The original comment by jernfrost is much closer to the actual numbers than your followup comment. You wrote: "I don't know what Danish fast food employees and

The original comment by jernfrost is much closer to the actual numbers than your followup comment. You wrote: "I don't know what Danish fast food employees and store clerks earn, but I doubt they make more than software developers ($45,000/year is about $22/hour)," McDonald's in Denmark pays about $20/hour. Quoting http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/business/international/living-wages-served-in-denmark-fast-food-restaurants.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/business/international/liv... : > ... he earns the equivalent of $20 an hour — the base wage for fast-food workers throughout Denmark and two and a half times what many fast-food workers earn in the United States. ... a study from the University of California, Berkeley found. American fast-food workers earn an average of $8.90 an hour. You also wrote: "I've occasionally researched positions in Europe, and while I haven't looked at Denmark specifically, mid/senior-level software developer salaries tend to be around $45,000/year (or even less)," http://www.payscale.com/research/DK/Job=Software_Developer/Salary http://www.payscale.com/research/DK/Job=Software_Developer/S... says "A Software Developer [in Denmark] earns an average salary of $66,385 per year. Most people with this job move on to other positions after 20 years in this field." http://www.daxx.com/article/it-salaries-software-developer-trends-2015 http://www.daxx.com/article/it-salaries-software-developer-t... says: "Quite predictably, the US and the EU are the areas where software developers earn a lot. The highest paying country is Switzerland, with an average annual software developer salary reaching $104,200. Switzerland is followed by Norway with programmer’s wages of $81,400 per year, the United States with $76,000, Denmark with $71,500, and Israel with an average of $70,700 per year." P.S. You also wrote "the only Americans working in Europe are rich expats". Just how many Americans do you know in Europe? Because the ones I know (I am a US citizen who lives in Sweden) are not rich. (FWIW, I prefer the term "immigrant", not "expat.")