DO compare it and see how much one can end up saving in a given time in the US, even after paying for healthcare, education etc.
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.
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.
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 $1,380 in out of pocket costs each year. But adding that in, you're looking at 10.3%.
It doesn't depend on income and gives you access to whatever hospitals can provide for everybody. My SO had six brain surgeries, two radiation treatments (one with cyber-knife) and Temodar chemo twice, and months of rehabilitation and hospital stay for that. She still died in the end but she got few years of healthy life more (and a year of some life) for the 1.25% of patchy mostly freelancing income. All she had to spend on top of that was maybe 100$ 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.