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Comment by ythl | Hacker News Reader

Because European governments take a lot more out of your salary before it reaches you in exchange for social services (pensions, healthcare, etc). Unlike America where you are expected to either drop a stack of bills just to see the doctor or die in the streets.

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About 90% of Americans overall have health insurance. Most full-time tech jobs in the US at the companies that would pay more than European salaries will include sufficient health insurance. I'm not sure who you're referring to dying in the streets because of a lack of medical treatment due to financial limitations.

I currently have an condition that requires surgery that I'm putting off because even with my insurance (which costs me about 25% of my rent every month, or more than the total of all of my utility bills including phone and internet) it's still expensive enough that I can't do it now. This condition is the result of minor issues that I noticed nearly a decade ago, when I had no insurance, and I decided that I needed to tough it out rather than not have enough money to pay rent.

Just wanted to make this less abstract for you. Lack of insurance led to a more complex situation that underinsurance leaves me helpless to solve, while homelessness waits for me to choose health over shelter.

Well, maybe not die in the streets, but in my state the best, most expensive health insurance I can purchase still doesn't kick in until I've dropped several thousand out of pocket.

I get decent insurance through my job, but it's still fucking stupid how much I have to spend before it kicks in. Even then, there are all kinds of clauses and stipulations and loop holes. I guarantee if and when I really need my insurance it will fail me and I'll still come out in debt. There simply is not a "pay money and don't worry" insurance plan out there.

Even worse, when I go to the doctor, I have no idea what I'm going to pay. You can possible decode it, but good luck - and if he or she sends something to a lab, etc. one day a bill will just show up and you'll just have to pay it. The doctor doesn't say "we can do a lab test, it'll cost you $40" or anything. Imagine if your dry cleaner wouldn't tell you what the charge would be until your clothes had already been cleaned!

Oh, and that bill is probably gonna be full of medical coding mistakes too. Tests and procedures and all kinds of things marked up, put in the wrong category, and so forth. Expect to have to wrestle the insurance and the hospital for corrections.

I've had to do that once. I got denied short term medical insurance because they said I had diabetes (this is before Obamacare).

I've never had diabetes. I called my doctor and it turned out they coded one of my visits wrong and said I had diabetes, and it had been in everyone's system for at least a couple of years. Wonderful. Got it fixed, at least.

They do if you are a Qliance subscriber.

More and more Americans are getting stuck with High Deductible Health Plans, which for all intents don't exist until you fork over several thousand dollars to meet your deductible (excepting a limited range of "preventable care" items that are covered).

As someone without chronic expensive health needs, I've been on a HDHP with an HSA for almost a decade. They're great.

With a low deductible, I'm paying more up front so I can pay less if I need care. With an HSA and HDHP, I'm paying less for insurance and putting the difference into an interest-bearing account that I keep with me. Two different jobs that offered HDHPs also offered HSA contributions or matches.

Over time, my HSA has grown to roughly 3x my family's deductible. Tell me how I'm losing out?

As a relatively healthy young adult I'm actually a huge fan of those plans - I'd rather bank the money I would normally spend on an unused premiums into an HSA for later use. I completely recognize this is not ideal for many (most?) people and support single-payer healthcare.

Yes, but those high deductible plans have significantly lower premiums. They are usually a better deal than the copay plans, where you pay a lot more in premiums even if you never see a doctor.

The 10% of Americans who don't. The other Americans who do but still can't afford to pay what their health care doesn't cover, etc.

Even with sufficient health care, I try to avoid the doctor because of the cost.

> Even with sufficient health care, I try to avoid the doctor because of the cost.

If that is generally true then that is one really big difference between the US and northern Europe and Scandinavia. I never think of money when I or any of my family visit a doctor or hospital. Here in Norway I have to pay about USD30 to visit my GP, various fees for medical tests and so on, and I have to pay something towards any prescriptions but there is a cap on how much I will have to pay each year (about USD150 for drugs). Beyond that limit it is all free (except that of course it is paid for out of general taxation).

> I'm not sure who you're referring to dying in the streets because of a lack of medical treatment due to financial limitations.

Perhaps the GP was referring to the 10% without insurance

Employer provided health insurance is generally not worth your time, especially if you change jobs a lot. I pay for my insurance out of pocket even though my employer offers it, because I can't afford 20% copays.

90% have health insurance? Are you kidding me? I'd love to see where you pulled that figure from.

90.9%, according to the Census Bureau. See the table in this article copied from their report on Health Insurance Coverage: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/...

So let's compare tax rates in the US vs Norway where I live, arguably a "socialist bastion" according to the rest of the world!

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates

Corporate tax Norway: 25%

Corporate tax US: 35%

Individual (Min/Max) Norway: 0%/46.9%

Individual (Min/Max) US: 0%-3%/52.9%

Payroll tax Norway: 0%-14.1%

Payroll tax US: 20.2%

VAT Norway: 10%-25%

VAT US: 0%-11.725%

The tax systems are different though, for Norway, the max tax bracket is from 950.000 NOK (a bit over 100k USD). You do not pay tax until you make around 80k and the rates are progressive. You do have loads of deductibles though like paid interest, children, transportation etc.

So I wouldn't say we pay vastly more in tax here, but we still get social services.

The salaries here are not on EU level, but a bit higher. As an analyst I make about 1.1 million NOK/year. From that I pay around 350k in tax and that is not too bad compared to what we get in exchange. I actually have no objections to paying the tax.

Edit: BTW, I work 37.5 hours a week and two of the days are from home. And I have 27 paid vacation days a year + the public holidays :)

Edit2: the tax stuff was mangled, reformatting

I'm not sure how researched on US taxation you are, however the posted numbers mean absolutely nothing.

The effective tax rates are incredibly low for the upper class. Miniscule.

The middle class pays on average around 25% in income tax.

The good news is this means there's an incredibly simple answer for why the US is underinsured and undereducated: the average american is not willing to pay the amount of money it costs to insure and educate the lower class.

There aren't many non-european Americans willing to live in Scandinavia or europe over the US barring extraordinary circumstances. A significant amount of foreign, non 'white', skill prefers the US over say Norway. Considering that, "socialism" in the context of Scandinavia,europe, etc isn't an attractive option by a long shot in a more global, and highly diverse 'market'. The benefits of a selective style of socialism like Norway may be attractive to say similar mindsets and cultural effects comfortable with a homogenous idealism of utopia, but having the benefits of a highly diverse and varying mindsets and cultures has its own positive effects even with the negatives.

Sadly in the US, the idealisms of socialism often also comes with certain european-centric identities, or commonly bastardized into race ideologies where their proponents emphasize a socialist "utopia" like Scandinavia. These people emphasize this socialism on the basis of certain similar attributes where they can afford such promises to a small percentage, through the removal or exclusion of those they decide are not like them.

Breaking down the US economic system, one would be quick to notice that there does indeed exist a kind of socialist utopia much inline with euro-centric ideologies. One that even dwarfs the so called socialist bastion of Scandinavia and europe.

I think the parent is actually referring to pre-tax salaries; the baselines are much lower (last I checked) in the EU relative to the US.

Some payroll taxes have to paid by employers (i.e. not subtracted from monthly salary). If they are higher than in the US, employers have less incentive to offer big salaries.

Just did a quick calculation for Brazil and for an employee that earns $1000/month, the employer has to spend $1528/month ($1000 salary + $528 in taxes and mandatory benefits).

A senior ie 10 years experience in London is unlikely to make more than $70k which is about half what the starting salary is for google in the valley

There are plenty of senior dev jobs in London that pay far more than that. I passed that level in London 15 years ago. At that time I had about 6 years experience.

It depends much more on niche, how well your market yourself, and what type of companies you work for.

Perm or contractor?

Perm. Contractor rates need to be much higher to be anything worth talking about.

EDIT: Basically, never accept the first offer. Brits rarely negotiate, but I negotiated up my last salary 50% over the initial offer, after going in specifically knowing the top end of the stated salary band was lower than what I'd consider. If you take the initial offer, you're being paid less than your employer was willing to pay. I've never had an offer pulled, in London or elsewhere, over trying to negotiate it. I've declined positions where I didn't get it quite high enough, though.

If you take the initial offer, then you'll be very lucky to get a good deal.

And aim for niches. E.g. PHP devs are dime a dozen. Talk to a recruiter and flat out ask them what skills they get most demand for and highest salaries for now. Just be honest and tell them you're considering what to skill up in. I do backend/devops stuff with AWS and other cloud services etc, and that'd doing ok, but there are other opportunities. And network as much as you can. You'll get your salary up a lot if you're coming in via a suitable recommendation rather than the normal hiring channels.

ah just realized I used $ instead on £ there.

At least in France companies pay tax on your salary so even if you receive 2000 € for your salary, the company would have paid 3000 € (salary + taxes).

Then you pay the tax on your revenue.

Then the company pay tax on revenue.

Then politics wonder why France is not attractive to investments

This doesn't add up though, people often talk about salaries of 60k Euro or less, and then you have to pay higher taxes on that. A $65k salary would be a joke for a software engineer in the US.

The less inflammatory way of putting that is that the costs of employing someone in most European countries are rather high; up to 100% of salary in many cases.

In almost all European cities except for London (where the cost of living compensates for the disparity, anyway), you're lucky if you're making EUR 70k per year as a senior developer.

From what I've heard in the US a senior developer in a comparable location, i.e. West Coast/East Coast makes at least $ 100k per year.

On top of that, many American software companies give out stock, which almost no European companies do.

That's if you find yourself in an ideal condition: No health issues or no social issues that blocked you from having a perfect career.

If for any unfortunate reason you are not able to land a decent-payed job, the situation in Europe is much, much better.

So yes, top workers life Software Engineers may earn less. But the safety net for the whole population is way better in Europe.

Yeah, but we're talking about programmers. We typically get excellent health care benefits.

The tax difference is generally less than people think. 5-6 European countries are very high, with Belgium in a class by itself, but most are not that many percentage point above the US.

Most tech jobs in the US come with very generous health insurance with pretty small out of pockets. And it's mostly paid by the company.

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