6 ms·

It includes people from all over the world. US skilled salaries are usually 2x+ (not just for tech, but also things like healthcare) salaries in Europe. Remembe

It includes people from all over the world. US skilled salaries are usually 2x+ (not just for tech, but also things like healthcare) salaries in Europe. Remember they have social safety nets and lower costs for things like education and healthcare, we do not. Also this list has a very small sample size, and very few people from big tech, otherwise the pay would skew significantly higher.

quelltext 7y ago
Uhm, safety nets etc. do not really offset this. That's because Europe also has higher taxes though/autodeductions. When someone in Germany casually says 50k per year pre tax, they typically mean pre deductions (tax and social/health insurance) and the effective received money is more around 25k per year. People in the US underestimate how much of ones salary a European has to give up for that safety net.
- DasIch 7y ago
  50k per year pre tax in Germany, would end up being 30k after taxes. If you're married, you'd get substantial tax benefits and there are also benefits, if you have children.
  - eecc 7y ago
    Well those benefits still go towards payments you have to do anyway and it’s never 100%... (eg in NL you’d pay ~1k/month in childcare, and get back ~800. You’re still down ~2.5k/year)
    - DasIch 7y ago
      In Germany childcare costs vary a lot and depend on your income, so it's hard to say what somebody would pay for that. However you'd definitely pay less than 400/month. If you're paying more than 200/month, you got quite unlucky. In some places, such as Berlin, childcare is free.
      - eecc 7y ago
        Yup, Germany is surprisingly more generous than NL. But here the Liberals have been working hard to prevent a “Scandinavian socialist hellhole”... ;)
- komali2 7y ago
  If we're going to calculate like that I think it's only fair to calculate in the average American's medical cost including insurance premiums which can put quite the dent in effective take home pay.
  - K0SM0S 7y ago
    Everytime I look at it, the US in PPP per capita¹ is ~10th worldwide, ranking behind places like Luxembourg, Norway, Switzerland. But well above the bulk of Europe including France, Germany. The problem when comparing is that the structure of a city-state like Luxembourg or Singapore has nothing to do with big countries; and even France or Germany are like 1/5th of the US in population, much less in area, so you can't compare much, certainly not the homogeneity. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
  - topkai22 7y ago
    Roughly $5k/year out of pocket, with employers posting $17k for full family coverage for very good insurance (as it goes in the US). Health care costs in the us are the most burdensome on the working poor and lower middle class because they stay a fixed cost even as income rises. For well paid tech workers, moving to the US and going from $75k to $105k/ year (the median for the US BTW) is probably going to be a good move economically. A roofer moving for a $30k to $40k bump is a much dodgier proposition. An aside, I saw a great analysis a few years back looking at the increasing income gap in the US. It determined that a large part of the gap can be laid at the feet of rising health care benefits to employers. The math is simple and interesting. In 1990 worker A costs an employer $10k ($8k in pay and $2k in benefits) and worker B costs $100k ($98k in pay, $2k in benefits). In 2020 worker A costs $25k, but a whopping $10k now goes to health insurance, meaning thier pay is only $15k and saw an 87% increase even though the employer saw a 250% increase in cost. Worker B? They got went from $100k to $250 in total cost, but saw thier pay go from $98k to $290k, or a 244% increase. The highly paid worker saw a 3x more percentage increase compared to the low paid worker, even though their cost to the employer increased by the same percentage.
    - 7y ago
adventured 7y ago
The lower cost for healthcare gap is about $5,000 to $6,000 per person in other developed nations vs the US. It doesn't come close to offsetting the far higher US skilled salaries figures compared to Europe. When US university costs were far lower circa year 2000, that also didn't imply a narrower gap with Europe on skilled salaries. University costs are a phenomenon caused by the US Government destructively backing ever higher education loan increases, causing a spiral of fees by universities. It wasn't caused by higher US wages (which have existed for a very long time). That is better explained by a simple fact: the US has far higher economic output per capita than Europe. Before this decade is out, the US will double the GDP per capita of France, Japan, UK. Unless they all snap out of stagnation soon. It's not that the US is growing super fast, it's that most developed countries haven't been growing much at all for the last ~12-13 years.
- mk89 7y ago
  Unfortunately in Europe we tend to be brainwashed about the health insurance, as if this was taking half your salary. Thanks a lot for clarifying this, I hope that people start to understand that the salaries for highly skilled people in Europe are just ridiculous.
  - karatestomp 7y ago
    Health insurance may not be so bad for a $300K+ SV software engineer, but it's terrible for just about everyone else. My wife's a teacher and for a while we had to use her health insurance, which meant getting the "family plan" option through her school district. The cost of that? Half her take-home pay. And it's not even a very good plan (i.e. we were still exposed to a lot of risk, we had a couple medical things come up in the same span of time and were out several thousand more dollars for those). Now, sure, I make way more money than her so we were fine, but her single-parenting colleagues? The couples in which both are teachers? They're not so lucky. And more jobs pay way closer to a teacher's salary, and may have even worse health benefits, than pay anything like SV software developer money. Half may be an exaggeration, but for normal people losing 15-30% of their post-tax income to healthcare is probably about right. And of course we're already paying Medicare & Medicaid taxes on top of that.
cdoxsey 7y ago
The US has social safety nets. Nearly half the federal budget is spent on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And there are numerous other programs: unemployment, housing assistance, snap, etc. There are also state and local programs as well as private charities.
- uncletaco 7y ago
  Social security and Medicare are both social safety nets that one cannot take advantage of while they're working in most cases, and everything else you've mentioned either requires a person to be in extreme poverty or severely disabled. Meanwhile a healthy, young, gainfully employed person in France can take advantage of a wealth of social services and benefits. Mentioning them the way you have requires a very uncharitable interpretation of the previous posters point.
  - nsxwolf 7y ago
    The American system sounds like what something called a “safety net” should provide. Why would someone actually need to use a safety net while they are healthy, young, and gainfully employed?
    - grumple 7y ago
      I should have said "socialized services" in my original post. Sorry, I've been brainwashed by years of American right-wing owned media to call it a safety net.
  - RestlessMind 7y ago
    > Meanwhile a healthy, young, gainfully employed person in France can take advantage of a wealth of social services and benefits. If they have such an amazing welfare system, then why are the French perennially rioting[1]? And why do so many recent French presidents have abysmal approval ratings[2]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unrest_in_France#21st_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unr... [2] Macron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_the_Emmanuel_Macron_presidency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_the_Emmanue... Hollande: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Hollande#Approval_ratings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Hollande#Approva... Sarkozy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Nicolas_Sarkozy#Opinion_polling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Nicolas_Sarkozy#...

quelltext 7y ago

Uhm, safety nets etc. do not really offset this. That's because Europe also has higher taxes though/autodeductions. When someone in Germany casually says 50k per year pre tax, they typically mean pre deductions (tax and social/health insurance) and the effective received money is more around 25k per year. People in the US underestimate how much of ones salary a European has to give up for that safety net.

DasIch 7y ago
50k per year pre tax in Germany, would end up being 30k after taxes. If you're married, you'd get substantial tax benefits and there are also benefits, if you have children.
- eecc 7y ago
  Well those benefits still go towards payments you have to do anyway and it’s never 100%... (eg in NL you’d pay ~1k/month in childcare, and get back ~800. You’re still down ~2.5k/year)
  - DasIch 7y ago
    In Germany childcare costs vary a lot and depend on your income, so it's hard to say what somebody would pay for that. However you'd definitely pay less than 400/month. If you're paying more than 200/month, you got quite unlucky. In some places, such as Berlin, childcare is free.
    - eecc 7y ago
      Yup, Germany is surprisingly more generous than NL. But here the Liberals have been working hard to prevent a “Scandinavian socialist hellhole”... ;)
komali2 7y ago
If we're going to calculate like that I think it's only fair to calculate in the average American's medical cost including insurance premiums which can put quite the dent in effective take home pay.
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  Everytime I look at it, the US in PPP per capita¹ is ~10th worldwide, ranking behind places like Luxembourg, Norway, Switzerland. But well above the bulk of Europe including France, Germany. The problem when comparing is that the structure of a city-state like Luxembourg or Singapore has nothing to do with big countries; and even France or Germany are like 1/5th of the US in population, much less in area, so you can't compare much, certainly not the homogeneity. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
- topkai22 7y ago
  Roughly $5k/year out of pocket, with employers posting $17k for full family coverage for very good insurance (as it goes in the US). Health care costs in the us are the most burdensome on the working poor and lower middle class because they stay a fixed cost even as income rises. For well paid tech workers, moving to the US and going from $75k to $105k/ year (the median for the US BTW) is probably going to be a good move economically. A roofer moving for a $30k to $40k bump is a much dodgier proposition. An aside, I saw a great analysis a few years back looking at the increasing income gap in the US. It determined that a large part of the gap can be laid at the feet of rising health care benefits to employers. The math is simple and interesting. In 1990 worker A costs an employer $10k ($8k in pay and $2k in benefits) and worker B costs $100k ($98k in pay, $2k in benefits). In 2020 worker A costs $25k, but a whopping $10k now goes to health insurance, meaning thier pay is only $15k and saw an 87% increase even though the employer saw a 250% increase in cost. Worker B? They got went from $100k to $250 in total cost, but saw thier pay go from $98k to $290k, or a 244% increase. The highly paid worker saw a 3x more percentage increase compared to the low paid worker, even though their cost to the employer increased by the same percentage.
  - 7y ago

adventured 7y ago

The lower cost for healthcare gap is about $5,000 to $6,000 per person in other developed nations vs the US. It doesn't come close to offsetting the far higher US skilled salaries figures compared to Europe. When US university costs were far lower circa year 2000, that also didn't imply a narrower gap with Europe on skilled salaries. University costs are a phenomenon caused by the US Government destructively backing ever higher education loan increases, causing a spiral of fees by universities. It wasn't caused by higher US wages (which have existed for a very long time). That is better explained by a simple fact: the US has far higher economic output per capita than Europe. Before this decade is out, the US will double the GDP per capita of France, Japan, UK. Unless they all snap out of stagnation soon. It's not that the US is growing super fast, it's that most developed countries haven't been growing much at all for the last ~12-13 years.

mk89 7y ago
Unfortunately in Europe we tend to be brainwashed about the health insurance, as if this was taking half your salary. Thanks a lot for clarifying this, I hope that people start to understand that the salaries for highly skilled people in Europe are just ridiculous.
- karatestomp 7y ago
  Health insurance may not be so bad for a $300K+ SV software engineer, but it's terrible for just about everyone else. My wife's a teacher and for a while we had to use her health insurance, which meant getting the "family plan" option through her school district. The cost of that? Half her take-home pay. And it's not even a very good plan (i.e. we were still exposed to a lot of risk, we had a couple medical things come up in the same span of time and were out several thousand more dollars for those). Now, sure, I make way more money than her so we were fine, but her single-parenting colleagues? The couples in which both are teachers? They're not so lucky. And more jobs pay way closer to a teacher's salary, and may have even worse health benefits, than pay anything like SV software developer money. Half may be an exaggeration, but for normal people losing 15-30% of their post-tax income to healthcare is probably about right. And of course we're already paying Medicare & Medicaid taxes on top of that.

cdoxsey 7y ago

The US has social safety nets. Nearly half the federal budget is spent on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And there are numerous other programs: unemployment, housing assistance, snap, etc. There are also state and local programs as well as private charities.

uncletaco 7y ago
Social security and Medicare are both social safety nets that one cannot take advantage of while they're working in most cases, and everything else you've mentioned either requires a person to be in extreme poverty or severely disabled. Meanwhile a healthy, young, gainfully employed person in France can take advantage of a wealth of social services and benefits. Mentioning them the way you have requires a very uncharitable interpretation of the previous posters point.
- nsxwolf 7y ago
  The American system sounds like what something called a “safety net” should provide. Why would someone actually need to use a safety net while they are healthy, young, and gainfully employed?
  - grumple 7y ago
    I should have said "socialized services" in my original post. Sorry, I've been brainwashed by years of American right-wing owned media to call it a safety net.
- RestlessMind 7y ago
  > Meanwhile a healthy, young, gainfully employed person in France can take advantage of a wealth of social services and benefits. If they have such an amazing welfare system, then why are the French perennially rioting[1]? And why do so many recent French presidents have abysmal approval ratings[2]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unrest_in_France#21st_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unr... [2] Macron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_the_Emmanuel_Macron_presidency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_the_Emmanue... Hollande: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Hollande#Approval_ratings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Hollande#Approva... Sarkozy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Nicolas_Sarkozy#Opinion_polling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Nicolas_Sarkozy#...