The salary is less than U.S. but their actual take home pay may be more.
The salary is less than U.S. but their actual take home pay may be more.
A comment earlier said that the average senior software engineer salary at a large UK firm was 62k pounds per year. Even adjusting for PPP that’s about half of what a senior swe in a MCOL city in America can expect to make.
Also, contrary to popular belief, we have health insurance in America, with max deductibles. As in, after a certain amount (usually in the 4 digits), all healthcare costs are covered by insurance
To me, that is worth the taxation even I myself (probably) will never have to use most of the safety net.
Simply not true. For example, I have a high deductible plan. I pay no premiums, and my max out of pocket is around $5-6K/year.
So that's the max I'd pay per year for medical expenses for the whole family. Throw in a few more thousand for transportation related expenses. Probably shouldn't even do that as the cost to own a car is generally cheaper in the US than Europe (cars are cheaper, and auto related taxes are lower).
What else?
I moved from the UK to US a decade ago. Software engineer salaries in the UK are on the 75th percentile of earnings vs the 90th percentile in the US. The US also has higher variance of income, so at the 90th percentile one would earn 2.6x the median salary vs 2.0x in the UK. If you are a highly paid professional the US is a pretty good place to be.
The downside is of course you live in a much more unequal place with all the societal problems that implies. After having a kid we're thinking of moving back to Europe, though whether we can find jobs and visas in the places we'd like to live is an open question. It's a lot more complicated having lost my EU citizenship post Brexit.
Eastern europe is doing pretty good though. Salaries are very close to western part, but cost of living is waaaay lower.
At least in Germany we do have more paid time off though, but I don't think that's enough to offset the salary gap with the US