Honestly our insane taxation is holding us back. My salary is embarassing, but it's not even the company's fault, I'm costing my company ~2.5x what I make. The job market is perma-bearish and has been so since before I was even born.
Setting up shop or working as a freelancer just pays so much better.
Economists would argue that it's a mixture of things: high taxes, low productivity, broken justice system, slow and intricate bureaucracy that does not really work, etc.
I bet that if Italy's economy would be based on high value-added industries (like France and Germany), less people would complain about high taxes.
You have high taxes, slow and intricate bureaucracy (it took more than 3 months to complete the house purchase process in Germany whereas in Italy is far faster), low productivity, tax evasion, etc etc but somewhat Germany works slightly better than Italy that generates far better results in the end.
you're bot not mentioning irregular work and tax evasions. that and the fact that some regions produce a net positive in terms of per-capita gdp while other produce a net negative (a significant net negative).
All of those things are absolutely true. I mentioned taxes because taxation at 46% of the GDP (pre-covid) is just ridicolous.
But quality of life… oh man quality of life. Or education, I don’t want my kids to deal with education here.
But y’all are lovely.
There are plenty of things to like about the EU but let's not kid ourselves, America is pretty nice if your goal is to be wealthy (and most people want that, even if they won't admit it).
The Americans the EU would be best for are, for the most part, the ones who can't get a visa.
Of course I expect a different opinion from the top 3% income tech bro libertarian bent of the HN user base. But I haven’t seen a compelling reason here to think life for the average American is better than it is for someone in the EU.
For high earners the EU comes with a jaw-dropping price tag. The effective tax rate on a 200k income in Finland is over 50% for instance. In the US even the _marginal_ tax rate is nowhere near that.
And I was surprised to see that on average I pay almost a net month of salary. ( I pay 10k in 2021 so far, I will get a small return )
While in France, I was paying a month of my salary as well. ( roughly 3k / year )
Listening to French media, I thought I was moving to a tax heaven while going here. Meh. I kinda pay the same thing.
Except I don’t get any benefit and half my salary needs to be stashed away to important, non négociable futur use. ( while that part is done for me in France automatically though socialized taxes )
I understand why you guy don’t like taxes thought : you really don’t get much back.
For 200k (euros), that's $250k or so which is 35% federal (single filer), 9.3% California for 44.3%. (Which I would argue isn't that far off).
It would probably be more useful to compare effective tax rates and what you get for them. In the US, Social Security applies to the first $147k now (so on $250k that's 3.6% effective), but you also get a small retirement income. In Finland, I assume people get services in exchange for those taxes that you might be paying for in the US (e.g., healthcare, childcare, education, and retirement income), so you can't just compare using "what are relative tax rates like?" as a question.
tl;dr: taxes and services are nuanced!
But a very large chuck of the difference are “cotisations” a word that does not exists in English and is often inaccurately translated to “taxes”.
Those cotisations is money I will get back once old, sick, or un-employed. It can’t be spend on buying new fighter jet or fixing the roads.
Specially in a context where one side of the political spectrum is constantly pushing to reduce the tax burden. Cotisations can be set aside in that discussion ( because, they are not taxes, you are guaranteed to see the money back in a specific and personal way )
Another difference is that French folks rely and plan to use the equivalent of Medicaid more. Here; my understanding is that it’s a nice bonus. ( I might be wrong )
Anyway, I like the EU, but it still is a harder place to build wealth on the whole. Where I am you pay tax on _unrealized_ gains in ETF's (called deemed disposal), CGT is high (33%), and you get much less advantage saving for retirement than in the US.
On the other hand, if I lose my job, unemployment benefits more than cover our monthly expenses if we pare back a bit. Our overhead is low.
If it tells you anything I went back to California to start a company. Then, after someone drove a car in to my wife and the cop lied about her statement and she was lucky not to get a huge bill (it was the first few months of Obamacare before the horrific deductibles came in), AND she took her 1 week of vacation and that was it for the year, we decided to hell with that and moved back to the EU.
At a million dollars of salary, that is not going to make a difference to anyone, especially because most of the $30k premiums will be paid by employer, so you are left spending $20k out of pocket maximum including your portion of the premiums.
I would just add $15k for a single person / $30k for a family to tax expenses to compare relative taxes for an employer person in US vs EU.
That's not horrifically abnormal. A 2x multiplier on salary is considered standard in the US for the cost to an employer. If you make 20% less than a US counterpart, the company is breaking even.