Do not compare EU salaries with the US
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All I know is if I earned what I did now (which is an excellent UK salary) in Silicon Valley, I wouldn't be able to afford to live by myself in a two-bedroom flat in a desirable area, which is what I do now. I've no idea how much I would have to earn in SV to have the same quality of life as I do in Manchester, UK. (I figured it out for London and it's approximately a £20k premium due to the rental premium in London)
At $45,284 the US has the highest household net disposable income per capita in the OECD (http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/), where "[disposable income](http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=46)" is adjusted for purchasing power and accounts for healthcare and government benefits. By contrast Canada is $30,854 (http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/canada/), below the OECD average of $33,604.
It blows me away every time I read an article about places other than SF and NYC: I could buy an extremely nice house, in cash, in most parts of the country, for less than a reasonable down payment on a crappy house in the bay area.
Affordable housing units developed during some of the late 2000s to early 2010s had very, very high income limits. Those housing programs have mostly been sunset at this point but units built under those programs retain the income bracket levels then in effect.
http://web.archive.org/web/20200110053546/http://www.nychdc....
What I find interesting about many of these units is how the net effective rent is still typically 40x annual income for people in that bracket. If I hadn’t switched jobs and gotten some significant raises in the process, much of my salary would have still been going to housing in an ‘affordable’ unit.
> I don't wanna make 250k while most people work three jobs
About 5% of people work more than one job in the US: https://www.qualityinfo.org/-/it-takes-two-or-more-oregon-s-...
In Germany, where the author is based, that figure is 3.5 million of a labor force of 45 million--over 7% https://www.dw.com/en/germany-more-and-more-people-work-mult...
> My father is disabled and my mom had the mentioned medical issues.
Portugal has a disability pension of 430 euro per month: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/progdesc/ssptw/2018-2019/eur...
The average Social Security Disability benefit in the U.S. is $1,260 per month: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/082015/what-are-max...
Additional benefits are paid to disabled workers with families--the average is $2,200. That is higher than the cost-of-living (PPP) adjusted average monthly wage in Portugal.
> My mom had cancer on minimum wage back in Portugal and we didn't pay a fucking cent
A minimum wage worker with a disabled spouse would almost certainly be eligible for Medicaid, which has extremely low out-of-pocket costs: https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/cost-sharing/cost-sharing-...
You can take anecdotes and spin out a story that is highly misleading. You can find people abusing public benefits and spin out a myth about "welfare queens." But you can also find plenty of people who have fallen through the cracks of the system for whatever reason, and spin out a myth that we have no safety net and people are dying in the streets.
* Your comparison between Portugal's social security system and the US's includes only one source of support, but several are available. (Cost of housing is one.) Neglecting this easily-verifiable fact has the same misinformational outcome as lying.
* "Medicaid has extremely low out-of-pocket costs" is not a reply to "we didn't pay a fucking cent". Your (not-included) estimates of how much money a US resident definitely will have to pay is by definition never going to be as good as zero. It's almost like you're setting out to smooth over this also-easily-verifiable fact with "rhetoric".
This reasoning is absurd. If I have to pay $10/mo in the US, but I make $100/mo more in the US, then I'm still up $90/mo. No one cares about "not paying a fucking cent" if "not paying" actually means "I'm $90/mo poorer".
Several sources of support are available in the US as well, including food stamps, medicaid, and housing assistance.
Lies, damn lies and statistics.
Even from your link:
> Nearly 3 million people worked a "minijob" — meaning they earned €450 ($499) or less per month — on the side of a full-time job.
So they have a "main job". How many of those in the US would just be unaccounted for? How big is the size of "under the table" jobs in the US?
How easy is to qualify for Medicaid or SS aid in the US?
Portugal is a low COL country, 430 Eur there is not comparable to $1260 where depending on the US you are it can be a lot of money or it can be nothing
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/portugal-economy-p...
[..] The country’s left-wing coalition has prioritized private investment and economic growth over public services such as housing, education, and forest fire prevention.[..]
[..] PERKS FOR FOREIGNERS Portugal has tried since then to enhance its fiscal attractiveness as a stimulus to the real estate market. Since 2012, “golden visas”—five-year residence entitlements for non-EU foreigners who buy property in Portugal worth over €500,000—have brought in €4 billion. Non-habitual residency (NHR) status, which offers tax advantages, is available to EU pensioners who buy homes in Portugal.[..]
[..] BUDGETARY BOMB Portugal’s universities are almost bankrupt, and the health system is understaffed and under-resourced. The state body that runs the railways estimates that 60 percent of its infrastructure is in bad or mediocre condition. Social housing is just 2 percent of the housing stock. “A framework law on housing is currently being debated in parliament, but we already know how it will go,” said Rita Silva of Habita, a housing rights association. “Despite a few positive steps, there is no political will to invest public money in housing. [..]
And it goes on and on. Worth a read.
- There is a job shortage at the moment. This is not as acute in tech but the situation in tech is not good either.
- Startups are chronically poor. There is little investment in startups and it's hard to secure it. If you are involved with a small startup it's likely it has existed for 5+ years and it has never had a round of more than €100k.
- Companies can't just compete with each other here the way they do in the US. There are a number of EU laws that limit job mobility and competition, which mostly affect tech / engineering / insert qualified trade. This is an issue for companies and workers.
- Salaries are low when compared to rent and property prices.
Feel free to avoid the EU vs US salary conversation. As a developer in the uglier side of the EU I know experienced developers in the not-so-well-off states of the US are doing way better than experienced developers in the not-so-well-off countries of the EU.
Why not re-incorporate in SV?
Sounds like the VC ecosystem is simply broken. Where are Europeans investing then?
For a lot of Americans, the fear we have is being completely dependent on the government. Look at who is exiting presidential office, look who is entering. Attaching our fates to these bozos isn't something I necessarily relish.
Even Canada pays better than a lot of European cities when you factor in COL between say Toronto and London.
Doubt. The sinking CAD is an issue and COL (except for rents) is usually lower in Europe
I understood her primary point as being about inequality and justice: "I don't wanna make 250k while most people work three jobs"
It’s good that there are so many discussions on the internet about the people who fall though the cracks, but it can create an inaccurate picture of reality, which is what seems to have happened to this observer. On the facts, she has a confused understanding of both the typical and the extreme American experience.
I didn't have to pay for college, due to Pell grants, yet she thinks that in the USA, a good student can't go to college without money. That's just not a thing. But the media in the US creates that impression for Europeans.
Also, the idea that poor people with cancer in the US are left to die. Not accurate. Medicare, medicaid, etc. Not saying its good, just saying she's deeply misinformed in the typical socialist left-wing media stereotypes and oversimplifications.
No, she actually thinks that an average (or below average, or without some exceptional physical skill etc. etc.) student can't go to college without money.
That's a non issue here in Europe (generally).
> Also, the idea that poor people with cancer in the US are left to die
You still have to pay for it.
Without premium insurance premiums forget about premium health care.
Here in Europe is not perfect, bu paying more is not necessary to get better health care.
You don't, actually. Medicaid is a de-facto single payer system (with the caveat that it's funded by both federal and state governments).
- death
- downvotes from Americans who do can't tolerate critics
Medicaid is not "free" there are requirements, but assuming you qualify, there are hidden costs. Like for example.
> The DRA created a five-year "look-back period." That means that any transfers without fair market value (gifts of any kind) made by the Medicaid applicant during the preceding five years are penalizable. The penalty is determined by dividing the average monthly cost of nursing home care in the area or State into the amount of assets gifted. Therefore, if a person gifted $60,000 and the average monthly cost of a nursing home was $6,000, one would divide $6000 into $60,000 and come up with 10. 10 represents the number of months the applicant would not be eligible for medicaid.
Maybe it's me as Italian that am a simpleton, but for me that's a cost.
If someone parents here get treated in a hospital, they are treated freely.
If after 4 years they want to gift their children with a few thousand euros to pay, for example, for their marriage, they don't have to worry about it.
Worrying has a cost.
The incentive of the Medicaid system is to lie about the real entity of the assets one possess.
Totally different program (medicaid nursing home care) and not relevant because (1) it isn't medical care and (2) someone who has assets to draw down from is, by definition, not poor.
> If after 4 years they want to gift their children with a few thousand euros to pay, for example, for their marriage, they don't have to worry about it.
This isn't a realistic scenario (at least in theory). Medicaid nursing home eligibility is evaluated on a case by case basis and penalties are only incurred if the Medicaid applicant's intent is to defraud the government (i.e. you can't give away your money for the sole purpose of acquiring government benefits).
So it is a paid program
Payed by your poverty.
If you end up inheriting money from a distant uncle, you have to pay back.
> you can't give away your money for the sole purpose of acquiring government benefits
That's understandable.
And it's only necessary because the country with the highest spending per capita on healthcare cannot agree that the only reason why they don't create a free universal healthcare system is not because it is economically unfeasible (if it is for Italy, it is for USA, I usually argue that USA could do a much better job than us), but because they fear that without the incentive to become rich and distance yourself from State benefits, the system would collapse.
It's only a cultural problem: nobody wants to rely on the State providing base services because nobody wants to think of themselves as "being poor" because only poor people use public services.
When you come from countries where public figures, politicians, presidents, Queens and Kings and even the Pope go to public hospitals, you can't imagine why it should be a bad thing.
If you inherit money from a distant uncle, your uncle is presumably no longer alive to utilize state provided long-term care and you don't have to pay anything back. You're trying to contrive a counterexample that simply isn't applicable.
It's not contrived to receive money from your family, it is in fact the most common way on this side of the ocean.
It is contrived to help the citizens of your country in needs and then ask for the money back!
My parents don't have to worry that in their 80s they would have to pay because one of their nephews was born with some condition or preterm.
They only have think about being good grandparents.
When I was born I was put in the incubator for 16 days and have been in hospital for 24 days total. how much would that havee costed to my family?
My parents were nurses, they weren't completely poor so they surely had to pay for it, but not rich either.
Between me and my brother my mom stayed home, in payed sick leave, full salary, all expenses covered, for 36 months.
If they were in USA they'd have bankrupted or given up on having children.
My mom had a pre condition, she already had two miscarriages, I'm quite sure the insurance company would have used that notion to not pay.
Do you realise how ridiculous that system is?
What are the benefits of having such a system, when in the end USA life expectancy is only one year longer than China?
Look at this study.
If the system is so good, why USA ranks so badly?
(this is only one of many, all the international institutions, including WHO, agree that USA healthcare standards are lower than the average western standards and much worse than the highest western standards, despite how much money they pure into it)
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality...
Then you wouldn't be inheriting anything in the legal sense of the word. That's why it's a contrived scenario -- it doesn't exist in reality.
Besides, the point is moot, as Medicaid nursing home care isn't Medicaid medical care, which is what the original topic was about.
> My parents were nurses, they weren't completely poor so they surely had to pay for it, but not rich either.
The government here heavily subsidizes the healthcare plans of people near poverty (up to 4 times the poverty level), not just the poor.
First of all, the uncle could be Mexican or French.
Secondly, devolving one's inheritance to someone else is completely legal (at least in my country).
> The government here heavily subsidizes the healthcare plans of people near poverty
They are paying for the insurance, not for the healthcare!
I don't know why is so hard for Americans to understand the difference.
So instead of having a State run system to give the people the best healthcare possible, they use a large amount of money to pay private institutions and still have shitty health care[0], while also spending more than anybody else [1]
Isn't it the textbook definition of "idiotic"?
[0] USA healthcare ranks 37th according to WHO study that evaluated 191 countries https://www.who.int/healthinfo/paper30.pdf
[1] https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...
There are low, published co-pays, similar to Italy.
The example you're quoting is for Medicaid nursing home care, a very expensive program with a distinct set of requirements: https://www.medicaidplanningassistance.org/medicaid-look-bac...
> When a senior is applying for long-term care Medicaid, whether that is for services in one’s home, an assisted living residence, or a nursing home, there is an asset (resource) limit. In order to be eligible for Medicaid, one cannot have assets greater than the limit. Medicaid’s look-back period is meant to prevent Medicaid applicants from giving away assets or selling them under fair market value in an attempt to meet Medicaid’s asset limit.
Italy does not have universal long-term care for the elderly: http://www.ancien-longtermcare.eu/sites/default/files/ENEPRI.... Like the U.S., it has some support for lower-income people who need long-term care.
You don't need to qualify, you just need to go tot the hospital.
> Ialy does not have universal long-term care for the elderly
That's not the exact picture though.
If you read the document you posted, it clearly says that
"Only 35% of the residential care beds available are public, whereas 43% belong to private not-for-profit institutions and 22% to private for-profit ones (Table 7). The number of elderly persons in institutional care is still relatively low by international standards, being 19.8 per 1,000 inhabitants aged 65 or older."
The key points are
- elderly care in Italy has always been in the hands of religious intitutions, that's what the 43% of private non profit institutions are. (and that is honestly an entirely different can of worms, but a can of worms nonetheless. I could talk about what opus dei does here it for hours ...)
- Italy is an old country, 25% of the population is >=65, most of them are in relatively good health conditions, as the study confirms.
- only 22% of the long term beds for elderly are private for profit, usually they are for richer people, who want to separate themselves from the rest of us.
- in total, on 15 million elderly, only less then 300k are hospitalized and only 60k of them are paying.
- the vast majority of the elders are taken care of at home, if they are not self sufficient, the State gives the family an allowance to take care of them.
- the problem here is the opposite: many try to trick the State into thinking they need monetary help faking disabilities they don have.
Not counting that elders in Italy have pensions, all of them, regardless of the amount of retirement savings (savings here are mandatory, a minimum of 23% of the salary, of course more savings mean higher pensions, but with zero savings people still get a - fairly low - pension) , payed directly by the State, adjusted for inflation, and that we spend around 15% of our GDP in pensions.
I would say it depends on your illness. Here in France, if you have teeth problems, need glasses or eye surgery in order to not go blind or need to stay in the hospital, you better have good insurance (mutuelle). The state social security /does/ pay for this, but the amounts are ridiculously low. I'm not sure what the prices are in the US, but healthcare over here is not free. Source: my mom had to undergo eye surgery (the mutuelle had to cover a fair chunk of the cost) and my father had to spend some time in the hospital for surgery; both where in "state-approved" clinics.
I'm not familiar with how the US system works, but from what I understand this "mutuelle" thing looks like the employer health plans in the US. It's also paid for by the employer over here, but you have to pay income tax on it.
I think that many people, at least when they compare the US to France, consider that the insurance paid-for by the employer is somehow "free", or don't even realize it's there.
AFAIU Mutuelle costs tens of euros a month, not hundreds or thousands.
In Italy it's the same, you can go to public hospitals which are always free if the procedure is necessary, or you can go to private hospitals or clinics and pay by yourself or through a medical insurance policy, but you absolutely don't need it, it's a choice people make.
The company I work for pays for my insurance policy, it costs them 25 euros/month and I can spend up to a couple thousand euros a year on medical procedures.
Usually people use those for things like fixing your teeth as an adult (up to 18 years the State here covers 100% of the expenses)
I used it to get two dental capsules at 70% discount rate (it was manageable anyway, less than 15 hundred euros, all included)
Most Europeans don't know anything about the US other than Michael Moore documentaries and reports from very biased journalists. I think the US medical system is incredibly flawed and has horrific inefficiencies and other things that make me hate it, but I live here and I actually know a lot about it as opposed to the typical European who comments on it based on the second hand information.
That's the problem.
End of story.
> Most Europeans don't know anything about the US other than Michael Moore
Most Americans assume they know what European know, based on stereotypes 100 years old.
And have never been here.
But I've lived in the US, for example.
She's wrong and misleading on so many things, It's really hard for me not to think she was somehow paid to write that. By whom I have no clue.
It reads like a PR piece to fear potential high value EU expats, a cheap attempt at preventing them from jumping ships instead of actually fixing the underlying issues.
I've done a little bit of international recruiting and it's always surprising the number of misconceptions folks have.
It's the same in Europe, though. No one wants their government to have too much power.
The political class is both out of touch and untouchable in the US, EU and pretty much most countries I'd say.
I really don't know anything, but I guess Germany where I would expect that to happen. If some self driving car related company funded by idk, BMW or Siemens or someone tried to scale up really fast. The other day people were mocking the EUs program to encourage European semiconductor tech, but I think Neural Network accelerator chips are still a niche that new companies could develop in.
German startups aside, our big multinationals happily create teams working in the the US and Germany, while paying their German employees a fraction of their American colleagues. I know of cases in pharma, automotive, and erp.
I'm loathe seeing this contentment with the wage situation in Germany. If wages for in demand fields like Software engineering are essentially flat for 30 years and €70k are considered an amazing salary, how exactly are wages supposed to rise in service sector fields, for example for caregivers? Salaries as part of gdp have deceased over that time range, but the prevalent ideology among my crowd is that one shall not work for money, because that's apparently a dirty thing to do.
Software engineers not pushing for significantly higher wages and gaslighting people who do makes them accomplices to the wage surpression that is rampant in Germany and the EU at large.
- Most people work multiple jobs to make ends meet: False
- Low income people don’t have health coverage: False
- The US doesn’t have any form of government safety net health coverage for its people: False. Medicaid covers low income population and Medicare covers the older population.
Not saying any of the above is perfect but these false pictures people paint of the US deserve to be called out.
1. no way “most” people work three jobs 2. But if they were they would still be working three jobs wether you had a US or EU salary
In my uncharitable opinion US is good for earning money as a young, highly educated person and for nothing else.
So go there when you are around 25, work your ass off at whoever pays the most for your skillset, spend as little as possible and bail before 35. Later you're screwed. You'll still make more and more there but the money is going to be useless.
Not really if you have insurance which as a software engineer you would have. Might hit your $10k out of pocket maximum but you salary will easily cover that.
edit: When my dad got cancer his insurance actually PAID him a cash payout for every treatment on top of paying the medical costs. He works at a non profit.
This now infamous reddit comment puts it into perspective very well: https://old.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/hj6t3t/not...
That's 5.75% of gross income, which is lower than the health-insurance tax a lower middle class person would pay in most European countries.
edit: For example checking the Maryland ACA page is showing maximum out of pocket costs of $7k/person for most plans and up to $17k/family for some. When you make $24k/year that will wipe out your savings for years.
That price may come out of monthly premiums, deductibles, out of pockets or copays but it will be paid out on average.
In a universal healthcare system the government can use progressive taxes to subsidize this cost for the less well off. In a private system that isn't the case.
So if you make $24k/year that comes out to 30% of your income. Assuming you get the average standard of medical care in the US. You may get lucky and avoid this but lotteries aren't good ways to live life.
edit: Please note I'm talking about the working age population. I don't think the elderly make sense in this discussion given that there's government health coverage for them.
Except we don't have a fully-private system. We have Medicaid, which covers the working-age poor, and also people with disabilities which is a very high-cost group. Then we have Medicare taking the high-cost elderly population. And then we have ACA potentially subsidizing much of the rest.
> So if you make $24k/year that comes out to 30% of your income.
In Maryland, a low-deductible Kaiser ACA Gold plan for a 36-year old making $24,000 per year costs $3,864/year. But the government pays $2,533 of that, leaving you to pay $1,380 + out of pocket costs.
Out of pocket expenditures in the U.S. add up to about $1,100/year on average: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/indicator/access-afforda.... But note that other countries have out-of-pocket costs too. Even in France, where point-of-use costs are very low, it's still $463/year.
Your typical person making $24,000 per year is going to be young, and not rack up $1,380 in out of pocket costs each year. But adding that in, you're looking at 10.3%.
Actual US healthcare spending in 2019 was $11,582/person.
https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta...
The median might arguably be a more useful average here, but I doubt the data necessary to even identify the median individual cost are kept.
It doesn't depend on income and gives you access to whatever hospitals can provide for everybody. My SO had six brain surgeries, two radiation treatments (one with cyber-knife) and Temodar chemo twice, and months of rehabilitation and hospital stay for that. She still died in the end but she got few years of healthy life more (and a year of some life) for the 1.25% of patchy mostly freelancing income. All she had to spend on top of that was maybe 100$ on minor medicaments.
It’s 9%. That’s the money that goes into the health insurance system. You can’t run a universal health insurance system with a 1.25% tax.
If you can take a deduction on your personal income tax for what you pay in health tax, then you have to compare those personal income tax rates as well. The proper way to do this is to look at the tax wedge: http://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/taxing-wages-poland.pdf
http://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/taxing-wages-united-state...
The tax wedge for an average single worker Poland is 36%, right at the OECD average. For the US it’s 29.8%. The Poland number includes health insurance, and the US number doesn’t. For workers who have to purchase an ACA plan, the effective tax rate probably works out to the same number.
But 70% of US workers get health insurance from their employer, which is a benefit on top of their income (so it’s not factored into the OECD tax wedge data).
> In a case study, a patient with lymphoma paid out-of-pocket healthcare costs from $6,446 in a large employer-sponsored health plan to $12,931 in a health plan on the individual health insurance market. These were all Affordable Care Act (ACA)-compliant plans.
Total out of pocket costs for cancer were $5.6 billion in 2018, with 1.8 million cases. That's about $3,100 out of pocket per diagnosis on average.
Over a career, you'll pay way more in additional taxes in Europe than whatever you'll save in out of pocket costs in the U.S. if you get cancer.
So you just need to be lucky to have an employer that won't fire you if you get sick right?
We've had the ACA for a decade now, you can't just pretend it never happened.
I'm not saying it's an ideal system and doesn't have major flaws but if you are a software engineer the scenario you are describing just isn't a thing. I'm sure it feels a lot better to tell yourself that when you realize you're being paid a quarter what you could be on the other side of the Atlantic.
Most people saying this stuff have never had to actually use the U.S. safety net. There's a lot of stuff we could fix: making medicaid enrollment automatic, extending unemployment benefits, etc. But pretending all these programs don't exist is crazy.
Note that the author of the original tweet was not afraid of her own financial situation but doesn’t want live in a system where _anyone_ has to fear going broke over medical expenses.
Also, yes you save much more, but when your mother has cancer and dad is disabled(As the author explains), realistically much more than what you save ends up being spent to take care of them and paying their medical bills.
In the US, she would've been able to buy a laptop for dirt cheap or get it from some charity or just someone looking to get rid of it for free. I myself got my first laptops and smartphones from the US, it was cheaper than buying locally, believe it or not.
Most, if not all MOOCs are from the US. Tons of blogs, content, documentation in English, written by Americans. Free for all, just learn and show your skills.
But yes, if there's an unforeseen medical emergency, you could go bankrupt in the US, while you'd be taken care of for free (or nearly free) in Europe.
Poor people generally don't pay for healthcare in the US for the most part. I have multiple family members that received (literally) state-of-the-art cancer treatment at top hospitals at no cost to themselves. The hospitals don't even try to collect anything. That's pretty normal in the US. Having to pay expensive medical bills is something that happens to the middle class, not the poor.
I think there are two issue, Low gross salaries in EU(which I agree with you), and high taxes in the EU(Which the twitt justifies and I agree).
For the first issue, I am all for better and more fair wages in EU, but that is a completely different topic with different dynamics.
Just one question as I am genuinely curious, when poor people get hospitalized or can not work and have to rest at home, do they receive any payment due to their job? Do they get terminated? Do they receive a social payment of sorts? Even if they don't pay the medical bills, can they afford to get by without family/community support?
For more context see my other reply about a friend having stomach issues.
I have never lived in the US and this all from online media, reading and talking to various ex/current US citizens/residents colleagues, so I might be wrong still.
edit: And my comment was more to point out that anecdotes make poor facts.
For example, in the EU, my middle class neighbors’ children safely bike and ride the train to and from their excellent publicly funded schools, after school activities, and friends’ houses requiring little to no adult supervision while in transit.* What do private schooling, chauffeurs, and security personnel cost in the US, anyway?
*Of course, COVID does interfere somewhat with this, but this is true worldwide.
> I wanna give back, im okay with that
> I don't wanna make 250k while most people work three jobs
Nobody is stopping one from voluntarily donating to a non-profit or for-profit organization, or being involved in one for that matter.
In Europe, most people don't work 3 jobs because either it's not legal to do so or those jobs don't exist because of debilitating regulations... or at some point, making more isn't really worth it because of how high the taxes go up.
Eliminating working three jobs is desirable, it isnt debilitating to prevent exploitation of workers, its enabling. Setting a minimum wage and maximum working hours creates a minimum quality of life.
For most people this is desirable. As far as I can see you'd either have to be a sadist, or incredibly obsessed with how well off you are vs others to not want this.
Nobody needs an obscene salary for writing code when others are struggling to afford the basics.
As an aside, I remember being really taken aback when I went on holiday to the US and most of the menial jobs were being carried out by Hispanic and Black people. I guess if you are a white American you get inured to it, but as a white European it was kind of creepy and a bit repulsive.
The world we live in right now was created because of CAPITAL. Not TAXES.
Even taxes exist only because of capital.
I am tired of people instructing others how to think. If someone wants to compare their EU salaries with the US, let them!
What is even the point of the Twitter thread except that the author says she is ‘ok with paying more taxes’. This literally has no value unless she also reveals how much she pays and how much she has gotten out of the system.
The problem we have with our economic system..at least in theory..is the lack of A Constant. Either we should have a constant fixed population or a constant steady rate of consumption or stable prices or constant renewable resources. It is very difficult to have maintain equilibrium all the time when there is so much dynamic flux.