The puzzle of Europe
johnhcochrane.blogspot.com
johnhcochrane.blogspot.com
For example, good public healthcare and transport can lower the country’s GDP and improve it’s citizens wellbeing at the same time.
I’m not saying that France/Italy have it better for their citizens, but treating GDP as a main metric is terribly flawed.
I'm not saying it is more accurate than the GDP measure, it just offer a different view.
The UK has a similar share (actually slightly smaller) with over 10 times the population.
For the vast majority of people, living in a wealthy country, where that wealth is more equally distributed, will be much more attractive than living in country with just a high GDP.
1. The USA gifts itself > $6 trillion in imputed values. Or about the GDP of Japan;
2. If China measured their GDP using the formula used by India, its economy would be significantly larger;
3. Nigeria overtook South Africa literally overnight by changing (amongst other things) the value of unpaid child care.
Its largely are ruse to make public debt look sustainable.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_...
> A Gini coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality, where all values are the same (for example, where everyone has the same income). A Gini coefficient of one (or 100%) expresses maximal inequality among values
Was easy to spot, US and Russia are definitely not at the top when it comes to income equality as both are controlled by oligarchy
Generally you have a lower limit to how poor a person can be, in Scandinavia that limit is reasonably high (I sure it doesn't feel that way if you're actually poor), so I would have assumed that would level out the inequality somewhat.
Denmark in particular have also always excluded students from statistics on who's poor, because it's seen a temporary thing. So we don't see them as truly poor, even if they often are, but I suspect that they have to be included in the Gini coefficients calculation.
Looking at the median wealth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...), a median person in Spain is 3 times as "rich" then someone in Sweden and Germans or the Dutch are more "poor" than Slovaks or Greeks etc. But this is largely a result of relatively low home ownership rate in most North European countries.
However if we disregard average people and look just at the top 10% or even 1% Sweden is still Remarkably similar to the US:
Wealth Share of the top 10%/1% *
United States: 75.9% / 35.4% Sweden: 75.3% / 37.4% Netherlands: 68% / 26.6% Denmark: 66.6% / 29.3% Germany: 65.1% / 30.2% Norway: 65% / 32% United Kingdom: 59.3% / 24.5% Spain: 55% / 23.8% France: 54.6% / 22.2% ...
* according to https://www.credit-suisse.com/about-us/en/reports-research/g..., see page 168 in "Global wealth databook 2019" fro the full table
The reason is, higher income tax means it is more difficult to become wealthy. So in countries with high income tax, the majority of wealthy people is those that inherited their wealth. Over time some wealthy people become poor, but with high income tax, even fewer become rich. This means that wealth becomes more and more concentrated among the few, which is somewhat counter-intuitive.
So in the US, wealth-mobility is greater than Denmark for example, resulting in the list on Wikipedia, where countries that are thought of as "unequal" actually are the most equal of all when it comes to wealth.
Article studying the effect: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
The reasoning is pretty much the opposite, the redistribution of health helps to move children out of their parents wealth/social-class. It might be that an individual adult in the US is able to move from poor to wealthy more easily, but I sort of doubt it.
Otherwise, I would rather be wealthy in the USA.
Meanwhile, the difference between the US and Europe in the article is around $10K per person--hundreds of times larger than the distortion created by the billionaires.
His income last year was around $60 billion, or $200 per person (of any age) in the United States. While last year was exceptional, all of his wealth ($600 per capita) was income in the last 20 or so years, most of it in the last 10. And his ex-wife Mackenzie Scott kept 25% of their combined wealth when they separated.
So it's simply not true that his contribution to GDP looks completely trivial even when compared to total US GDP.
Secondarily, capital gains is not really the same thing as income (at least, not in the tax code, and also not in GDP calculations), and most of his $60B "income" is increases in Amazon stock price. And even if it were actual cash income, the GDP difference between the US and Europe is still fifty times larger than that.
Look: I was an American by birth, but I moved to Europe as an adult. I get the attraction, and I'm not trying to bag on Europe. But it's simply false to suggest that America is not overall richer than Europe, or to say that America's extra riches are all concentrated at the top.
The GDP difference between the US and Europe is fifty times larger than one rich person's own income? This isn't actually a great argument dismissing the suggestion that US wealth is extremely concentrated.
Are you really counting the increase of Amazon stock price as his personal income? This is totally inaccurate. Most of that worth is extremely volatile and can quickly dissipate if the stock price falls for whatever reason. Would you count a falling stock price as spending?
Amazon aggressively reinvests its extremely large and stable earnings into the business which Bezos owns a large part of and controls actively. Both he and his ex-wife have realized extremely important liquid wealth by selling a significant part of their stakes. How would you measure his wealth?
Certainly Amazon revenue is not the best way.
GDP is a measure of production and thus an indication of spending power (you need to earn before you can spend).
Whether a country chooses to use its economic output to finance these services is another question.
On the short term it may be true. On the long term you need a strong GDP to sustain quality of life.
COVID showed Europeans how dependent they are from China industry and US tech. Quality of life is still an order of magnitude better than in most countries in the world but I don't believe it will remain like this ad infinitum. Most Europeans know that Europe is declining and sinking slowly.
I'm not convinced at all that Europe is declining, though I am convinced that China and India are rising (as they bloody well should after the horrible history Europe has given them in recent centuries) though I'm worried that this isn't accompanied by a freer, fairer society in those places, just a richer one. Being richer is a good thing of course; freedom being of limited value to a starving child.
Which leads me to ask what your basis for comparison is? Because I've lived in wealthy parts of the US - much wealthier than anywhere I've lived in Europe - and seen streets paved with metaphorical gold, but I've visited plenty of places in the US that seemed pretty backward, poor, soaked in ignorance and hopelessly broken. When 2 million people in the richest country in the world don't have indoor plumbing then something is wrong with that country's measure of wealth.
I know that Eastern Europe is "killing it" regionally by a mix of good policies, EU funding and geoarbitrage - I've lived there - but European Union as whole is slowly declining.
Yes, we are still the world leader on lifestyle and culture - I don't want to create roots anywhere else - but I don't believe this will be enough to guarantee a bright future for my children.
10 years ago I'd have said Eastern European spirit may turn the ship around. But today I'm not so sure. It feels like too many people got comfy enough and sign off on Western's idea. The sad part is that we're still pretty poor and that comfiness will be gone even faster. Both in terms of wealth and geopolitics.
Is this code for calling West Europe lazy? I surely can't make much sense of what you mean with this phrasing.
I'm pretty sure in Asia they see next year will be better then this year. I can see it in my own family members back in Asia. They went from generational housing to each uncle and auntie having their own house, nieces and nephews having finished college or university able to afford a better life style then my aunties and uncles could. While I see my little brother and many others struggling to afford a good enough place to buy or rent because of the fucked up housing markets back here in western Europe.
Meanwhile in Eastern europe is as you describe Asia. My parents live tremendously better than their parents. I live better than my parents. And I'm positive my kid will live better than I do. After that... Fingers crossed I'll see the trend going strong. And that's in pretty much any socioeconomic class. While wealth gap is growing since Soviet era, the poor are living better than Soviet era elite. Both in terms of necessities and leisure.
> "10 years ago I'd have said Eastern European spirit may turn the ship around. But today I'm not so sure. It feels like too many people got comfy enough and sign off on Western's idea."
And this is a pretty strange statement, calling on something like "Eastern European spirit" to turn something around, and getting "comfy" as a "sign off on Western's idea", both of which you don't describe what you mean with.
Do you care to expand on those points?
Meanwhile Western Europe. Feels much more.. complacent? if that's the right word. Looking from the East, West looks like smug underachievers riding on forefathers' fame.
Look, I came from Brazil, working 10-12h/day was common for most of my 10 years career there. It doesn't bring prosperity, it doesn't get rewarded, working hard and not taking breaks is no measure of success. As much as you think this is the way to emulate because of US's wealth I'd say to think again about this bold assumption, you are being extremely reductionist and topping it off with some xenophobia. I don't like it.
And I was talking about true hard working, not butt-in-seat theatre. And we sure got rewarded here in Eastern Europe. Just look at statistics comparing east/west in 1990 and today.
How much would you like to be called one of the numerous Eastern European stereotypes?
You didn't get rewarded simply by working hard, go check Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, etc.) and see how fucking hard the people there work, which, unlike in the EU, doesn't have support from the US, the country that extracts most of the value and productivity from these nations.
There are a lot of geopolitical and economical factors for the rise of the East in Europe, one of these factors is exactly by being included in the EU and participating on the free market with richer nations, that propped up the economy of the bloc as a whole... Stop feeding into this bullshit narrative, it's dangerous.
TBH a lot of Eastern european stereotypes are truth. Unfortunately we did export a lot of criminals and welfare seekers. We joke all the time how after joining EU streets became safe the next weekend. In reality it took a bit longer :)
It's funny how you want to read that I'm saying that people were working hard. No, I'm saying that people work(ed?) hard and smart. Maybe sometimes too smart skewing regulations.
It's not bullshit narrative, it's your xenophobia :) See, I can play this game too.
Now on a more serious note, sure it's not just hard/smart work. There're a lot of reasons. For example, leading up to WW2, there was no big discrepancy between east and west. When Soviet era was over, nothing was stopping East from bouncing back to where it should be.
I don't see how stating that West is more rich and people take it for granted and happy with what they have is "hateful". I'm not saying "you fools live on our hard work". I'm saying "we're catching up and fast and that's awesome. But that's partially on you, because you seem to be not trying to level up anymore". I wish all europeans would get more hungry and get ready to take on Asia.
Is wishing for people to become more active/hungry/whateveryouwanttocallit "hate"?
I absolutely agree with you here.
> Most Europeans know that Europe is declining and sinking slowly.
Sorry, you lost me here. Outside of the nationalist far right, I never hear people saying anything of the sort. How are we "declining and sinking"?
You don’t have to be a far-right nationalist in order to have an objective look at the situation in EU, although I understand your temptation to resort to such low-effort arguments, it’s fashionable after all.
As a non far-right European, the EU is falling behind by failing to drive any tech innovation, by relying on non-EU countries for vaccine production, by not importing any external tech talent by having extremely unattractive wages in the tech sector. Every major tech innovation happened outside of EU, and this is something I’m not proud about. If your only metric for success is having decent public healthcare and social benefits, then I guess EU is doing fine, but I’m skeptical this will do us any good in the long run.
What is the metric you are using to gauge innovation in tech in the EU?
The part that made it work, a lipid envelope that keeps the thing running at non cryogenic temperatures, doesn't sound very impressive (though it is), is a Belgian company (Dutch, although I believe located in the French part of the country).
This vaccine, aside from (part of) it's financing is very much European ...
Sure, but I didn't say that. I said those are the only ones I hear making unsubstantiated alarmist claims about Europe, and/or their respective home countries, "declining and sinking". I have no problem with people pointing out specific problems, like you did with wages and tech innovations. This opens up for constructive debate. Screaming that we're doomed does not.
I think you'd get very different graphs if you compared the incomes of the lower half of the population. Or even the lower 80%.
So to what extent is that high GDP actually benefitting the US as a whole? It's not a game where GDP is your high score.
No european politican in power is that altruistic. Ours are in no way less crazy or corrupt than the US ones.
Political systems are always eventually captured by the powerful and they prevent any real change because they benefit from the status quo. Europe has old corporations and the system is built to benefit them.
We also have very little VC money going around. The EU is technically a single market but in reality there are big barriers. Not anywhere close to what US or China has as a domestic market. Companies have a pretty damn tough time getting out of their country. Mostly because there is so little VC money to help them get out.
The reason for limited VC money is because there are few exit strategies. Going public in the US means getting way more money. The stock market in an EU country is not anywhere near what the US stock market is.
The reason the stock market is not as developed is simple, US dollar is the worlds reserve currency not the Euro.
I very much believe that Dutch politicians are less corrupt than U.S.A. politicians, in no small part due to the fundamental operations of the electoral system.
Donald Trump refused to yield power and flirted with a coup d'état after losing the election; around that time, the Dutch cabinet offered it's resignation peacefully to atone for a scandal it wasn't even directly responsible for, but took responsibility for as the ultimate executive. — it's quite a difference.
I find Dutch politicians very much far less self-absorbed and egocentric, and I believe this is due to the U.S.A. system being a winner-takes-all system that thereby selects upon narcissistic risk takers, for to obtain any public office in the U.S.A., one must have taken a risk where one stands to leave with nothing after considerable investment, — such is not the Dutch system, which is not a winner-takes-all system but one where victory is a matter of degrees.
Dutch politicians are generally quite down to earth rather than surrounded by pomp and grandeur. The prime minister goes to work by bike and has a part time job as a primary school teacher and lives in a normal apartment rather than a posh official residence, and this is because the system selects upon men who have power trusted upon them, not upon those who seek power.
> Political systems are always eventually captured by the powerful and they prevent any real change because they benefit from the status quo. Europe has old corporations and the system is built to benefit them.
In 1916, the Netherlands switched from a district-based system to a simple, proportional system. This change surely did not benefit the parties in power, but they did so anyway for the purpose of democracy, and probably because the voters wanted it.
I don't think that's true. Mark Rutte was prime minister during the escalation of the excessive fraud hunting, and has been directly involved with parts of it. He undeniably carries much of the real responsibility.
He's also not a great example of a politician taking that responsibility; he has a tendency to smile problems away.
That said, you're absolutely right that neither the Dutch not any other European country is anywhere near as corrupt as the US, where corruption seems to be baked deep into its political system.
What has the direct involvement been then beyond simply being the ultimate executive at the top of the chain of command?
> He's also not a great example of a politician taking that responsibility; he has a tendency to smile problems away.
Offering the resignation of one's cabinet is quite far from a mere smile.
> That said, you're absolutely right that neither the Dutch not any other European country is anywhere near as corrupt as the US, where corruption seems to be baked deep into its political system.
Any other? I daresay that there is greater corruption in many European nations.
It's not baked, it is rotten. It started with noble intentions and designs. European countries reformed mostly in the 20th century to become what they are. US has continued it's system since the funding of the republic and the rot has set in deep until now.
The so celebrated “founding fathers” were rich, white, male slaveowners that tried their hardest to keep as much power for the rich, white, male, and slaveowner at the expense of all others and transparently founded an elitocracy that favored the big man over the little man, and certainly succeeded.
That the U.S.A. electoral system gives disproportionate power to the elite already in power is not a fluke, but a deliberate design choice.
The big irony of the founding of the US is that the guy who believed it was "self-evident that all men are created equal", owned men as slaves. It's important to continue in the direction they pointed, and not stop simply at the point where they ended up in their time.
I believe corruption goes hand-in hand with two-party systems. This eventually results to partisan politics and loss of all accountability. The two-party system may be either de facto (e.g. USA) or emulated (e.g. Greece), but the result is still chronic corruption.
> In 1916, the Netherlands switched from a district-based system to a simple, proportional system. This change surely did not benefit the parties in power, but they did so anyway for the purpose of democracy, and probably because the voters wanted it.
Simple proportional systems all the way. The problem is that if you didn't do the switch early-on (like the Netherlands), then it's almost impossible to do later because of deeply vested interests. E.g. Greece attempted a switch to a simple proportional system in 2016, but the move was smeared with FUD articles by the mass-media. In the end, the current government restored the previous election system, which gives a ludicrous number of bonus parliament seats to the first party.
You can't just make silly claims like this and not explain yourself. If you're just not familiar with recent US politics you're forgiven (although have you been living under a rock?), otherwise... huh?
It's not about personal altruism, it's about creating the right institutions that encourages politicians to do the right thing, and to hold them accountable when they don't. In the US, these systems don't work very well. I remember when Congress had an approval rating in the single digits, yet 90% of all incumbents got re-elected. That's a pretty clear sign that the very basis of your democracy doesn't work right.
> Political systems are always eventually captured by the powerful and they prevent any real change because they benefit from the status quo
And yet political systems change. Absolute rulers decide to share their power, write liberal constitutions and hold fair elections, politicians in district systems decide to change to proportional representation, men vote to allow women to vote.
Of course these changes often require protests by the people who used to be excluded, but those protests happened, and the people in power listened and changed the rules.
It's mostly the US where a large number of people insist that the rules of two and a half century ago are sacred and should never be changed. Few other countries hold to that sort of idiocy. (Though the UK might be as bad or worse than the US in that regard.)
> We also have very little VC money going around.
That is absolutely true. The US is great for money. It's great for rich people and for investors. And many European startups end up moving to the US.
But that doesn't change the fact that regular people aren't benefitting all that much from it. Warehouse workers for Amazon often work in atrocious circumstances that would not be allowed in the EU. How does their country's high GDP or Amazon's high market value benefit them if their job is destroying them?
I disagree. Politicians change when they are forced to. People in power listening and changing the rules is in my opinion a pipe dream. They only change when their positions are threatened (i.e. being voted out of office in the civilized case).
What the EU had is two world wars fought on its soil. The old systems were cleansed out with blood and fire. So while culturally European countries are old, politically they are generally not. The US has never had this, so the old system has been kept and unfortunately has rotten to its core and will collapse in our lifetimes in my opinion.
This is why I tried to make the point that politicians are no better over here. They are selfish cunts like all politicians are and they sure as hell don't give the slightest damn about making sure "wealth benefits everybody to some degree". They are just operating in a setting that is not a rotten corpse and act more civilized.
This is only true in some cases, not in all. The first Dutch king, Willem I, was originally made an absolute king and liked it that way, but later decided to have Thorbecke write a liberal constitution that would severely limit his power. Of course there were plenty calls in the country to do that, but he wasn't facing a revolution, and couldn't be voted out. Unless you count the Belgian independence from a couple of years earlier, but that had already happened and wasn't prevented by this decision.
There are plenty of other cases where people decided to do the right thing because they saw it was the reasonable thing to do without being forced to.
But the US refusing to change the broken electoral system from 250 years ago is also on the voters themselves, who keep voting for parties that don't want to improve the system. Keep voting out all incumbents until they fix the problem.
As for blaming voters, that is entirely useless and simplistic.
I strongly disagree on both points. There are politicians who take their responsibility seriously, and voters have a responsibility to vote for better politicians. Ultimately, voters get the government they choose, and if they choose corrupt politicians, that's what they get. The corrupt politicians aren't going to change as long as people keep voting for them. But better people exist, and it's up to voters to elect them.
Powerful interests can derail any threat to them. This is why things seldom change in any real way. Take US presidential candidates Andrew Yang or Tulsi Gabbard. Completely reasonable politicians who had to deal with constant lies about them being spread by the media.
It's absolutely true that the US system is incredibly corrupt, and it may be hard to see a way out of that, but a lot of countries are different, and many countries have seen real change. The US could do that too, but the people have to want it.
Media has always been beholden to powerful interests. Especially now when their revenue streams are drying up. Saying many don't is naive. You just don't see it, because the corruption reveals itself about what they don't print. For that to be obvious you have to be aware what they are hiding from the public.
But in many other countries, journalists are more idealistic than that, and have editorial independence. And when the media owner threatens that independence, journalists cry foul and leave.
Arguing that media can only be corrupt, is basically arguing that there can not be any democratic accountability. Instead of arguing it cannot be improved, it would be more constructive to demand improvement, demand editorial independence, and follow and pay for those media that offer that.
France and Germany GDP per hour worked is only about 6% less than the US (while it was mostly the same until 2008) [1] [2].
Seems like most of the difference can be explained by stronger work-life balance policies chosen by European (sick days, holidays, earlier retirement and parental leave).
[1] https://i.imgur.com/zuZ4pYz.png [2] https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm
I think part of the explanation is that the finance and high-tech sectors are way overvalued in money, and they shift the balance massively. This "inflates" the GDP in the U.S. This has basically been a conscious policy in the U.S. - "quantitative easing".
Also, are these figures adjusted for PPP? (And can you therefore make a blanket statement such as "The average European is about a third or more worse off than the average American"?) I'm going to guess not: [1] and [2] compare the GDP per capita without and with adjustment for PPP between the US and France. The first (no PPP adjustment) shows how France plateaued after 2008, while the US kept increasing. The second shows that both kept increasing at the same rate (albeit with France's figures consistently 20% lower than the US).
By the way as a European I don't disagree that the EU's (average) economy has fared worse in the last 10 years than the American economy. But these numbers are too simplistic to find out what the underlying causes are.
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
[2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...
[3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
[4] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...
[3] and [4] are those same graphs for the countries in the article + Germany + EU average.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
Private-debt-to-GDP ratio:
- Germany (154)
- Scandinavia (269-280)
- Western Europe (224-266)
- US (220)
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/private-debt-to-gd...
Gov-debt-to-GDP ratio:
- Germany (58)
- Scandinavia (~40)
- Western Europe (~100)
- US (108)
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/government-debt-to...
GDP-per-capita is a mean, it doesn't tell you anything about distribution. Qatar has a higher GDP-per-capita than the United States, but most of that wealth is highly concentrated.
The Republic of Ireland also beats the US. Explain that. Without doing so it's fairly meaningless.
This is driven by multinational profit shifting, and is in no way reflective of the actual Irish economy.
According to the World Bank data our GDP per capita was roughly equal to that of the US in 2008 (even slightly higher for a while) [0]. Since then the recession hit us a lot harder than the US and our economy still hasn't recovered.
I don't have a good explanation on what happened and why we haven't been able to recover. The conventional answer is some mix of failed austerity based politics in the early 2010s, a bloated public sector, stiff labour markets and structural problems relating to an aging and shrinking population.
On top of the facts mentioned above (or maybe because of them) there's a weird sense of fatalism in our society that I find deeply unnerving. We did a decent job of handling the pandemic, but apparently completely suppressing the pandemic was determined to be "impractical" for what ever reason I still can't fathom. Now we're postponing our state/municipality elections because of not being able to keep the virus in check.
I'm feeling angry about my own country in a way I haven't before. We're still doing ok, but I'm frustrated that no one is really demanding that we do better.
[0]: https://datacommons.org/tools/timeline#place=country%2FFIN%2...
Everybody that I know that has an idea or a business that might be worth something, is moving or trying to move to the US.
The mix of too much regulation, high taxes and difficult access to capital is just too much for most new businesses to handle. So, they are moving somewhere else.
I think, despite the talk about higher quality of life, etc., that is going to make us losers in the long run and actually erode our quality of live. Because we need a productive and innovative economy to keep our living standards.
Regulations usually pop up because systems, left on their own, tend to evolve towards a spiral of undesirable social dumping and other negative outcomes. We tend to focus on a minority of arduous regulations, ignoring the majority of them that make our lives better.
High taxes, when distributed fairly, are a good thing - talent and hard work gets you to upper-middle class, but really high incomes are mostly down to luck. Now, the move from taxing incomes to taxing wealth is long overdue, but that's a different discussion.
Difficult access to capital - can it be that Europeans are simply less exuberant, less gullible, and assess startups more realistically? Getting seed funding worth of lifetime income of a median person, for a dubious idea without any reasonable business model - that's the anomaly, not the other way around.
All the positive things aside it seems young people there also struggle way more than the older generations, as housing prices etc. have gone up immensely (in the Paris region e.g. you can pretty much forget to buy a house as a young middle class family).
I don't know about other European countries, but I often heard this argument in France, and it is bullshit.
It's free but overall about 60~70% of your work value/cost for employer is taxed.
It's free, but when you need to see an ophthalmologist (for example), you are either lucky to get an appointment next year, or have to pay 150 Euros for a non-affiliated doctor.
Its free, but so completely broken that we have to pay by ourselves what is called a "mutuelle", which is basically an insurance that covers partially what is not paid by the national health system. And this thing became mandatory a few years ago.
It's free but so inefficient and corrupted that when you subscribe you have to wait 6 months and re-do the procedure 3 times because they lost your files somewhere in the bureaucratic black-hole.
If this is the definition of "free" in Europe, I'd rather get both my money and the real freedom to decide how to use it.
I live in DK now, having moved from the US. I get paid less than before, but I don’t need to save for health insurance and the off chance that I might get some expensive disease that the insurance company wouldn’t cover!
Neither do I need to save for paying super expensive day care, or child education, or college costs of my son.
So, money exchange is different when you don’t pay for a lot of services like in the US.
The experience we felt when our little boy was born was unforgettable. We drive to the hospital, get treated very well, get a room to stay close to the hospital with service from resident nurses in case we needed help or education about taking care of the baby, and all through this without ever thinking about money or bills....! Let that sink in. Everyone who lives here gets that treatment and gets to enjoy the baby being born instead of the financial burden. I will happily pay my 37% income tax and high VAT if it brings happiness and fairness to all. It’s not perfect, but it’s the closest there is.
FAANG market cap: US$7T
USA GDP: US$20T
Getting back to FAANG:
Amazon: $386bn
Apple: $274bn
Google: $182bn
Netflix: $25bn
Facebook: $85bn
So that would bring the numbers up to $925bn.
Now, a lot of this revenue is global, so the US stuff is probably 50% or less. However, a big chunk of this global revenue is the thing that allows US salaries to be so high. Also, if we were in normal times, these companies would repatriate their profits and be taxed in the US, plus these profits would be reinvested in the company or invested in the US. So I'd count the US "contribution" not as strictly half ($462bn) but more likely closer to $600bn.
Also, FAANG is a catchy name but it's not a good economic representation. Netflix is big-ish, it's a household name, but it's much smaller than the others. There are also some big companies missing from it:
Microsft: $143bn
Oracle: $39bn
Adobe: $11bn
Salesforce: $17bn
IBM: $73bn
Dell: $92bn
Intel: $71bn
HP: $58bn
Cisco: $51bn
So that's another $546, using the same "formula" from above, probably another $350bn "contribution" for the US.
And that's just the absolute A tier plus the B+ tier. If we start including B (Uber, big but debt ridden; ServiceNow, etc.) and C tiers (ever heard of Axway?), I imagine we get to $1500-2000bn easily, especially since I forgot to add numbers for some big B+ tier companies up there (Broadcomm, Qualcomm, etc.).
Personally I'd suspect that all these small companies combined probably make more than the big companies combined.
The size of an economy doesn't indicate whether or not it is actually improving people's lives.
Again, to quote RFK: "It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities."
Do you think humans for the vast majority of our history and also in the vast majority of places today were/are utterly miserable?
GDP is also interesting as a metric, because you can inflate it by having a terrible and inefficient health care system. If health care takes an extra 8% of your entire GDP, what value is that bringing if the results are so much lower than a country that has a system that saves that 8% points?
Italy is a giant dysfunctional mess, no question there.
France, I have a lot of questions about the work they have done to try to insulate their workforce from globalization. Some of that is showing cracks, some isn't. If the USA had done more to insulate the poor and middle class from the impact of globalization would our GDP be lower or higher? Something I've been thinking about. Especially as we finally consider measures to help people weather the storm as the economic system raises everyone up globally...
No. GDP does not equal well-being. I mean, the numbers presented in the article _are_ interesting, but their interpretation seems simplistic.
More to the point, GDP isn't everything. There are many factors at play. It is possible to cherry pick a multitude of attributes to compare Europe with the US and have either appear to be failing in a graph.
Think about how the graph would look if the following were considered: education levels, clean air/water, broadband connectivity, health care, inner city and suburban public transport.
Also when comparing Europe it would be fair to include Europe in the data rather than a select few countries, otherwise the title (and the argument) becomes more misleading.
> These are huge numbers. The worst estimates of climate change are 7% of GDP in 2100. And those are surely overstated (see the excellent new paper by José Luis Cruz and Estban Rossi-Hansberg) You may admire the NHS for saving money, but even if the 20% of GDP we spend on health care is totally wasted, we're still ahead. Lots of people admire the European model. Just how far Europe is behind the US is remarkable -- and getting worse.
It really bothers me that the guy casually waves away the problem of climate change, reducing it to at most a cost of 7% of GDP by 2100 - this is a major error that many economists make. If the worst of climate change happens, there won't be much of a GDP left to count - you just can't capture catastrophic changes with macro-economic time series forecasting.
It's also astonishingly simplistic to do back of the envelope extrapolations of GDP growth and healthcare costs and conclude that the US will 'come up ahead'. What people admire about the NHS is not that it saves money, it's that it delivers good healthcare to everybody (also more cheaply than the private US system).
In my mind, these are the metrics that make people feel ‘better off’.
Several things stand out:
- Citizens in larger countries have it better than one would expect. This reflects the economies of scale, and matches well with the informal anecdotes of people who have lived there - that despite GDP and productivity figures, somehow life's better there
- Tax havens don't really benefit the citizens of their countries, outside of a narrow sliver of population. Material standard of living in Ireland is below that of Italy
Here's a report from Eurostat: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/sdg_10_20/def...
Here's a more comprehensive set of data - builds up a very interesting argument, based on AHDI figures: https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2018/11/19/why-everything...
Why try to see the single market as a failure out of the blue just by comparing GDP growth?
The single market has been a great success and has undoubtedly boosted growth.
The issue is that it is not everything. For example, the business environments in France and Italy are far from being friendly and efficient. The UK's is much friendlier but IMHO the UK has chosen a path of making London an island of prosperity based on services (with a strong emphasis on finance) while letting the rest of the country fend for itself (the UK has both the richest and poorest areas in Northern Europe)...
TFA is just discussing one topic, GDP, without making broad statements. However, the submitter has chosen an intentionally misleading title.
Looking at the submissions of this submitter, this is an intentional pattern.
(edit - typos!)
Median p.a income in US is 43k USD.
Median p.a. income in Germany is 33k USD.
Median p.a income in Bulgaria is 4k USD.
With such big outliers all the equations regarding EU as 1 entity will be off by such a wide margin that it'll be useful only to get the conclusions you (the presenter) want.
Here's more subtle factors though:
* how much does healthcare cost?
* how much does bringing a child up cost?
* how much does education cost?
* how much does real-estate cost?
With all that, I think that unless you're the top earner and can take advantage of favorable taxation schemes, favorable healthcare schemes, favorable living location, you're better of being median in western europe.
The grand failure of the world's biggest free trade zone really is a striking fact to gnaw on.
do not suggest that the author will have any particular interest in facts that don't align with their existing ideas.
In reality causes are likely a mixture of:
- Tighter regulatory environment
- More barriers in the overall market
- Lower income inequality
- Fewer hours worked
And this says very little about the benefits or costs of the decisions that might lead to these outcomes, or why they indicate "falling further behind".
Historically, the empires exploited other countries, it used to be very brutal, now it's just who works for whom, who is the product, who control the money and information flow.
> What the heck happened? It could happen here too. Maybe it already has, just not as bad.
Yes, it is possible. Add Japan to the graph, see what happens.
I think the bigger part of the answer is China. Some of it is PPP. Some of it is that Italy has internal problems to solve. Some of it is what I'd call "paper GDP"
The problem is that the person who submitted the article chose an inflammatory title, just like he has done on many of his past submissions. There's an agenda at play here that goes unnoticed, and it has a lot of people in this comment section worked up.
There are so many variables of value other than GDP. The US is #40 on the list of countries by citizen lifespan.
It's #15 on quality of life index (assuming you believe in the methodology of defining that index).
It's #45 when freedom of press is measured.
I would not be surprised if, after taking all the different indices into account, the US is not in the top 5 overall. GDP matters little if you don't have freedom, healthy long life, maternity leave (and other expensive but necessary quality of life benefits).
Also, reconsider GDP per capita relative to hours worked. The US is not the leader here. It's no surprise that if you work a lot more hours, you should have higher overall output (diminishing returns, but still obviously higher).
This is not afforded to anyone without reserve currency status.
EU governments are prevented from running deficits due to some treaty in order to keep the euro stable, and historically the currencies would depreciate quickly.
Additionally, the EU is lightyears ahead of the US wrt decarbonization; if we suddenly priced carbon properly then the US would be a lot less wealth in comparision.
Except of course that that isn't true at all.
Quality of life in Europe is infinitely higher for all but the wealthiest.
The per capita discussion in that post is of course a bit misleading, the US is larger so it's also more likely to attract immigrant.
But my point still stands, unless you are already well off, or an academic, you are very unlikely to have better quality of life in the US than here. You need a pretty high salary in SF for example if you want to enjoy the lifestyle of a nurse or street sweeper in Copenhagen.
A migrant doesn't care if the country he is moving to has a million, 10 million, or 100 million people. He cares that it offers the job opportunities/welfare programs he wants. If Mexico was the same population of about 100 million and the US had 33 million instead of 330 million people but was just as wealthy, would a single Mexican illegal alien be dissuaded from attempting to sneak across the border? Of course not.
>Americans are obviously very unlikely to move anywhere, and not least because they don't know very much about the outside world, let alone speak a foreign language.
No. The same disparities exist with Canadians, Britons, and Australians vis-a-vis Americans. The dataset I link to in the discussion shows that, on a per capita basis, [a Canadian is 27 times more likely to move to the US than an American is to move to Canada](https://np.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/6lin9k/reupload_pop...). The per capita population flows between, say, Canada and Australia are much more normalized (that is, close to 1:1)
>You need a pretty high salary in SF for example if you want to enjoy the lifestyle of a nurse or street sweeper in Copenhagen.
Ah yes, as we can see from the massive flow of Americans moving from San Francisco to Copenhagen to work as nurses and street sweepers.
>But my point still stands, unless you are already well off, or an academic, you are very unlikely to have better quality of life in the US than here.
I repeat: Why don't you ask those who actually vote with their feet? Their answers are quite clear, to anyone who looks at the data.
Obviously, if the US was ten times smaller there would be 10 times fewer jobs, so yes the flow would be much slower.
>> You need a pretty high salary in SF for example if you want to enjoy the lifestyle of a nurse or street sweeper in Copenhagen.
> Ah yes, as we can see from the massive flow of Americans moving from San Francisco to Copenhagen to work as nurses and street sweepers.
Your logic continues to amaze me. I live in Copenhagen and have some friends with pretty basic jobs. Even a kindergarten teacher can live in a (small) apartment downtown, walk/bike to work and have her kids in the best school in Denmark, and we all have the same healthcare and access to university. Needless to say everyone gets 5-6 weeks holiday a year, works at most 40 hours a week and in general have much more pleasant life than someone earning 150 k in SF would have.
But again, how many Americans do you think could even place Copenhagen on the map? Let alone would consider learning Danish. Canadians are much more cosmopolitan, so why do you think it would be comparable?
The situation is dire, and I'm not sure there is much to be done. There has been talk of the EU funding AI and cloud-computing superefforts, but I'm skeptical that this will produce results. I also agree with the author's sentiment that perhaps all the technological regulation in the EU may have stifled competition dramatically (Ben Thompson and others have been positing that GDPR for example may have been a boon for incumbents and a disaster for newcomers, as the former can afford to jump through all the hoops while the latter have a much harder time doing so)
There may be a good argument in the sentiment that many are repeating in the thread: growth for the sake of growth is not necessarily good, and wealth distribution is also important. But the EU cannot afford to completely neglect growth and its compounding nature over time, or it risks becoming completely sandwiched by the US and China. Maybe the ECSC was born primarily to foster trade between its members and not so much to worry about forming a "bloc" that could stand up to other superpowers, but I think it's hard to deny that this is a legitimate expectation of many EU citizens nowadays.
Perhaps the EU should think outside of the box and look for other avenues of growth, and also review existing regulation. I'm cynical on both fronts nonetheless: despite having been staunchly pro-EU all my life, I get the feeling that the weight of its bureaucracy makes innovation and changing laws very difficult. I find it much more akin to a continent drifting millimeters each year, rather than a massive fleet of ships, which would be complex to commandeer, but would still retain its fundamental capabilities for changing course and reorganizing itself.
As a friend (thanks Tom!) laid it out,
1980
$1.6T in circulation, $2.9T GDP
1990
$3.2T in circulation, $6T GDP
2000
$4.7T in circulation, $10.2T GDP
2010
$8.5T in circulation, $15T GDP
2020
$19T in circulation, $21.4T GDP
In many ways, this post is an argument around Baumol's cost disease (i.e. a bag of saline that used to cost $1 to $10, inflation adjusted, with most of the price being the packaging, now costs $700+ for no discernible reason) than other types of macroeconomic policy. It is surprising that, as a rule, such analyses don't consider the difference in American and European monetary policy. Essentially, even though they are broadly similar, their capital injection system does seem to produce somewhat different effects that are showing up in this data.
More generally, most economic policy discussions have become murkier and stranger because of the difficulty of establishing ground truth through economic data. After all, how do you use something as a reference for measure, when the references rapidly changes in a short period of time? It seems apparent to me that alternative measures need to be used instead, and that their use should be taken more favorably, and when we view the state of these countries through alternative indices.
For example, average lifespans have declined in the US, for several years in a row - a first for the developed world, https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2019/12/02/middle-ag...
The US has the highest infant and maternal mortality rate of these countries, and the rate is increasing https://hbr.org/2019/06/the-rising-u-s-maternal-mortality-ra...
Other measures are trending in the wrong direction as well, from economic mobility, https://www.pnas.org/content/117/1/251 , to a reduction in access to safe drinking water - https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/millions-americans-d... , and the return of diseases of poverty such as hookworm. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/12/12/5702176...
The flywheel of prosperity has been broken for some time now, and the drift in the US between the "other America" and paper wealth is rapidly increasing. The EU, on the other hand, has had some of the same problems, but to a much smaller degree, and the group of nations has increased in net prosperity when measured through these indices. The question we should ask is why. Why did this divergence happen in America and not Europe?
On a personal note, the metrics I'm most interested in are indirect measures of "effective" research and research into basic science. My experience on both sides of the pond tells me that in some ways, the EU is catching up to the US in that regard - at least in my experience. However, I'd like to find a reliable dataset (or datasets) before making this claim.
- the US prints infinite dollar
- the US impose trade restrictions that kill businesses
- the US send the lawyers when you try to compete with them
The puzzle of Europe
European costs of living are way lower in Europe. Not just rent (fwiw, even as someone living in Munich, US rents sound utterly ridiculous) but also everything else (with the notable exception of gas/diesel). Not to mention medical insurance/debt: with a ~3500€ gross job, an employee pays ~275€ a month for full medical coverage - including, if married and the s/o not working, the whole family!
> What the heck happened? It could happen here too.
What happened is mostly that the US exploded their financial industry over the last decades.
In Europe, pension funds are (mostly) on a "rolling" basis - meaning that the contributions of the current working generation plus tax-funded prop-ups are used to pay for the current pensioner generation. Also, there are decent public social security networks (unemployment insurance, health insurance, assistance for the poor), and universities are government-funded which means that (UK excepted) tuitions are either not existing or extremely low if you are a citizen of an EU country.
In the US in contrast, people are supposed to save on the capital markets for their retirement via 401k and the likes, for their kids' education (529 plans) and for their medical needs (MSA). That money is parked for extremely long time and available to prop up the economy - and in times of extremely low interest rates, that money is available to fund even the most dumbass ideas (remember Yo?), stuff that eventually destroys societal foundations (not just "social" networks, but also Walmart/Amazon who kill off retail and other "gig economy" companies) or for predatory lending (the money backing student loans, paycheck loans and five-digit credit card limits has to come from somewhere!).
The downside of this: the US economy is massively dependent on "the stonks go up and up", which means that times of crisis hit the US population extremely hard as both 2008ff and corona showed, with dozens of millions losing their jobs and homes or depending on food banks over the course of maybe a month; Europe meanwhile weathered the crisis way better on these metrics.
> the world's biggest free trade zone became the world's biggest regulatory-stagnation, high-tax, welfare-state disincentive zone
LOL What? At least our people don't suffer for over half a decade from lead in water pipes (Flint), week-long power cuts due to natural disasters or shoddy maintenance (California fires, Texas snow desaster), our consumers aren't ripped off for internet and cable TV, full-time employees generally aren't depending on food banks/food stamps to survive while their employer's owners rake in billions... regulation is a good thing because usually the only ones profiting off of de-regulation are the 0.01% elites while everyone else and nature pays the price.
What’s the reason for this deficit? Why aren’t there any Silicon Valleys in the EU?
Salary difference is so large, I would never move. Land is dirt cheap, housing is affordable and private healthcare is fine in the US.
Before we get in a war on HN - I would move instantly if the salary is matched or even better than US since everything else is scarce in EU (housing, land). Yep, here comes the downvotes.
I think that EU tech hubs focus on some ~~bullshit~~ not shiny industries like banking/financials, insurance and generally those very mature.
Decades of "infrastructure and community" is not easily copied else where and is a real advantage for the US. Europe had lot's of "Facebooks" but non grew out of the local market to be able to gain a global advantage.
Silicon valley is not easily reproduced elsewhere in the US either.
And it's not bigger because there are trade barriers between countries, for services. It's far from trivial for a UK company to sell stuff in the US.
I imagine the timezone difference also doesn't help.
If a company headquartered in the UK wants to sell to the US they need to deal with a whole new set of regulations, bureacracy, marketing etc.
In the meantime, any SV startup can grow in a huge market and only then bother with crossing the ocean.
Of course that is only half the equation -- better and cheaper labour (than in Berlin or Paris, say) brings you halfway there, but the language barrier for customers in the EU as well as regulatory hurdles still make massively harder to scale to the whole of the EU than to the whole of the US.
Germany - senior software engineer - 45k eur.
US - senior software engineer - 240k usd.
Do you or the average engineer, over the course of their lifetime, save or spend around 190k usd a year on healthcare?
That's utter nonsense.
45K € is the salary of a junior software dev right out of university.
It's still a big difference to US salaries but let's not get carried away here with lowballing the EU salaries.
Update: this post [0] mentions $110K for the US average, $60K for Germany (and $95K for Switzerland, $72K for Denmark).
[0] https://www.daxx.com/blog/development-trends/it-salaries-sof...
> The average salary for a Software Engineer is $110125 per year in United States
A US senior software engineer making that much would live in a major tech center and would probably work for a very good company, so a lot of people are excluded because of location and others just because of selection. It's hard to say, but I can't imagine more than 30-50% of US senior software engineer making that much.
And for Germany, the salary for a senior software engineer is not that low :-)) A senior software engineer in Romania or Ukraine would be making that much (while living in less developed countries with much lower cost of living). The only way their salary would be so low in Germany would be if they would be working for a crap company in a small city.
So you're not comparing apples to apples.
However the general point can be right as I'd say that the correct number for the us would be more around $150k and the correct number for Germany would be around $90k. So you'd still have a $60k gap.
Well, in Germany, a software engineer making that much simply does not exist..
So, the difference between the two countries is about ~20-25% on a cost-to-company basis (which is what employers care about). That can be easily justified by a better talent pool (attracted by the higher salaries), economies of scale in training, managing, etc. Not a massive deal. Also, helps a lot when you are a FAANG, literally the most profitable companies in the history of humanity (i.e. under-regulated as hell).
Source: software employer (not FAANG) in both the US/EU.
You mean, in a rural town of the former DDR right?
I think 45k is for a junior dev (or some immigrant experienced dev who didn't negotiate due to lack of knowledge on local market + employee taking advantage of that), but 3-4x that is an exaggeration.
Because I'd say that 3750 EUR per month gross is way too low for a Czech senior dev, and 3750 EUR net would be an okay-ish compensation for an experienced developer in Prague or Brno.
Here is a study of 3600 anwsers: https://www.silkhom.com/barometre-des-salaires-2019-combien-...
There are many other studies like these every year in France, for many different positions in tech.
Here is a TLDR. A junior dev (0-2 years of experience): - Paris: 35-45k€ - Big cities: 35-40k€ - Outside of big cities: 32-38k€
A confirmed dev (3-5 years of experience): - Paris: 45-60k€ - Big cities: 40-46k€ - Outside of big cities: 38-45k€
Senior (5 years+): - Paris: 55k+€ - Big cities: 45-55k€ - Outside big cities: 45-50k€
Note that these salaries are "brut", meaning there are 23% of various taxes (income tax not included), unemployment taxes, social security, retirement etc.
On top of that, France as one of the highest income tax rate in the world.
If you look at say here in the UK salaries in software overall are lower than in the USA sure, but a senior dev in the finance industry in London can be very competitively compensated. Industrial sector and location make a huge difference.
Finally, this all has very little to do with the E.U. or even with overall GDP growth between here and the USA. There are deep historical reasons why the tech sector particularly is concentrated in the USA. For comparison consider the prominence of the finance industry in London compared to the wider Europe, or why the car industry is concentrated in Germany. There are deep historical reasons for those too, you won't find the answers in broad economic policy in the last few decades.
It's obviously fine for those who have it or can afford it. The argument is not about whether or not Silicon Valley software engineers can live with private healthcare. The argument that we here in Europe tend to make is that every inhabitant of a country is entitled to that excellent healthcare, nomatter who they are.
This isn't always true..
In some of these free healthcare countries you can be SOL if you get cancer or a rare condition and don't have money for the latest treatments. Here in New Zealand the wait times are so long that a lot of people just pay for private surgery/screening. My father for example was out of work for almost a year waiting for a hip operation, he irrationally thought he was getting a good deal having it publicly funded.
And if you can't afford that plan?
If you haven't got the money you won't be able afford those treatments in the US either and the insurance companies have caps on how much they will pay.
So for some rare cases European national health services are not better than the US.
Translates if you want to have cutting edge treatments that haven't gone through medical processes to see if they're safe. Or if the chances of the treatment working is too low.
That is indeed a problem. How does giving up and saying "the rich or well-insured can get these things, the poor not" help in any way shape or form?
I lived in 2 European countries with amazing healthcare systems available for free or almost free but had either: amazingly long waiting times (measured in years) for anything but the most basic interventions OR an amazingly difficult process to get referred by your GP into any specialist care (GP generally recommends paracetamol and rest for everything).
So while the US has an overall broken system, as a highly-paid engineer with private employer-sponsored health insurance in the US you might be more likely to access the high quality healthcare you need.
In Europe you can still pay for private treatment, if you're highly paid you can still get that fast treatment. It's just by default you don't need to worry about it. The wait times only affect those who can't or don't want to pay. That is a choice they make.
Can you share specifics backing up your point please?
https://www.cursor.tue.nl/en/news/2016/januari/take-a-parace...
Which countries would those be?
I imagine misuse of easily available medication is pretty universal.
I know this is not everyone's experience, just comparing the choices of Sw Engs.
Do you have some examples? Since the vast majority of HN people (myself included) aren't medically trained, it might be very unclear what kind of interventions you're thinking about.
For example, I would hazard a guess that something that is mostly cosmetic could be considered "basic" – but my experience is that such a thing is given a low priority (rightfully so, IMHO). Yet there's lots of urgent and non-"basic" cancer interventions that happen quickly. So I'm a bit puzzled.
I now live in a region where there aren't really public doctors and people demand more The consequence is that doctors almost always prescribe a bag of various antibiotics and other pills to counter the side effects just to make patients feel like they got their moneys worth.
I think I should point out that it seems like very few can afford it. This just what I seen from tv show story lines which are designed to reflect what people experience, stories on reddit/twitter, and the fact gofundme is such a large thing. Even if people have health insurance of some kind they often have deductiables that means they still need to pay for any treatment they have even if it's only a percentage, treatments can only be approved by the insurer for certain things at certain times - a company decides and not the doctor, health insurance only covers for certain things, emergencies can ruin a family, medical bankruptancy is a thing, etc.
They literally created a tv show based on the idea that a teacher with cancer needed to start selling drugs to afford it.
I'm pretty sure those with health insurance in the US pay more for theirs than I do (I live in Germany and health insurance is a legal requirement and the amount they can charge is legally limited). Yet they get less than what I do. I can just turn up at hospital and not worry about how much it's going to cost. I don't even pay attention to how much I pay for insurance and neither does anyone else I know. We just consider it another tax.
If you read the complaints from software engineers living in the Bay area, they will tell you that housing isn't affordable. You have well paid people with roommates. The affordable housing isn't in the same areas as the jobs (for the most parts).
Honestly the startups could move much of their development to eastern Europe and pay half the salary, while still getting some of the best developers in the world.
If you have good public transportation (as in: you can get around faster in a bus than using Uber), good and cheap healthcare, and free public education, you just don’t need as much money to get a better lifestyle.
Also: “fine” is a good description of the US healthcare. I experienced both US and European healthcare systems and it’s amazing how much worse is one from another. Even if money is not much of an issue.
Salaries for software engineers in Europe are high, extremely high compared to the general population in terms of standard deviations.
The difference is that salaries in the US are more or less uncapped, that benefits a lot us, software engineers, but not society. For society my work as a SWE isn't worth 3x of a nurse, even though economically it makes sense as I bring 5-10x profits to the company I work for as a SWE, just due to the leverage I can be used as to produce value in monetary terms.
If the only thing you care about is the figure in your bank account, for all means the US is the best place on Earth for you to try your luck. For people like me, who want to live a happy and comfortable life instead of grinding and living with the stress of all insecurities caused by the US approach to society... It's not a pretty game to live in that kind of society.
I posted not long ago the same type of comment, I have a personal anecdote as I moved from a country that is very Americanised (Brazil) to Sweden, the American philosophy of life (individualistic, "got mine, fuck you") only works in the US, with lavish sums of cash flowing around so some of it can drip into normal society. Living in a completely different environment only showed me how sick this kind of living is, how unhappy it makes the average Joe.
Good luck as a SWE in the US, it's a cushy place to be. Personally I still prefer to take-home 1/3 of what I could manage in the US but have a much more stable and comfortable life, because the rest of society here also enjoy a stable and comfortable life together with me.
1. We have a much more chill working situation. You work a regular work day, you're not the property of the company you work at, you do not have non-compete clauses (the company would have to pay your salary in full as long as it was valid), a lot of things that in the US come from post-tax salary is handled by the tax (education for you and your kids, healthcare, etc.)
2. Trying your luck as entrepreneur is easier and much lower risk than in the US. It's also quite easy to get "free" entrepreneurial government grants of small to medium sizes. As a result, there tends to be more, smaller startups, and bootstrapping is popular. When VCs aren't involved, salaries tend to be less astronomical.
3. Software engineer salaries in the US are blown completely out of proportions, and too market-distorting to be goal to have.
Just moving to where the salary is highest with no other consideration for anything else sounds... Short-sighted, narrow-minded and greedy (but not in a smart way).
It's not like the EU wants you to move here, in the first place...
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=2Xa
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...