that you need to stay at least a year to get paid. The post-tax money I mentioned is with everything getting taxed as income.
speaking for google, it's a mix of: base salary, annual bonus, and restricted stock units, which are taxed at vesting time.
It blows me away every time I read an article about places other than SF and NYC: I could buy an extremely nice house, in cash, in most parts of the country, for less than a reasonable down payment on a crappy house in the bay area.
For example, this lottery [0] from early 2020 permits individuals with an income of $168,130 to qualify for the affordable unit.
Affordable housing units developed during some of the late 2000s to early 2010s had very, very high income limits. Those housing programs have mostly been sunset at this point but units built under those programs retain the income bracket levels then in effect.
Interesting, thanks for the history! I personally qualified for/lived in an affordable housing unit for a few years right after college. The income limit for a single person was 95k at the time
What I find interesting about many of these units is how the net effective rent is still typically 40x annual income for people in that bracket. If I hadn’t switched jobs and gotten some significant raises in the process, much of my salary would have still been going to housing in an ‘affordable’ unit.
The rent is specifically chosen to be 30% of gross annual income which works out to be exactly that magical 40x ratio that's typically used in NYC rental qualification.
Additional benefits are paid to disabled workers with families--the average is $2,200. That is higher than the cost-of-living (PPP) adjusted average monthly wage in Portugal.
> My mom had cancer on minimum wage back in Portugal and we didn't pay a fucking cent
You can take anecdotes and spin out a story that is highly misleading. You can find people abusing public benefits and spin out a myth about "welfare queens." But you can also find plenty of people who have fallen through the cracks of the system for whatever reason, and spin out a myth that we have no safety net and people are dying in the streets.
Whatever your politics, we should endeavor to stop giving oxygen to rhetoric that misstates easily verifiable facts
* Your comparison between Portugal's social security system and the US's includes only one source of support, but several are available. (Cost of housing is one.) Neglecting this easily-verifiable fact has the same misinformational outcome as lying.
* "Medicaid has extremely low out-of-pocket costs" is not a reply to "we didn't pay a fucking cent". Your (not-included) estimates of how much money a US resident definitely will have to pay is by definition never going to be as good as zero. It's almost like you're setting out to smooth over this also-easily-verifiable fact with "rhetoric".
> "Medicaid has extremely low out-of-pocket costs" is not a reply to "we didn't pay a fucking cent". Your (not-included) estimates of how much money a US resident definitely will have to pay is by definition never going to be as good as zero. It's almost like you're setting out to smooth over this also-easily-verifiable fact with "rhetoric".
This reasoning is absurd. If I have to pay $10/mo in the US, but I make $100/mo more in the US, then I'm still up $90/mo. No one cares about "not paying a fucking cent" if "not paying" actually means "I'm $90/mo poorer".
You're technically correct, but are picking at straws
Lies, damn lies and statistics.
Even from your link:
> Nearly 3 million people worked a "minijob" — meaning they earned €450 ($499) or less per month — on the side of a full-time job.
So they have a "main job". How many of those in the US would just be unaccounted for? How big is the size of "under the table" jobs in the US?
How easy is to qualify for Medicaid or SS aid in the US?
Portugal is a low COL country, 430 Eur there is not comparable to $1260 where depending on the US you are it can be a lot of money or it can be nothing
Not to mention that Portugal has a nationalised healthcare system. I think I'd rather have 430 Eur + nationalised healthcare than $1260 and have to pay out of pocket (or deal with years of paperwork and insurance claims)
The country’s left-wing coalition has prioritized private investment and economic growth over public services such as housing, education, and forest fire prevention.
[..] The country’s left-wing coalition has prioritized private investment and economic growth over public services such as housing, education, and forest fire prevention.[..]
[..] PERKS FOR FOREIGNERS
Portugal has tried since then to enhance its fiscal attractiveness as a stimulus to the real estate market. Since 2012, “golden visas”—five-year residence entitlements for non-EU foreigners who buy property in Portugal worth over €500,000—have brought in €4 billion. Non-habitual residency (NHR) status, which offers tax advantages, is available to EU pensioners who buy homes in Portugal.[..]
[..] BUDGETARY BOMB
Portugal’s universities are almost bankrupt, and the health system is understaffed and under-resourced. The state body that runs the railways estimates that 60 percent of its infrastructure is in bad or mediocre condition. Social housing is just 2 percent of the housing stock. “A framework law on housing is currently being debated in parliament, but we already know how it will go,” said Rita Silva of Habita, a housing rights association. “Despite a few positive steps, there is no political will to invest public money in housing. [..]
A few things about the EU's (especially southern / eastern EU) job market:
- There is a job shortage at the moment. This is not as acute in tech but the situation in tech is not good either.
- Startups are chronically poor. There is little investment in startups and it's hard to secure it. If you are involved with a small startup it's likely it has existed for 5+ years and it has never had a round of more than €100k.
- Companies can't just compete with each other here the way they do in the US. There are a number of EU laws that limit job mobility and competition, which mostly affect tech / engineering / insert qualified trade. This is an issue for companies and workers.
- Salaries are low when compared to rent and property prices.
Feel free to avoid the EU vs US salary conversation. As a developer in the uglier side of the EU I know experienced developers in the not-so-well-off states of the US are doing way better than experienced developers in the not-so-well-off countries of the EU.
> Startups are chronically poor. There is little investment in startups and it's hard to secure it. If you are involved with a small startup it's likely it has existed for 5+ years and it has never had a round of more than €100k.
Why not re-incorporate in SV?
Sounds like the VC ecosystem is simply broken. Where are Europeans investing then?
It seems she's fairly ignorant of how things work here as the vast majority of his fears are unfounded. That's ok though, the point about comparing salaries is very valid, there's extreme cost of living differences among many other things.
For a lot of Americans, the fear we have is being completely dependent on the government. Look at who is exiting presidential office, look who is entering. Attaching our fates to these bozos isn't something I necessarily relish.
For starters, “most” people don’t work three jobs, obviously, and the U.S. is in fact a very wealthy country with a vast middle class. Second, anybody who wants to can go to college. I went on student loans and Pell Grants. Third, we don’t have universal health care in this country, but poor people actually do get care and are insured, via Medicaid. Cancer patients aren’t left to die in the street.
It’s good that there are so many discussions on the internet about the people who fall though the cracks, but it can create an inaccurate picture of reality, which is what seems to have happened to this observer. On the facts, she has a confused understanding of both the typical and the extreme American experience.
I grew up in a family whose income put us below poverty line.
I didn't have to pay for college, due to Pell grants, yet she thinks that in the USA, a good student can't go to college without money. That's just not a thing. But the media in the US creates that impression for Europeans.
Also, the idea that poor people with cancer in the US are left to die. Not accurate. Medicare, medicaid, etc. Not saying its good, just saying she's deeply misinformed in the typical socialist left-wing media stereotypes and oversimplifications.
> yet she thinks that in the USA, a good student can't go to college without money
No, she actually thinks that an average (or below average, or without some exceptional physical skill etc. etc.) student can't go to college without money.
That's a non issue here in Europe (generally).
> Also, the idea that poor people with cancer in the US are left to die
You still have to pay for it.
Without premium insurance premiums forget about premium health care.
Here in Europe is not perfect, bu paying more is not necessary to get better health care.
- downvotes from Americans who do can't tolerate critics
Medicaid is not "free" there are requirements, but assuming you qualify, there are hidden costs. Like for example.
> The DRA created a five-year "look-back period." That means that any transfers without fair market value (gifts of any kind) made by the Medicaid applicant during the preceding five years are penalizable.The penalty is determined by dividing the average monthly cost of nursing home care in the area or State into the amount of assets gifted. Therefore, if a person gifted $60,000 and the average monthly cost of a nursing home was $6,000, one would divide $6000 into $60,000 and come up with 10. 10 represents the number of months the applicant would not be eligible for medicaid.
Maybe it's me as Italian that am a simpleton, but for me that's a cost.
If someone parents here get treated in a hospital, they are treated freely.
If after 4 years they want to gift their children with a few thousand euros to pay, for example, for their marriage, they don't have to worry about it.
Worrying has a cost.
The incentive of the Medicaid system is to lie about the real entity of the assets one possess.
> Medicaid is not "free" there are requirements, but assuming you qualify, there are hidden costs. Like for example.
Totally different program (medicaid nursing home care) and not relevant because (1) it isn't medical care and (2) someone who has assets to draw down from is, by definition, not poor.
> If after 4 years they want to gift their children with a few thousand euros to pay, for example, for their marriage, they don't have to worry about it.
This isn't a realistic scenario (at least in theory). Medicaid nursing home eligibility is evaluated on a case by case basis and penalties are only incurred if the Medicaid applicant's intent is to defraud the government (i.e. you can't give away your money for the sole purpose of acquiring government benefits).
> someone who has assets to draw down from is, by definition, not poor.
So it is a paid program
Payed by your poverty.
If you end up inheriting money from a distant uncle, you have to pay back.
> you can't give away your money for the sole purpose of acquiring government benefits
That's understandable.
And it's only necessary because the country with the highest spending per capita on healthcare cannot agree that the only reason why they don't create a free universal healthcare system is not because it is economically unfeasible (if it is for Italy, it is for USA, I usually argue that USA could do a much better job than us), but because they fear that without the incentive to become rich and distance yourself from State benefits, the system would collapse.
It's only a cultural problem: nobody wants to rely on the State providing base services because nobody wants to think of themselves as "being poor" because only poor people use public services.
When you come from countries where public figures, politicians, presidents, Queens and Kings and even the Pope go to public hospitals, you can't imagine why it should be a bad thing.
> If you end up inheriting money from a distant uncle, you have to pay back.
If you inherit money from a distant uncle, your uncle is presumably no longer alive to utilize state provided long-term care and you don't have to pay anything back. You're trying to contrive a counterexample that simply isn't applicable.
It's not contrived to receive money from your family, it is in fact the most common way on this side of the ocean.
It is contrived to help the citizens of your country in needs and then ask for the money back!
My parents don't have to worry that in their 80s they would have to pay because one of their nephews was born with some condition or preterm.
They only have think about being good grandparents.
When I was born I was put in the incubator for 16 days and have been in hospital for 24 days total. how much would
that havee costed to my family?
My parents were nurses, they weren't completely poor so they surely had to pay for it, but not rich either.
Between me and my brother my mom stayed home, in payed sick leave, full salary, all expenses covered, for 36 months.
If they were in USA they'd have bankrupted or given up on having children.
My mom had a pre condition, she already had two miscarriages, I'm quite sure the insurance company would have used that notion to not pay.
Do you realise how ridiculous that system is?
What are the benefits of having such a system, when in the end USA life expectancy is only one year longer than China?
Look at this study.
If the system is so good, why USA ranks so badly?
(this is only one of many, all the international institutions, including WHO, agree that USA healthcare standards are lower than the average western standards and much worse than the highest western standards, despite how much money they pure into it)
> Then you wouldn't be inheriting anything in the legal sense of the word
First of all, the uncle could be Mexican or French.
Secondly, devolving one's inheritance to someone else is completely legal (at least in my country).
> The government here heavily subsidizes the healthcare plans of people near poverty
They are paying for the insurance, not for the healthcare!
I don't know why is so hard for Americans to understand the difference.
So instead of having a State run system to give the people the best healthcare possible, they use a large amount of money to pay private institutions and still have shitty health care[0], while also spending more than anybody else [1]
> When a senior is applying for long-term care Medicaid, whether that is for services in one’s home, an assisted living residence, or a nursing home, there is an asset (resource) limit. In order to be eligible for Medicaid, one cannot have assets greater than the limit. Medicaid’s look-back period is meant to prevent Medicaid applicants from giving away assets or selling them under fair market value in an attempt to meet Medicaid’s asset limit.
> There are low, published co-pays, similar to Italy.
You don't need to qualify, you just need to go tot the hospital.
> Ialy does not have universal long-term care for the elderly
That's not the exact picture though.
If you read the document you posted, it clearly says that
"Only 35% of the residential care beds available are public, whereas 43% belong to private not-for-profit institutions and 22% to private for-profit ones (Table 7). The number of elderly persons in institutional care is still relatively low by international standards, being 19.8 per 1,000 inhabitants aged 65 or older."
The key points are
- elderly care in Italy has always been in the hands of religious intitutions, that's what the 43% of private non profit institutions are. (and that is honestly an entirely different can of worms, but a can of worms nonetheless. I could talk about what opus dei does here it for hours ...)
- Italy is an old country, 25% of the population is >=65, most of them are in relatively good health conditions, as the study confirms.
- only 22% of the long term beds for elderly are private for profit, usually they are for richer people, who want to separate themselves from the rest of us.
- in total, on 15 million elderly, only less then 300k are hospitalized and only 60k of them are paying.
- the vast majority of the elders are taken care of at home, if they are not self sufficient, the State gives the family an allowance to take care of them.
- the problem here is the opposite: many try to trick the State into thinking they need monetary help faking disabilities they don have.
Not counting that elders in Italy have pensions, all of them, regardless of the amount of retirement savings (savings here are mandatory, a minimum of 23% of the salary, of course more savings mean higher pensions, but with zero savings people still get a - fairly low - pension) , payed directly by the State, adjusted for inflation, and that we spend around 15% of our GDP in pensions.
> Here in Europe is not perfect, bu paying more is not necessary to get better health care.
I would say it depends on your illness. Here in France, if you have teeth problems, need glasses or eye surgery in order to not go blind or need to stay in the hospital, you better have good insurance (mutuelle). The state social security /does/ pay for this, but the amounts are ridiculously low. I'm not sure what the prices are in the US, but healthcare over here is not free. Source: my mom had to undergo eye surgery (the mutuelle had to cover a fair chunk of the cost) and my father had to spend some time in the hospital for surgery; both where in "state-approved" clinics.
I'm not familiar with how the US system works, but from what I understand this "mutuelle" thing looks like the employer health plans in the US. It's also paid for by the employer over here, but you have to pay income tax on it.
I think that many people, at least when they compare the US to France, consider that the insurance paid-for by the employer is somehow "free", or don't even realize it's there.
Form what I understand Mutuelle is an integrative insurance policy that covers medical expenses if the patient decide to go to private hospitals (which need to be approved by the State).
AFAIU Mutuelle costs tens of euros a month, not hundreds or thousands.
In Italy it's the same, you can go to public hospitals which are always free if the procedure is necessary, or you can go to private hospitals or clinics and pay by yourself or through a medical insurance policy, but you absolutely don't need it, it's a choice people make.
The company I work for pays for my insurance policy, it costs them 25 euros/month and I can spend up to a couple thousand euros a year on medical procedures.
Usually people use those for things like fixing your teeth as an adult (up to 18 years the State here covers 100% of the expenses)
I used it to get two dental capsules at 70% discount rate (it was manageable anyway, less than 15 hundred euros, all included)
if you are below a certain income in the United States you don't have to pay for your health care. End of story.
Most Europeans don't know anything about the US other than Michael Moore documentaries and reports from very biased journalists. I think the US medical system is incredibly flawed and has horrific inefficiencies and other things that make me hate it, but I live here and I actually know a lot about it as opposed to the typical European who comments on it based on the second hand information.
She's wrong and misleading on so many things, It's really hard for me not to think she was somehow paid to write that. By whom I have no clue.
It reads like a PR piece to fear potential high value EU expats, a cheap attempt at preventing them from jumping ships instead of actually fixing the underlying issues.
I've done a little bit of international recruiting and it's always surprising the number of misconceptions folks have.
I agree, I don’t consider a good trade a much higher salary but having to live in that society. Life is not only about money and in this sector we are lucky enough to have a above average salary everywhere in the world.
The US salary situation is clearly superior. I wish I had somehow made my way into the US after getting my MsC in CS. But some choices led me elsewhere. Anyway, if I did, I'd probably be retired by now.
This feels like a faux-woke way to justify workers being paid less. The subtext here is that European workers can't be paid more because of overhead of various public services, and I don't think that's true. If there were a few big European companies closely located that were hiring as much as SV tech hired, I think wages would go up. Not matching US salaries, but some.
I really don't know anything, but I guess Germany where I would expect that to happen. If some self driving car related company funded by idk, BMW or Siemens or someone tried to scale up really fast. The other day people were mocking the EUs program to encourage European semiconductor tech, but I think Neural Network accelerator chips are still a niche that new companies could develop in.
I live in Germany, and I do compare salaries to American numbers. This is the very reason why I will never work for German companies ever again, because I'm not willing to be dependent on wage labour until the end of my days. I am working remotely for a US startup, who a) value my skillset instead of using antiquated tech, and b) who pay twice what I made before in Germany, and c) recently made me a cofounder.
German startups aside, our big multinationals happily create teams working in the the US and Germany, while paying their German employees a fraction of their American colleagues. I know of cases in pharma, automotive, and erp.
I'm loathe seeing this contentment with the wage situation in Germany. If wages for in demand fields like Software engineering are essentially flat for 30 years and €70k are considered an amazing salary, how exactly are wages supposed to rise in service sector fields, for example for caregivers? Salaries as part of gdp have deceased over that time range, but the prevalent ideology among my crowd is that one shall not work for money, because that's apparently a dirty thing to do.
Software engineers not pushing for significantly higher wages and gaslighting people who do makes them accomplices to the wage surpression that is rampant in Germany and the EU at large.
Very little in this post is true and highlights the sort of false image people paint of the US:
- Most people work multiple jobs to make ends meet: False
- Low income people don’t have health coverage: False
- The US doesn’t have any form of government safety net health coverage for its people: False. Medicaid covers low income population and Medicare covers the older population.
Not saying any of the above is perfect but these false pictures people paint of the US deserve to be called out.
So many assume that programmers get handed high 6fig salaries here... Good luck with that, hope you are really the best of the best or you're barely going to scrape 6fig despite what all the comments / articles say!
Many comments here point out Medicaid and Medicare. What about sick pay? In most EU countries you can keep large fraction of your salary until you are able to work again. And what about parental leave? It is another benefit most Europeans enjoy. Finally vacations I get 30 days stress free vacation per year. I might be wrong but are there alternatives for these in the US?
You'll get ruined in US if you get cancer in your close family despite 'paying for healthcare' all your life.
In my uncharitable opinion US is good for earning money as a young, highly educated person and for nothing else.
So go there when you are around 25, work your ass off at whoever pays the most for your skillset, spend as little as possible and bail before 35. Later you're screwed. You'll still make more and more there but the money is going to be useless.
>You'll get ruined in US if you get cancer in your close family despite 'paying for healthcare' all your life.
Not really if you have insurance which as a software engineer you would have. Might hit your $10k out of pocket maximum but you salary will easily cover that.
edit: When my dad got cancer his insurance actually PAID him a cash payout for every treatment on top of paying the medical costs. He works at a non profit.
The person in the Twitter thread notes how her minimum wage mother had cancer. I think it is highly unlikely that someone working at a minimum wage job would be covered for that by their insurance (I may be wrong)
The comment I replied to made broad statements and based on the second sentence was talking about anyone with a cancer risk and not just those making low income. I don't disagree with your statement about costs to those lacking decent insurance, I merely disagree with creating broad generalizations unfounded in reality.
The US is really bad for the lower middle class in terms of social support. The poor can get passable benefits if they know how to apply but the middle class doesn't get that. As a note, there's other social issues with being poor in the US so I wouldn't recommend that either.
That's why we spent a bunch of money creating the ACA. If I was a single person here in Maryland making $24,000 per year, I could get a low-deductible health plan for $115/month (and a high-deductible one for a fraction of that).
That's 5.75% of gross income, which is lower than the health-insurance tax a lower middle class person would pay in most European countries.
The issue is that insurance companies don't always pay out as they have incentive to find ways to avoid paying. Then you're on the hook. If I remember, deductibles for example don't fully cover many hospital stays so you get hit with out of pocket costs. Those have a maximum cap but I'm sure there's some caveats if you end up in a hospital that's not in network for example. This is what people talk about when they say they went bankrupt despite having insurance.
edit: For example checking the Maryland ACA page is showing maximum out of pocket costs of $7k/person for most plans and up to $17k/family for some. When you make $24k/year that will wipe out your savings for years.
To expand on this. The average healthcare cost in the US is $7k/year/person for the working age population. Children are an additional $3k/child/year. Since insurance companies are private businesses they will be paid $7k/year/person on average. No loopholes, no ifs, no buts. As such, no matter what your plan says or what the tradeoffs are (deductible, monthly, etc.), on average you will be paying them $7k/year/person. If you're paying for it yourself then that price will be paid by you. Now, you can avoid medical treatments to lower that price but I hope it's obvious why that's not a good social solution.
That price may come out of monthly premiums, deductibles, out of pockets or copays but it will be paid out on average.
In a universal healthcare system the government can use progressive taxes to subsidize this cost for the less well off. In a private system that isn't the case.
So if you make $24k/year that comes out to 30% of your income. Assuming you get the average standard of medical care in the US. You may get lucky and avoid this but lotteries aren't good ways to live life.
edit: Please note I'm talking about the working age population. I don't think the elderly make sense in this discussion given that there's government health coverage for them.
> The average healthcare cost in the US is $7k/year/person for the working age population.... In a universal healthcare system the government can use progressive taxes to subsidize this cost for the less well off.
Except we don't have a fully-private system. We have Medicaid, which covers the working-age poor, and also people with disabilities which is a very high-cost group. Then we have Medicare taking the high-cost elderly population. And then we have ACA potentially subsidizing much of the rest.
> So if you make $24k/year that comes out to 30% of your income.
In Maryland, a low-deductible Kaiser ACA Gold plan for a 36-year old making $24,000 per year costs $3,864/year. But the government pays $2,533 of that, leaving you to pay $1,380 + out of pocket costs.
Out of pocket expenditures in the U.S. add up to about $1,100/year on average: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/indicator/access-afforda.... But note that other countries have out-of-pocket costs too. Even in France, where point-of-use costs are very low, it's still $463/year.
Your typical person making $24,000 per year is going to be young, and not rack up $1,380 in out of pocket costs each year. But adding that in, you're looking at 10.3%.
The person you responded to was talking about direct-to-consumer costs; you switched figures while suggesting that their number was erroneously low. You were wrong.
It's 1.25% in Poland. Technically 9% but you can deduct 7.75 of those 9 diectly out of the tax you owe.
It doesn't depend on income and gives you access to whatever hospitals can provide for everybody. My SO had six brain surgeries, two radiation treatments (one with cyber-knife) and Temodar chemo twice, and months of rehabilitation and hospital stay for that. She still died in the end but she got few years of healthy life more (and a year of some life) for the 1.25% of patchy mostly freelancing income. All she had to spend on top of that was maybe 100$ on minor medicaments.
> It's 1.25% in Poland. Technically 9% but you can deduct 7.75 of those 9 diectly out of the tax you owe.
It’s 9%. That’s the money that goes into the health insurance system. You can’t run a universal health insurance system with a 1.25% tax.
If you can take a deduction on your personal income tax for what you pay in health tax, then you have to compare those personal income tax rates as well. The proper way to do this is to look at the tax wedge: http://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/taxing-wages-poland.pdf
The tax wedge for an average single worker Poland is 36%, right at the OECD average. For the US it’s 29.8%. The Poland number includes health insurance, and the US number doesn’t. For workers who have to purchase an ACA plan, the effective tax rate probably works out to the same number.
But 70% of US workers get health insurance from their employer, which is a benefit on top of their income (so it’s not factored into the OECD tax wedge data).
> In a case study, a patient with lymphoma paid out-of-pocket healthcare costs from $6,446 in a large employer-sponsored health plan to $12,931 in a health plan on the individual health insurance market. These were all Affordable Care Act (ACA)-compliant plans.
Total out of pocket costs for cancer were $5.6 billion in 2018, with 1.8 million cases. That's about $3,100 out of pocket per diagnosis on average.
Over a career, you'll pay way more in additional taxes in Europe than whatever you'll save in out of pocket costs in the U.S. if you get cancer.
There is no need for a short-term limited duration plan under the ACA, because losing your job is a qualifying event that allows you to enroll in the ACA exchange or Medicaid (depending on our financial situation) and that can't be denied due to pre-existing conditions.
We've had the ACA for a decade now, you can't just pretend it never happened.
You have an incredibly inaccurate take on the US healthcare system. I live here and I'm in my late 30s with a family. My wife is a cancer survivor. My oldest son was born 3 months premature. and yet I'm not penniless and broke because my health insurance paid for everything.
I'm not saying it's an ideal system and doesn't have major flaws but if you are a software engineer the scenario you are describing just isn't a thing. I'm sure it feels a lot better to tell yourself that when you realize you're being paid a quarter what you could be on the other side of the Atlantic.
> I'm not saying it's an ideal system and doesn't have major flaws but if you are a software engineer the scenario you are describing just isn't a thing. I'm sure it feels a lot better to tell yourself that when you realize you're being paid a quarter what you could be on the other side of the Atlantic.
Most people saying this stuff have never had to actually use the U.S. safety net. There's a lot of stuff we could fix: making medicaid enrollment automatic, extending unemployment benefits, etc. But pretending all these programs don't exist is crazy.
> but if you are a software engineer the scenario you are describing just isn't a thing
Note that the author of the original tweet was not afraid of her own financial situation but doesn’t want live in a system where _anyone_ has to fear going broke over medical expenses.
Per the author's twit, without the higher taxes etc. they would not have been able to afford becoming a software engineer without this welfare setup.
Also, yes you save much more, but when your mother has cancer and dad is disabled(As the author explains), realistically much more than what you save ends up being spent to take care of them and paying their medical bills.
I have to say, she might be wrong about that. The US is different, sometimes worse, but people have adapted.
In the US, she would've been able to buy a laptop for dirt cheap or get it from some charity or just someone looking to get rid of it for free. I myself got my first laptops and smartphones from the US, it was cheaper than buying locally, believe it or not.
Most, if not all MOOCs are from the US. Tons of blogs, content, documentation in English, written by Americans. Free for all, just learn and show your skills.
But yes, if there's an unforeseen medical emergency, you could go bankrupt in the US, while you'd be taken care of for free (or nearly free) in Europe.
As someone who spent the first half of their life in poverty, this is not an accurate characterization of that situation in the US. Becoming a software engineer in the US is available to just about anyone, basically the cost of a cheap computer that sometimes literally rounds to "free" and some time. That is how I became a software engineer while working long hours at low-skill jobs. I eventually worked at FAANG and earned (much more than) $250k. This isn't a unique story; one of the under-rated aspects of living in the US is that this is realistically possible and many people do it. Low salaries for engineers don't help anyone except the company owners.
Poor people generally don't pay for healthcare in the US for the most part. I have multiple family members that received (literally) state-of-the-art cancer treatment at top hospitals at no cost to themselves. The hospitals don't even try to collect anything. That's pretty normal in the US. Having to pay expensive medical bills is something that happens to the middle class, not the poor.
Thanks for sharing this. She also mentions not affording university but that is besides the point.
I think there are two issue, Low gross salaries in EU(which I agree with you), and high taxes in the EU(Which the twitt justifies and I agree).
For the first issue, I am all for better and more fair wages in EU, but that is a completely different topic with different dynamics.
Just one question as I am genuinely curious, when poor people get hospitalized or can not work and have to rest at home, do they receive any payment due to their job? Do they get terminated? Do they receive a social payment of sorts? Even if they don't pay the medical bills, can they afford to get by without family/community support?
For more context see my other reply about a friend having stomach issues.
They'd realistically have Medicaid in the US which doesn't have high out of pocket costs. Probably social security payments for disability and various other government programs. Some programs would even pay the mother (or a relative) to stay home and help their disabled spouse. Community college is fairly inexpensive in the US so there's that as well.
I know someone that immigrated to EU from middle east, after ~1 year developed a severe life threatening stomach/liver illness(can not recall the details), went through multiple operations, after 1.5-2 years away from work but getting most of his salary due to welfare got better and got back to work. He is very young and I suspect you could have anything close to this in US. Let alone immigrants, even citizens can not afford to do this.
I have never lived in the US and this all from online media, reading and talking to various ex/current US citizens/residents colleagues, so I might be wrong still.
As someone who has lived in various parts of the US and knows people across the economic spectrum I only know of one person who has had major issues with medical coverage in the US. Various complaining about doctors and treatments and so on but that's the case in all countries.
edit: And my comment was more to point out that anecdotes make poor facts.
I hope that advocates of purchasing power parity comparisons are prepared to factor in implicitly consumed but not easily purchasable goods. Otherwise, they would miss out on many of the things that truly matter in life.
For example, in the EU, my middle class neighbors’ children safely bike and ride the train to and from their excellent publicly funded schools, after school activities, and friends’ houses requiring little to no adult supervision while in transit.* What do private schooling, chauffeurs, and security personnel cost in the US, anyway?
*Of course, COVID does interfere somewhat with this, but this is true worldwide.
Did you read the Twitter thread? The person writing the Twitter thread clearly outlines their feelings about the need to contribute to the social safety net.
> I wanna give back, im okay with that
> I don't wanna make 250k while most people work three jobs
Nobody is stopping one from voluntarily donating to a non-profit or for-profit organization, or being involved in one for that matter.
In Europe, most people don't work 3 jobs because either it's not legal to do so or those jobs don't exist because of debilitating regulations... or at some point, making more isn't really worth it because of how high the taxes go up.
The financial efficiency of a well managed charitable organisation is atrocious compared to state programs. This is largely due to state programs having the capability to actually solve problems.
Eliminating working three jobs is desirable, it isnt debilitating to prevent exploitation of workers, its enabling. Setting a minimum wage and maximum working hours creates a minimum quality of life.
For most people this is desirable. As far as I can see you'd either have to be a sadist, or incredibly obsessed with how well off you are vs others to not want this.
The occasional donation to a non-profit might help people subsist, but it doesn't build a better society with more opportunities for everyone.
Nobody needs an obscene salary for writing code when others are struggling to afford the basics.
As an aside, I remember being really taken aback when I went on holiday to the US and most of the menial jobs were being carried out by Hispanic and Black people. I guess if you are a white American you get inured to it, but as a white European it was kind of creepy and a bit repulsive.
I guess freedom of movement allowing Eastern Europeans to legally live, work and pay tax in Western Europe without jumping through hoops, and immediately being able to benefit from the social systems there.
She is merely saying..as I read it..that she doesn’t mind paying more taxes because she has already benefited more from the system than she expects to earn.
The world we live in right now was created because of CAPITAL. Not TAXES.
Even taxes exist only because of capital.
I am tired of people instructing others how to think. If someone wants to compare their EU salaries with the US, let them!
What is even the point of the Twitter thread except that the author says she is ‘ok with paying more taxes’. This literally has no value unless she also reveals how much she pays and how much she has gotten out of the system.
The problem we have with our economic system..at least in theory..is the lack of A Constant. Either we should have a constant fixed population or a constant steady rate of consumption or stable prices or constant renewable resources. It is very difficult to have maintain equilibrium all the time when there is so much dynamic flux.
All I know is if I earned what I did now (which is an excellent UK salary) in Silicon Valley, I wouldn't be able to afford to live by myself in a two-bedroom flat in a desirable area, which is what I do now. I've no idea how much I would have to earn in SV to have the same quality of life as I do in Manchester, UK. (I figured it out for London and it's approximately a £20k premium due to the rental premium in London)