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When my father goes to Detroit for business trips is always astonished by the amount of money his collegues get paid. He works on engineering processes and tool

When my father goes to Detroit for business trips is always astonished by the amount of money his collegues get paid. He works on engineering processes and tooling in a robotics company and makes about 30K €/year here in Italy, while his american collegues make 120K $/year. I think there is a great chance for businesses to save a lot of money by hiring personnel outside of the U.S.

xivzgrev 7y ago
And is he equally astonished by the cost of living / housing? Maybe not Detroit but certainly other major metro areas. The “profit” from employee perspective is probably similar
- balfirevic 7y ago
  You are always better off (economically speaking) in a higher cost-of-living area with proportionally higher salary.
  - stbtrax 7y ago
    There are other externalities to this. Tax incentives are better if you can buy vs rent, which is harder in high COL. Also from personal experience, you get to live in more vibrant and diverse neighborhoods as opposed to more homogenous ones that price out others. If you have children that go into non-lucrative fields (ex: teaching), they will not be able to live by you without your financial support.
    - balfirevic 7y ago
      Are you talking about high vs. low COL area in US? It sounds like you are (because none of what you said seems to be true where I live), but I wanted to point it out since this whole subthread started with the mention of Italy.
    - novok 7y ago
      On the other hand, if your kids go into fields where the pay is unequal across the country, they are less likely to stay in your small town of 100k and move to somewhere else with more economic or artistic opportunity. And by being in small town, it's a lot more time and money for them to fly to see you, so they will see you less. Ex: I can fly across the ocean for the same price it is to fly 2 hours direct equivalent / 4 hours connecting to see my family in their relatively small town.

xivzgrev 7y ago

And is he equally astonished by the cost of living / housing? Maybe not Detroit but certainly other major metro areas. The “profit” from employee perspective is probably similar

balfirevic 7y ago
You are always better off (economically speaking) in a higher cost-of-living area with proportionally higher salary.
- stbtrax 7y ago
  There are other externalities to this. Tax incentives are better if you can buy vs rent, which is harder in high COL. Also from personal experience, you get to live in more vibrant and diverse neighborhoods as opposed to more homogenous ones that price out others. If you have children that go into non-lucrative fields (ex: teaching), they will not be able to live by you without your financial support.
  - balfirevic 7y ago
    Are you talking about high vs. low COL area in US? It sounds like you are (because none of what you said seems to be true where I live), but I wanted to point it out since this whole subthread started with the mention of Italy.
  - novok 7y ago
    On the other hand, if your kids go into fields where the pay is unequal across the country, they are less likely to stay in your small town of 100k and move to somewhere else with more economic or artistic opportunity. And by being in small town, it's a lot more time and money for them to fly to see you, so they will see you less. Ex: I can fly across the ocean for the same price it is to fly 2 hours direct equivalent / 4 hours connecting to see my family in their relatively small town.