Also this list has a very small sample size, and very few people from big tech, otherwise the pay would skew significantly higher.
When someone in Germany casually says 50k per year pre tax, they typically mean pre deductions (tax and social/health insurance) and the effective received money is more around 25k per year.
People in the US underestimate how much of ones salary a European has to give up for that safety net.
Health care costs in the us are the most burdensome on the working poor and lower middle class because they stay a fixed cost even as income rises. For well paid tech workers, moving to the US and going from $75k to $105k/ year (the median for the US BTW) is probably going to be a good move economically. A roofer moving for a $30k to $40k bump is a much dodgier proposition.
An aside, I saw a great analysis a few years back looking at the increasing income gap in the US. It determined that a large part of the gap can be laid at the feet of rising health care benefits to employers. The math is simple and interesting. In 1990 worker A costs an employer $10k ($8k in pay and $2k in benefits) and worker B costs $100k ($98k in pay, $2k in benefits). In 2020 worker A costs $25k, but a whopping $10k now goes to health insurance, meaning thier pay is only $15k and saw an 87% increase even though the employer saw a 250% increase in cost. Worker B? They got went from $100k to $250 in total cost, but saw thier pay go from $98k to $290k, or a 244% increase.
The highly paid worker saw a 3x more percentage increase compared to the low paid worker, even though their cost to the employer increased by the same percentage.
That's for single young men. My mother pays > 1k per month for herself and my stepdad monthly. That's not unusual, and she has excellent insurance.
I'd say it's for any single employee (with the young being ripped off if they pay that much).
But yes it generally doubles or more for spouse or family coverage.
I don't think this number is working people only, I think it is among everyone.
And who said $1k isn't a lot?
The problem when comparing is that the structure of a city-state like Luxembourg or Singapore has nothing to do with big countries; and even France or Germany are like 1/5th of the US in population, much less in area, so you can't compare much, certainly not the homogeneity.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
However you'd definitely pay less than 400/month. If you're paying more than 200/month, you got quite unlucky. In some places, such as Berlin, childcare is free.
It doesn't come close to offsetting the far higher US skilled salaries figures compared to Europe.
When US university costs were far lower circa year 2000, that also didn't imply a narrower gap with Europe on skilled salaries. University costs are a phenomenon caused by the US Government destructively backing ever higher education loan increases, causing a spiral of fees by universities. It wasn't caused by higher US wages (which have existed for a very long time).
That is better explained by a simple fact: the US has far higher economic output per capita than Europe.
Before this decade is out, the US will double the GDP per capita of France, Japan, UK. Unless they all snap out of stagnation soon. It's not that the US is growing super fast, it's that most developed countries haven't been growing much at all for the last ~12-13 years.
Thanks a lot for clarifying this, I hope that people start to understand that the salaries for highly skilled people in Europe are just ridiculous.
The cost of that? Half her take-home pay. And it's not even a very good plan (i.e. we were still exposed to a lot of risk, we had a couple medical things come up in the same span of time and were out several thousand more dollars for those).
Now, sure, I make way more money than her so we were fine, but her single-parenting colleagues? The couples in which both are teachers? They're not so lucky. And more jobs pay way closer to a teacher's salary, and may have even worse health benefits, than pay anything like SV software developer money.
Half may be an exaggeration, but for normal people losing 15-30% of their post-tax income to healthcare is probably about right. And of course we're already paying Medicare & Medicaid taxes on top of that.
Nearly half the federal budget is spent on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And there are numerous other programs: unemployment, housing assistance, snap, etc.
There are also state and local programs as well as private charities.
Meanwhile a healthy, young, gainfully employed person in France can take advantage of a wealth of social services and benefits.
Mentioning them the way you have requires a very uncharitable interpretation of the previous posters point.
If they have such an amazing welfare system, then why are the French perennially rioting[1]? And why do so many recent French presidents have abysmal approval ratings[2]?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unr...
[2] Macron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_the_Emmanue...
Hollande: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Hollande#Approva...
Sarkozy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Nicolas_Sarkozy#...
Also, the US is also constantly protesting too. What do you think Black Lives Matter, the Google Walkout, the Amazon protests in NYC, the current and ongoing unrest surrounding ICE camps, and the teachers union strike in LA are?
You must not know the French very well, or you wouldn’t expect this. :)
because they are alive and free.
To be fair we are also a much larger country with more diversity (especially of culture) than many countries with robust social safety nets.
Basically what I want to know is, if I don’t have health insurance through my employer, make $50K a year, and get cancer, what happens? I don’t know for sure but here in the US I’m guessing the answer would be mountains of debt.
You must apply to a charity such as a catholic hospital that provides care for such cases. I know people with expensive conditions that have done this.
If it gets so bad that you become disabled, you can get social security.
If you run up a mountain of debt you can get rid of it (and your credit rating) via bankruptcy.