Hacker News Reader

Comment by wait_a_minute | Hacker News Reader

If highly productive people can't keep the fruit of their labor, they'll leave to a place where they can! We have less social programs in the US but the majority of productive people will probably prefer working here since they can take home a significantly higher salary even after taxes.

View on HN

And after you add the expenses needed to make up for the social programs you don't have, you might even realize that what you're left with is not that significantly higher.

I don't think that's going to apply to the majority of high-income earners, because the difference is greater than the cost of not having free college or socialized healthcare. A college education is a one-time cost. You might pay $30,000 over time but when you're earning $130,000 or more, you can crush that really quickly and not be burdened by the higher taxation and reduced opportunity you'd be facing each year otherwise.

The same is true with healthcare in America. It's actually not that bad if you have a decent insurance plan and some cash. For high-income earners, which is the people we are talking about leaving from the UK, it's most likely going to be a net gain over time to have the higher salaries and lower taxes.

There's a reason the best engineers are going to want to leave the UK, Canada, India, China, etc, and come to the USA. It's worth it. I personally could work from anywhere including the UK, but why would I subject myself to such lower pay for little or no real gain?

Healthcare is "not that bad" if you have some cash, because then you can afford to go abroad, e.g. India for your care. Other than that, it is terrible.

...do you live in the US? I have lots of problems with our health system, even as someone with health insurance, but I very rarely find myself traveling to India for healthcare.

My brother-in-law worked at a walmart warehouse for $15 an hour. Had no car payment (owned a used junker). Paid $600 for rent (mobile home). His wife applied for medicaid and was accepted and had their first child at a county hospital for little/no charge. After two years, they also used some day care thing for no charge as well. His wife would take the kid there and then stay home and post garbage all day on facebook. By year three, they started putting their 3 year old on a bus for some "pre-k 3" program at the local public elementary. The qualifications for the "pre-k 3" program were $400 a month $0 if on medicaid. Wife used this even larger amount of free time to post garbage on facebook. Kid's always sick cause of public school, but with medicaid they paid $10 per doc visit (which is two+ times a month)

As for me, I gave up on insurance once it got to $800 a month (which was the same as my rent). Denied coverage from then on, claimed religious exemption, and built a house with the money I saved. Paid $4,500 at a local birth center for each of my kid's birth and neither have ever been to a hospital or doctor.

So complaining about "how bad things are" is actually "terrible" on your part.

In aggregate you're 100% correct, but on an individual level if you're a senior technical employee at a large tech company, you're absolutely better off in the US.

Like what? If you are a high productivity engineer you will have excellent health care through your employer.

What if you're a high productivity engineer working on your own startup?

Then you should be in the USA and not the EU if you're hoping for VC funding.

Depends on where you come from - it may not be a pure $$ angle alone. (for most places of origin, $$ also works out).

Status of living is higher for many folks who move to US in terms of ability to actually use the outdoors (less pollution, less population, a civic sense of cleanliness, better traffic and so on), less corruption, better police force, better government, better healthcare (not cheaper), better food (regulations) and so many more angles. Obviously not all of em apply to all countries, but there is a good mix. Not to mention US dollar goes much further in many countries.

There is a reason why US actually rejects 100s of 1000s of H1B applications every year.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com