The truth is the pay is higher in the US and is not particularly close. It's funny trying to see Europeans argue places like London, Zurich, or Amsterdam are "low cost" compared to US cities to try justify the difference
Now, you can get a lot more for your money outside of San Francisco while staying in the US, but that applies to European cities as well.
Don't get me wrong – US pay still outweighs these lower costs as a young engineer without children. If you're planning on starting a family, things get a little muddier. Having a child is free in Sweden, whereas it ranges from thousands to tens of thousands in San Francisco. Childcare in Sweden is progressively prized and never goes above ~$100/month, while it ranges from thousands of dollars a month in San Francisco, to hundreds in other parts of the US. School? Yup, that one's free too – college and the works. Got elderly parents? Elderly care is also subsidized to ~$300 a month (although private alternatives do exist).
However, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and these things do need to be paid for. This is done by many different taxes. Working as a contractor, you become painfully aware of a few of these – I've contracted for an American company while based in Sweden, at American rates, and I still end up with way less than I did working in the US.
First off you have your payroll tax at ~31%. Normally this cost is quietly absorbed by the employer, so from the get-go almost a third of your salary is gone without you knowing it. After that point, you have a progressive income tax that can go as high as 60% – which is what employees see on their pay stubs.
So they're just different models. The European model largely optimizes for a high common denominator, whereas the US model seems to optimize for extremes.
Both my mother and uncle have had hip replacements. Mother waited 6 months. My uncle was wait-listed for years before going private.
Walk in centres appear to be universally bad everywhere. Canada's are meccas in comparison.
i.e. not very much. Like on £100,000, top 1%, you pay £5,879 in NI
The state pensions is higher than that per year. Plus free health care.
So how you feel you're paying 'a lot' when you can get full treatment for cancer, for free, boggles my mind.
> without realizing that high paid workers in the US are well taken care of in this regard.
Do these benefits go on if you quit your job? As in can you quit your job and get paid a little less for a while you search for a new one? If you only work a few years in a high paying job the rest in other industries, can you still expect a pension that pays enough money for your last 20-40 years of life? Can you afford proper health care you got in your great job in case you can't work in it anymore for whatever reason?
A lot of Americans will jump into this conversation without realising homelessness rate is 10s times higher in US and EU country with lowest literacy has higher literacy than highest literate state in US
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/paris-author...
I’m glad that these sort of protections apply to more people in Europe, too, rather than just some small privileged set of highly-paid employees.
Also, the Canadian healthcare is not exactly stellar. For some reason, dental care in Canada is "only cosmetic" and not covered by insurance.
This is the case in at least some western european countries as well - for example, dental is not included in Sweden (except for children, which get this coverage for free).
But most of my friends (non-IT) didn't have any such employer coverage.