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Germany's average tax rate (according to the OECD) for a one-earner married couple with two children is 34.3%, while the same in the US is 18.8%. Taking these,

Germany's average tax rate (according to the OECD) for a one-earner married couple with two children is 34.3%, while the same in the US is 18.8%. Taking these, the difference for your $100k/year example would be about 15k. You'd have about 80k in the US, and about 65k in Berlin. Now to compare cost of living - let's say you wanted to compare Berlin vs SF, for similarly ridiculous housing markets. A quick search[0] suggests that living in Berlin costs nearly half as much - Berlin's $65k is more like a San Francisco $130k. Now the downside is that you're not actually going to get paid as much in Berlin - maybe $68k as a senior software developer, as opposed to $135k-ish in SF. Plugging these numbers into a couple of actual quick tax calculators rather than using the averages, the Berliner makes about $41k, while the worker in San Francisco makes about $87k - although these are both without going through an accountant to massage the numbers. After our magic divider, that's a difference of about $2.5k. Perhaps the US allows an accountant to massage the numbers more than Germany, but honestly, as someone currently in Germany, that doesn't pass the smell test. So all in all, you wind up with $2.5k a year over the Berliner with which to cover everything that Germany's system does. And this is one of the best case scenarios - a high-salary tech worker with good benefits. For everyone else in the US, their quality of life and access to effective healthcare is likely to be significantly lower. [0] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Germany&city1=Berlin&country2=United+States&city2=San+Francisco%2C+CA https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

rayiner 6y ago
A high-tech worker living in SF is actually not “one of the best case scenarios.” As your calculations show, the insane cost of living blows out the somewhat higher income. In terms of actual prosperity, run the numbers for places like Iowa. Salaries are 1/2 as much in Des Moines than San Francisco, but a house costs about 1/8th as much. And 95% of people have health insurance. There is a reason people are actually flooding out of California and New York. I wonder if the insane costs and dysfunction of coastal cities is one of the driving factors of the differences in politics between those places and the rest of the country. I live in a Trump precinct in a historically red but recently purple county about an hour from DC. Median income in my county is $90,000, and you can buy a family house in a good school district for $300,000. We might feel differently about politics if our incomes were no higher and houses cost $1.3 million and our schools were among the worst in the country. But that’s California’s self-inflicted problem.
- vertex-four 6y ago
  And someone not living in Berlin can live significantly cheaper too - do you want to pick a city similar to Des Moines in Germany? EDIT: I took your number of 1/2 as truth, went through the numbers, and... our worker in Des Moines makes about 5k a year more than the one in Berlin. It'd still take 12 years to pay off the person above's unexpected medical expenses. Then, after running the numbers for a high-tech worker, do you want to run the numbers for your janitor? The definition of "health insurance" in the US is weird - it doesn't actually seem to mean you're going to be able to be able to access either expected or unexpected healthcare needs at a price you can afford.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    > I took your number of 1/2 as truth, went through the numbers, and... our worker in Des Moines makes about 5k a year more than the one in Berlin. It'd still take 12 years to pay off the person above's unexpected medical expenses. That's probably quite accurate. But most people don't have a $60,000 unexpected health expenditure before they're eligible for Medicare at 65. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5865642/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5865642/ > We calculated this estimate as follows: the graph shows that, on average, a hospitalization increases the annual probability of going bankrupt in the following 4 years by 0.004. Multiplying this figure by the annual hospitalization rate of 7.8% for our population (which we calculated using the 1999–2010 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey) reveals that 0.031% (0.004 × 7.8%) of the population goes bankrupt each year as the result of a hospitalization. If you extrapolate this out over the 40-year period covered in the study (it covers people ages 25-65) there is just a 1.2% chance that you'll go bankrupt as a result of medical debt in your working lifetime. In a country of 205 million working-age adults, that amounts to 2-3 million people. That's why you see so many news stories about it. But the odds of it actually happening to you are fairly low. Meanwhile, the higher taxes from universal healthcare are something that affect 100% of people. If you ask people "would you rather make $5,000 more per year, or have a 1.2% chance that sometime in your working life, you'll have to declare bankruptcy due to exorbitant medical bills?" You can't say it's an irrational choice if people choose to have more money in their pocket now. > The definition of "health insurance" in the US is weird - it doesn't actually seem to mean you're going to be able to be able to access either expected or unexpected healthcare needs at a price you can afford. And what are you basing this on? I've got a wife and two kids. We've need to rely on our health insurance for everything from a car accident that almost resulted in a pre-term birth, to child births. The system is chaotic and confusing, but as long as you're on top of the paperwork the coverage is usually very good. According to Gallup polling, people have negative views of the healthcare system as a whole, but most rate their own coverage as good or excellent (69%) and their own healthcare service quality as good or excellent (80%): https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcare-quite-positively.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcar....

rayiner 6y ago

A high-tech worker living in SF is actually not “one of the best case scenarios.” As your calculations show, the insane cost of living blows out the somewhat higher income. In terms of actual prosperity, run the numbers for places like Iowa. Salaries are 1/2 as much in Des Moines than San Francisco, but a house costs about 1/8th as much. And 95% of people have health insurance. There is a reason people are actually flooding out of California and New York. I wonder if the insane costs and dysfunction of coastal cities is one of the driving factors of the differences in politics between those places and the rest of the country. I live in a Trump precinct in a historically red but recently purple county about an hour from DC. Median income in my county is $90,000, and you can buy a family house in a good school district for $300,000. We might feel differently about politics if our incomes were no higher and houses cost $1.3 million and our schools were among the worst in the country. But that’s California’s self-inflicted problem.

vertex-four 6y ago
And someone not living in Berlin can live significantly cheaper too - do you want to pick a city similar to Des Moines in Germany? EDIT: I took your number of 1/2 as truth, went through the numbers, and... our worker in Des Moines makes about 5k a year more than the one in Berlin. It'd still take 12 years to pay off the person above's unexpected medical expenses. Then, after running the numbers for a high-tech worker, do you want to run the numbers for your janitor? The definition of "health insurance" in the US is weird - it doesn't actually seem to mean you're going to be able to be able to access either expected or unexpected healthcare needs at a price you can afford.
- rayiner 6y ago
  > I took your number of 1/2 as truth, went through the numbers, and... our worker in Des Moines makes about 5k a year more than the one in Berlin. It'd still take 12 years to pay off the person above's unexpected medical expenses. That's probably quite accurate. But most people don't have a $60,000 unexpected health expenditure before they're eligible for Medicare at 65. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5865642/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5865642/ > We calculated this estimate as follows: the graph shows that, on average, a hospitalization increases the annual probability of going bankrupt in the following 4 years by 0.004. Multiplying this figure by the annual hospitalization rate of 7.8% for our population (which we calculated using the 1999–2010 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey) reveals that 0.031% (0.004 × 7.8%) of the population goes bankrupt each year as the result of a hospitalization. If you extrapolate this out over the 40-year period covered in the study (it covers people ages 25-65) there is just a 1.2% chance that you'll go bankrupt as a result of medical debt in your working lifetime. In a country of 205 million working-age adults, that amounts to 2-3 million people. That's why you see so many news stories about it. But the odds of it actually happening to you are fairly low. Meanwhile, the higher taxes from universal healthcare are something that affect 100% of people. If you ask people "would you rather make $5,000 more per year, or have a 1.2% chance that sometime in your working life, you'll have to declare bankruptcy due to exorbitant medical bills?" You can't say it's an irrational choice if people choose to have more money in their pocket now. > The definition of "health insurance" in the US is weird - it doesn't actually seem to mean you're going to be able to be able to access either expected or unexpected healthcare needs at a price you can afford. And what are you basing this on? I've got a wife and two kids. We've need to rely on our health insurance for everything from a car accident that almost resulted in a pre-term birth, to child births. The system is chaotic and confusing, but as long as you're on top of the paperwork the coverage is usually very good. According to Gallup polling, people have negative views of the healthcare system as a whole, but most rate their own coverage as good or excellent (69%) and their own healthcare service quality as good or excellent (80%): https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcare-quite-positively.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcar....