If your life goes wrong, due to illnesses, unforeseen circumstances or unemployment, or if you plan to have a family, you're better off in Germany than in silicon valley with 160k.
I do agree with the first grade medical card and the general cheapness of the country.
COBRA covers your health insurance if you're fired, for up to 18 months or so. You do generally have to pay premiums on it.
The US has free healthcare for people without an income. If you're making the federal minimum wage, you qualify for free healthcare via Medicaid in every state (someone correct me if there's an exception).
The US has numerous government healthcare assistance programs for people that are in some kind of bad position.
Nearly half of all healthcare coverage in the US is public healthcare at this point, not employer sponsored.
The numbers are bad enough to not need pushed higher artificially frankly. It's closer to 1/4 of all bankruptcies having been impacted by medical bills (2011 Northwestern study indicating 26% of all bankruptcies are partially - not solely - caused by out of pocket medical costs).
There are roughly 288 million people in the US that have health coverage.
The medical bankruptcies you're referring to affect less than 1% of the adult US population across ten years. Among that 1% are common repeat medical bankruptcies, so the number is in fact even smaller.
If you look at the total number of bankruptcies in 2016 - 770,000 - and the share of those that were entirely caused by medical bills, you're probably talking about 100,000 to 150,000 (out of ~250 million adults). The ACA, it is speculated, has improved the medical bankruptcy numbers since its 2010 passage, and the economy has improved dramatically since 2010-11.
Is it terrible? Yes it is. Did you expect me to say otherwise? However it does in fact affect a small portion of the US population. It's obvious that if you could pick a few things to change about the US financial system, one would be to be able to more easily discharge medical debts.
Yes, that part is mainly relevant when comparing net income.
> Also, I might be mistaken but only 20 vacation days are required by law and I have 24 days currently.
You're right, but 24 is really low. 28 to 30 are very common.
Unfortunately with the decentralised IT industry, having the same benefits it's just a matter of negotiation. On top of that the amount of taxes that you pay for having "cheap" country to live in always averages those benefits.
Having a family here would be great as well, if they don't charge me a percentage of my income for kindergarten [1], a percentage of my income for health insurance, a percentage of my income for religion tax ( happily I'm an atheist ). Those all sound fair for low-skilled jobs, but not so much when you are heavily in demand IT-person ( the tax-bracket is too steep ).
1: https://www.expatica.com/de/education/Preschool-in-Germany_1...
Also it's important to point out that if you are a faithful member of one of the religions that enacts a church tax, that money goes to that church rather than to the state (who just collect it for the church, free of charge). So presumably you actually want them to get that money and are fine with the tax (although in practice most "believers" in Germany either opt out of the tax or complain about it because they're unhappy with the institutions of their religion).
AFAIK it's only the Catholic church and the Evangelical church who've done the necessary paper work and formed public bodies on the national level to be eligible to receive these taxes from self-declared members of their church. There's a small Muslim group that has managed to do this in two states but they're a minority sect (in Germany anyway). I guess for most religious groups it's just too much of a hassle compared to collecting money directly from church-goers (or mosque-goers for that matter).
Also do you remember that this costs you 40-50% of your salary? http://www.parmentier.de/steuer/steuer.htm?wagetax.htm
With the same amount of money you can get a normal private insurance in other countries that bring you a golden spoon.
and if you are not german or eu citizen, second part is also not valid. so qualified immigrants can't feel secure here. so berlin is a stop for me until i find some better place, not a city to settle in with my family and future kids.
Edit: fixed no. of days
> § 3 Dauer des Urlaubs > (1) Der Urlaub beträgt jährlich mindestens 24 Werktage.
https://www.arbeitsrecht.org/gesetze/burlg/
Edit: I was wrong! Working days are Monday to Saturday. If you only work 5 days per week you only have 20 days per year.
I have friends working at agencies where unpaid overtime is the norm. I also have friends working in industrial jobs where they complain when they have to work 40 hours (rather than the normal 35) and every hour of overtime is merely compensated at 200%. Oh and he made a pretty decent wage straight out of school.
Talking about "privilege" in this context creates the false impression that all IT workers automatically have it better than traditional industrial workers in every aspect.
Am I going to benefit from these as a foreigner not fluent in German language and having trouble navigating the bureaucratic maze of public healthcare and social support? My impression is that even the natives can get confused (see number of homeless and mental people on the streets or occupying the transport infrastructure).
There aren't that many in Germany, comparatively speaking.
Basically nobody here will be able to avoid the healthcare system.
This means when you don't speak German, you are mostly limited to work in projects where English is possible or the default - there are jobs like this, but this is actually limited.
I've met persons who were ten years in Germany and were not able to do a general conversation in a job interview in German. I would not hire them - other than for specific projects/tasks where that would not be a problem.
There are many edge cases which _do_ get more complicated, as (public) health insurance premiums depend on your reported salary. Let's say you have different income streams from different countries, have to pay alimony but also support your parent financially.
Well, one thing. When your doctor writes you off sick, you get three copies of the sick note: One is for you, one is for your employer, and one is for your insurer. You get all three copies (they're carbon copies of the same form), so you have to mail the latter two. (The version for the employer has all the medical details blanked out.)