Just trying to get a sense on how good life is in the EU.
Assume free healthcare excludes dental, vision & non-acute mental health and there is a $30 charge on all doctor appointments. It comes with the following caveats:
You are bound to the clinic associated with your address of residence; you will see a different doctor on each visit.
I non life threatening situations, you are guaranteed to see a primary care physician within 7 days and a specialist within 90 days; the guarantee is not usually honoured.
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@peterjanicki High end of senior software dev salary in Stockholm (70k SEK) vs high end of senior software dev in the US (https://levels.fyi/). Effective tax rate for California vs Sweden for the given salary levels. Problem?
The numbers for medical doctors are similar as well.
@admissions It would make much more sense to compare, say, 50 or 75 percentile salary of the population, not just the top paying positions.
Also, there is much more other factors, like how much things cost in general, how good is the state rent for your retirement age (under how big pressure you are to build savings), what is the average pressure at work (in Europe it is quite common to have 5-6 weeks of paid vacation, etc.), cost of education (mostly free in very decent quality in Europe), ..
@admissions I expect that for U.S. the numbers will be higher on average, with bigger spread, while in EU, it will be safer to mis-step. Am I wrong?
No Problem at all. Income is sure a good proxy for standard of living and life satisfaction (although with diminishing returns).
Simply: If I were to compare the US to the EU (difficult, roundabout 28 very different countries!), I´d look at the human development index, I´d look on life expectancy, I´d look at the world happiness report). Some countries are ahead of the US, most are not. Physicians and Software Experts obviously are way better paid in the US than in the EU, although the difference on average income is only ca. 16% between Sweden and the US.
If you would compare the US to Germany: I have 30 days of vacation (I am expected to use them all), a full-time-job means for me: 38,5 hours a week, I have sick leave (at least 6 weeks, but after that I am still paid some money by my health-insurance), we have a lot of parental leave (ca. 18 months), … Kindergarten, decent schools, no top universities, but some good ones and all basically for free … low criminality, democracy less broken than in the US,… oh, and whatever happens (health, unemployment, …): It´s not realistic to end up on the street. Still: The US GDP per capita is higher (though the difference on GDP/working-hour/per person between 18 – 65 years might be roundabout the same right now, but I assume the US will have higher growth in the next yesrs), so people in the US are richer on average. Fun Fact: Median Income seems to be higher in Germany. One of my clients (he lived in Germany and in the US) told me: “Life is better in the US – if you are rich.” I think, that sums it up.
But anyway. Germany is one of the richest countries in the EU. I was puzzled by your question on comparing the US to the EU. Some countries in the EU are rather poor, some are close to the US. That´s quite a range. I would prefer living in the US than living in some autocratic EU-countries. But there are some countries, there I expect life to be clearly better than in the US.
The other thing which puzzled me: US health costs per person (google) seem to be ca. 14000 $. It´s extremely expensive (=in other countries you get the same for half that money), so it´s not really a question, if its better to earn 250000$ but pay for health insurance or 77000$ with health insurance.
If you want to know more- happy to answer, happy to write more.
Peter
Do you get Aetna/Blue Shield insurance with the $250k salary that's standard for employees in the US or do you have to pay 100% out of pocket for healthcare with zero insurance coverage? Assuming you get a standard insurance plan this is a complete no-brainer: your annual medical expenses are usually capped at ~$3k/year, after which almost everything is "free". Quality of service is way higher than in the EU. Doctors and nurses are way friendlier. Doctor offices are better equipped. More procedures are covered by insurance. The latest experimental drugs are much more likely to be covered in the US.