> All in all, I much prefer the "relative poverty" of living in Sweden rather than getting 2-3x take-home pay while living in a stressful society such as the US

> All in all, I much prefer the "relative poverty" of living in Sweden rather than getting 2-3x take-home pay while living in a stressful society such as the US I don't get where you get the idea that all Americans are some hamsters spinning the wheel. Lot of IT jobs in USA are high-paying without the kind of stress you are talking about. And no they aren't getting rich to the extent that they are buying yachts or jets. On the opposite, lot of low paying stressful jobs exist in EU. > The US is the outlier in pay, most of the EU tips into a more collectivist view. Without much regard to the strength of different kind of economies around EU. A Spanish shouldn't be paying same price as a German has to pay without earning the same salary. This is big downside of EU that the collectivism you are talking about only works when they don't want to pay the salaries but still charge you the same price.