Is that satire? The last time I seriously looked at moving to Europe, it was a pretty fundamental part of why I aborted the effort. Unless something has changed recently, for software engineers income is vastly better in the US.

I care about income as a proxy for quality of life, not as an end in itself. For me, the quality of life I get in Europe for X salary is better than what I would get in the USA for 1.5X salary. Ymmv

If, when it comes times to retire, and your Us counterpart has $1,500,000 to your $1,000,000 to retire on, that extra $500,000 seems material.

I agree, YMMV. But the average software dev salary in western Europe is half what it is in the US. The guy in the US can buy better insurance than what is provided through taxes in Europe, and still have way more money to invest in their future and increase their quality of life.