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NL -> DE -> US for a FAANG, my net income has tripled. Cost of living is similar. Worth it from the view of financial security. We enjoy the US, especially Was

NL -> DE -> US for a FAANG, my net income has tripled. Cost of living is similar. Worth it from the view of financial security. We enjoy the US, especially Washington but will probably move back to the EU in ~7-8 years. Miss a lot of things from Europe though, especially the school system and public transportation.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
Isn't health insurance like 10x the price? I always hear that US people pay 1000$+ per month. In Holland it's around 100 i think and here in Spain it's free. That works be a big issue for me because any time without employment would drain my savings
- ranieuwe 5y ago
  It depends heavily on your employer. Mine pays the insurance but there is a deductible. That deductible is a bit more than what it is in NL but my monthly costs are zero. It works out to about the same.
- agleason 5y ago
  If you're employed by a top company in the US, your health insurance is generally much better quality than most public option in Europe
  - dijit 5y ago
    Even if we argue the very disagreeable notion that European healthcare is: 1) heterogeneous 2) subpar 3) public only Then we’re still left with the fact that most big companies do offer private health coverage in Europe. Mostly this is for less than life threatening illnesses, psychological help and physiotherapy.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      Well that notion is wrong anyway because every European country has their own system. Some are mainly public with a purely optional private option, like Spain. Some are kinda forced private because otherwise you have to wait for years, like Ireland. Some are absolutely mandatory private like the Netherlands. And yes in most countries some classes are purely private. I think Britain is a big exception though I've heard the NHS is also not what it used to be.
  - bflesch 5y ago
    not sure why you get downvoted, but yes - it is
  - kazen44 5y ago
    the issue i have with this argument, is that it makes healthcare for those who are not in a privileged non existant. (with the boatload of social issues that come with it). Sure, you might get proper and very good healthcare, but what about those around you in your community?
    - twic 5y ago
      As an argument in favour of privatised healthcare, this is valid, but in the context of Europeans moving to the US, it doesn't seem relevant. The US is not going to reform its healthcare just because a few Germans don't immigrate.
    - doktorhladnjak 5y ago
      It's not an argument. It's just the reality of health insurance in the US at this time.
    - adventured 5y ago
      That's not true in the US. The very non-privileged get moderately ok, free healthcare via Medicaid (along with numerous other programs for poorer people, including coverage for children, SS disability and so on). That covers the poorest/worst off quarter of the US population approximately. It's the working poor and middle class that really get screwed with the US system. The well-off pay taxes to cover the free healthcare system that the US has. The working poor and middle class often can't afford the healthcare system, are more frequently at risk while unemployed, and their employers are less likely to provide good coverage as a benefit.
      - thorin 5y ago
        I'd like to understand this better. If I was a software engineer for 20 years and had cover and savings etc then was between jobs for a few months for whatever reason and got into a car crash how would that work. Would I get medicare/aid? Are all people students / unemployed expected to be paying monthly premiums to get any kind of cover? I have had healthcare in the US for a serious accident, but I had travel insurance (UK based) which likely saved me 100,000s of dollars. Fortunately they paid up without question. I'm not sure how that would have worked if I was just some regular student from the US travelling around, would I be bankrupted for life or hoping for crowdfunding? Sounds like if you have an accident in the US you need to be rich or popular (or maybe really poor).
  - adventured 5y ago
    It's an important point for software developers. US healthcare for the top 1/4 is far better than what public healthcare is like in most of Western Europe. In the US if you have good healtchare you have exceptionally fast access to among the world's best healthcare services. You also have a freedom of (ab)use when it comes to utilizing healthcare services; it's a luxury you do not get in most of Europe, where service rationing and very long wait times are normal in the public healthcare sphere (also true in Canada). There are trade-offs in all of these systems. It sucks if you're in the middle ~40% in the US. It's spectacular if you're in the top 1/4 and your health insurance is covered by your employer.
  - lucb1e 5y ago
    > Of the Dutch adults surveyed, 59 percent said that they were very confident of receiving high quality and safe health care, compared to only 35 percent of the American adults surveyed. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_the_Netherlands Since you were replying to a comment about Holland this seemed relevant. Don't know about a general study covering all of Europe or something. But I guess that's where the "if you're employed by a bigcorp" part comes in. You can get better service if you pay a lot, yeah that much seems a bit obvious.
    - lelandfe 5y ago
      > You can get better service if you pay a lot, yeah that much seems a bit obvious. Not exactly - larger organizations in the US are able to negotiate better rates with insurance companies. So it's more so that your buck goes further than it is you paying more bucks ;)
  - rchaud 5y ago
    > If you're employed by a top company in the US, your health insurance is generally much better quality than most public option in Europe Assuming you are high up enough in the organization. Unless junior developers get the same plan and coverage as the CFO. The bigger assumption would be that a person with a good employer plan today, had no health conditions that went under-treated as a child and are more acute in adulthood. Someone in a UHC country may not have top-quality access to care, but it is the simple act of access to primary care itself that can have conditions diagnosed and treated early. That in turn will have a compound effect on QOL, even if you do earn the Tim Cook-level coverage plan when you're 50.
    - lostdog 5y ago
      > Assuming you are high up enough in the organization. Unless junior developers get the same plan and coverage as the CFO. Companies are required to offer the same benefits to all employees, so yes you do get the same health insurance as the CFO. This is one reason that companies keep pushing low-level labor jobs to contractors or falsely separate contracting companies. They want to attract software engineers with good health insurance, but avoid offering it to their janitors.
- ivalm 5y ago
  Almost all employers will pay your health insurance. Also, the salary often 3-7x greater than EU. Who cares even if you have $1k more expense while making $10k more a month.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    True but it's not all about money. It would worry me a lot if I would have recurring costs that high. Especially if it was directly tied to employment (e.g. getting healthcare through the employer). It makes it much harder to change jobs in case of difficulty and a much bigger blow to getting fired.
    - ivalm 5y ago
      That’s still not really true. Your healthcare is approximately free when employed and you pay ~1k/mo when unemployed. But your saving rate is much much larger so that expense isn’t actually high. I think the bigger issue is housing prices (if you live in US hcol) as even modest apartments can be 3k+.
  - alphabettsy 5y ago
    I’m the US if you’re unfortunate enough to be so ill that you cannot work you’re much worse off.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  It can be even worse than that if you’re buying your insurance yourself and you have a family. But if you have insurance through your work, it’s usually not that bad, it’ll probably be under a thousand.
- avar 5y ago
  > In Holland it's around 100 i think and here in Spain it's free. You personally pay around that amount in "insurance", but a big part of your healthcare costs are being taken out of your general taxation. The Netherlands spends around 13-14% of its GDP. That's pretty far from 100/EUR/month per person. I live in The Netherlands and I'd take Western European healthcare over the US's any day, but let's not sugar coat it by hiding the ball about how it's being paid for[1]. Before I moved to The Netherlands I paid 0 EUR/month in "health insurance" (a country with a true single payer system). Does that mean I wasn't actually paying anything for healthcare? No. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Well yes but if you're unemployed you don't pay a lot. This is what makes it much less of a pressure.
- adventured 5y ago
  The US out of pocket expense for healthcare is a lot lower than you probably think: https://i.imgur.com/kZlS6pC.png https://i.imgur.com/kZlS6pC.png The overall US healthcare cost per capita is around double the median of affluent Europe typically; higher than double vs Britain, and lower than double vs eg Switzerland or Norway. A lot of US healthcare is covered entirely or partially by employers. If you're a software developer making near or over six figures, it's very common that your healthcare costs are covered by your employer. What you're talking about when you say "100" for Holland is subsidization by way of taxation for covering healthcare costs. When you say it's free in Spain, you're talking about subsidization by taxation. Around 1/4 of the US population also gets "free" healthcare (ie the higher income brackets are paying higher taxes to cover those people). US healthcare is artificially very expensive, for numerous reasons. The employer provided system can also make unemployment quite risky, definitely. There is no free lunch however, someone is paying for the healthcare in France, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, and so on. Whether it's $7k (Germany), $8k (Switzerland), or $11k (US) per person, it's a lot of money.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    > ower than double vs eg Switzerland or Norway. Norway? Really. Health care costs here in Norway are capped at about 350 USD per year. If you pay more than that you get a card that exempts you from paying for things like GP visits, X-rays, MRIs, prescriptions, etc. Anything you did pay in excess of that you get refunded in the next tax settlement.
    - Turing_Machine 5y ago
      > Health care costs here in Norway are capped at about 350 USD per year. You are confusing "individual out of pocket extra costs" with "total costs". Norway's annual per capita expenditures on healthcare are about 71883 krone (about $7,000 USD). Only the United States and Switzerland are higher. Source: https://www.ssb.no/en/nasjonalregnskap-og-konjunkturer/statistikker/helsesat/aar/2021-03-18 https://www.ssb.no/en/nasjonalregnskap-og-konjunkturer/stati...
      - 5y ago
- twic 5y ago
  My understanding is that the important difference is in the tail of the distribution. In the US, your employer will buy you health insurance, which covers some but not all of your healthcare costs. If you don't need much medical care, your costs in the US will be small or nothing, essentially the same as in Europe, probably with much more expensive and luxurious service. But if you do need extensive care, then even when a good insurance policy, you may be facing substantial costs. A friend who moved to New York with a big tech company told me (lightly paraphrased to anonymise): > I’ve had a surgery, a ton of dental work, and a new child. It’s cost me tens of thousands of dollars, but the experience has been consistently better than in the UK. If that child had been ill and needed special care when it was born, that could have been hundreds of thousands. Whereas in Europe the cost is still zero, or only a little more. There's also the issue that the insurance is tied to your job, and it's extremely hard to get decent insurance directly from an insurer. I'm not sure if this is still true in the Obamacare era, but I've read of extremely rich people being unable to get decent insurance.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    That's weird, if you're extremely rich, couldn't you just set up an LLC and employ yourself? And then you can give yourself health benefits :) I thought most of these guys do this stuff anyway for all the tax breaks. I know all the self-employed and entrepreneurs in the Netherlands do this, they all have "BV"s and "Holdings" so they pay less income tax.
- CSSer 5y ago
  This is one of those questions where knowing the median value won’t do you much good. The true cost is highly individualized, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that, yes, it’s more expensive, and yes, it can be more treacherous, especially if you have existing medical conditions you must maintain or that could cause you to become unemployed. To answer your question directly: roughly on average for families it is, yes. However, even that isn’t so cut and dry. For example, some plans just have a family rate, whereas other providers will offer plans tailored to family sizes. Anyway, for individuals, the average is around $500 from what I can find. It’s going to vary a lot by employer. Regardless, for the kinds of jobs we have, it’s usually better across the board. I, for instance, pay less than half that.
- lnsru 5y ago
  I Germany you pay close to 1000$ monthly too for public health insurance. It covers whole family, that is single advantage. However better treatments cost something, but mostly <500€. That’s ok too.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Wow I had no idea it was that expensive in Germany. How do people cope that are on minimum wage?
    - sawmurai 5y ago
      Half of it is payed by the employer. You pay around 7.5% of your income before taxes (up to a certain limit aka Beitragsbemessungsgrenze).
      - lnsru 5y ago
        Many countries use this trick “payed by employer” trying to hide the real amount of taxes. 385€ does not sound that bad, but in the reality it’s twice that with another half “paid by employer”.
    - masta 5y ago
      It's not, see here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29373722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29373722
  - masta 5y ago
    Sorry, but that's just wrong, the maximum you're paying for public health insurance (as an employee) in Germany is around 7.5% of your pre-taxed income. BUT, there is a limit called "Beitragsbemessungsgrenze" which caps the amount of yearly income when calculating the amounts. The cap is currently at 58050 Euros, which translates to roughly 385 Euros. Only if you also include the public pension and unemployment insurance deductions (both of which are also percentage based and capped) you'll max out at about 1050 Euros.
    - 5y ago
Winterflow3r 5y ago
That makes a lot of sense. I've moved UK-> SWE and am not liking it here in SWE at all. I studied in the US for a few years so I totally understand missing public transportation and school systems. However, the software salaries here are low when you compare it to the cost of housing :(
- FundementalBrit 5y ago
  What didn't you like in Sweden? I'm a brit looking to buy land out their for the hunting opportunities.
  - Winterflow3r 5y ago
    Don't know anything about hunting other than it appears to be a very popular hobby here. There is a really strong brand of Sweden being a "come here, everyone speaks perfect English here" type of country but the reality is something completely different. In my experience, you definitely get treated differently based on how accented your Swedish is or if you speak any at all (and I live in the largest city here in Sweden where there a lot of people with a foreign background).
    - Dracophoenix 5y ago
      In what way are you treated differently?
      - cosmodisk 5y ago
        Usually it's very subtle, definitely not in your face. For some it will be the glass ceiling at work they'll never manage to break,no matter how good they are, for others it will be people simply not wanting to interact beyond 'hi, bye' level.
        thorsten11 5y ago
        Sounds like you've been unlucky. Not my experience at all.
lumost 5y ago
One item of note - public transit is pretty common in the northeastern US. In the major metros (Boston, NYC etc.) most people do not own cars.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  I think this is a bit of an exaggeration. Maybe in the major cities proper it’s true that a majority don’t own cars, but I doubt it’s true for the metro areas as a whole.
- in3d 5y ago
  This is true about NYC but not about Boston or any other U.S. cities.
  - lucb1e 5y ago
    According to https://www.valuepenguin.com/auto-insurance/car-ownership-statistics https://www.valuepenguin.com/auto-insurance/car-ownership-st... even in new york the vehicle ownership rate is only half (23) of the highest state (Delaware with 44 registered cars per 100 inhabitants). Assuming basically every family has one or two cars in Delaware (that's the impression I get of what is the norm in an average USA state), that translates to nearly every family having a car on average in New York as well. Then again, the Netherlands reportedly (https://longreads.cbs.nl/european-scale-2019/car-ownership/ https://longreads.cbs.nl/european-scale-2019/car-ownership/) has 48 per 100, which would be higher than the highest USA state, while I think most people are aware of the difference in car mentality between the two countries so something doesn't add up here. I'm not sure what I'm missing.
    - flicken 5y ago
      America has low car ownership rates compared to western Europe, possibly due to income inequality. See this 2012 article. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/its-official-western-europeans-have-more-cars-per-person-than-americans/261108/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/it... > The U.S. is ranked 25th in world by number of passenger cars per person...The Carnegie paper explains that car ownership rates are closely tied to the size of the middle class.
nextos 5y ago
I'm interested in the same question as the OP but referring to Academia instead of Industry. It's probably pretty comparable, as academic salaries in the US are significantly higher than anywhere else, except perhaps Switzerland.
nautilius 5y ago
Especially the school system, transportation, healthcare, and housing require much higher expenses in the U.S. than in Europe for a comparable standard and security of living, to the point where it may consume all of the extra salary. If you don't have kids that need a school or daycare (or have the luck to live in one of the few areas with good public schools), that alone may be a 5 digit difference.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Isn't health insurance like 10x the price? I always hear that US people pay 1000$+ per month. In Holland it's around 100 i think and here in Spain it's free. That works be a big issue for me because any time without employment would drain my savings

ranieuwe 5y ago
It depends heavily on your employer. Mine pays the insurance but there is a deductible. That deductible is a bit more than what it is in NL but my monthly costs are zero. It works out to about the same.
agleason 5y ago
If you're employed by a top company in the US, your health insurance is generally much better quality than most public option in Europe
- dijit 5y ago
  Even if we argue the very disagreeable notion that European healthcare is: 1) heterogeneous 2) subpar 3) public only Then we’re still left with the fact that most big companies do offer private health coverage in Europe. Mostly this is for less than life threatening illnesses, psychological help and physiotherapy.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Well that notion is wrong anyway because every European country has their own system. Some are mainly public with a purely optional private option, like Spain. Some are kinda forced private because otherwise you have to wait for years, like Ireland. Some are absolutely mandatory private like the Netherlands. And yes in most countries some classes are purely private. I think Britain is a big exception though I've heard the NHS is also not what it used to be.
- bflesch 5y ago
  not sure why you get downvoted, but yes - it is
- kazen44 5y ago
  the issue i have with this argument, is that it makes healthcare for those who are not in a privileged non existant. (with the boatload of social issues that come with it). Sure, you might get proper and very good healthcare, but what about those around you in your community?
  - twic 5y ago
    As an argument in favour of privatised healthcare, this is valid, but in the context of Europeans moving to the US, it doesn't seem relevant. The US is not going to reform its healthcare just because a few Germans don't immigrate.
  - doktorhladnjak 5y ago
    It's not an argument. It's just the reality of health insurance in the US at this time.
  - adventured 5y ago
    That's not true in the US. The very non-privileged get moderately ok, free healthcare via Medicaid (along with numerous other programs for poorer people, including coverage for children, SS disability and so on). That covers the poorest/worst off quarter of the US population approximately. It's the working poor and middle class that really get screwed with the US system. The well-off pay taxes to cover the free healthcare system that the US has. The working poor and middle class often can't afford the healthcare system, are more frequently at risk while unemployed, and their employers are less likely to provide good coverage as a benefit.
    - thorin 5y ago
      I'd like to understand this better. If I was a software engineer for 20 years and had cover and savings etc then was between jobs for a few months for whatever reason and got into a car crash how would that work. Would I get medicare/aid? Are all people students / unemployed expected to be paying monthly premiums to get any kind of cover? I have had healthcare in the US for a serious accident, but I had travel insurance (UK based) which likely saved me 100,000s of dollars. Fortunately they paid up without question. I'm not sure how that would have worked if I was just some regular student from the US travelling around, would I be bankrupted for life or hoping for crowdfunding? Sounds like if you have an accident in the US you need to be rich or popular (or maybe really poor).
- adventured 5y ago
  It's an important point for software developers. US healthcare for the top 1/4 is far better than what public healthcare is like in most of Western Europe. In the US if you have good healtchare you have exceptionally fast access to among the world's best healthcare services. You also have a freedom of (ab)use when it comes to utilizing healthcare services; it's a luxury you do not get in most of Europe, where service rationing and very long wait times are normal in the public healthcare sphere (also true in Canada). There are trade-offs in all of these systems. It sucks if you're in the middle ~40% in the US. It's spectacular if you're in the top 1/4 and your health insurance is covered by your employer.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  > Of the Dutch adults surveyed, 59 percent said that they were very confident of receiving high quality and safe health care, compared to only 35 percent of the American adults surveyed. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_the_Netherlands Since you were replying to a comment about Holland this seemed relevant. Don't know about a general study covering all of Europe or something. But I guess that's where the "if you're employed by a bigcorp" part comes in. You can get better service if you pay a lot, yeah that much seems a bit obvious.
  - lelandfe 5y ago
    > You can get better service if you pay a lot, yeah that much seems a bit obvious. Not exactly - larger organizations in the US are able to negotiate better rates with insurance companies. So it's more so that your buck goes further than it is you paying more bucks ;)
- rchaud 5y ago
  > If you're employed by a top company in the US, your health insurance is generally much better quality than most public option in Europe Assuming you are high up enough in the organization. Unless junior developers get the same plan and coverage as the CFO. The bigger assumption would be that a person with a good employer plan today, had no health conditions that went under-treated as a child and are more acute in adulthood. Someone in a UHC country may not have top-quality access to care, but it is the simple act of access to primary care itself that can have conditions diagnosed and treated early. That in turn will have a compound effect on QOL, even if you do earn the Tim Cook-level coverage plan when you're 50.
  - lostdog 5y ago
    > Assuming you are high up enough in the organization. Unless junior developers get the same plan and coverage as the CFO. Companies are required to offer the same benefits to all employees, so yes you do get the same health insurance as the CFO. This is one reason that companies keep pushing low-level labor jobs to contractors or falsely separate contracting companies. They want to attract software engineers with good health insurance, but avoid offering it to their janitors.
ivalm 5y ago
Almost all employers will pay your health insurance. Also, the salary often 3-7x greater than EU. Who cares even if you have $1k more expense while making $10k more a month.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  True but it's not all about money. It would worry me a lot if I would have recurring costs that high. Especially if it was directly tied to employment (e.g. getting healthcare through the employer). It makes it much harder to change jobs in case of difficulty and a much bigger blow to getting fired.
  - ivalm 5y ago
    That’s still not really true. Your healthcare is approximately free when employed and you pay ~1k/mo when unemployed. But your saving rate is much much larger so that expense isn’t actually high. I think the bigger issue is housing prices (if you live in US hcol) as even modest apartments can be 3k+.
- alphabettsy 5y ago
  I’m the US if you’re unfortunate enough to be so ill that you cannot work you’re much worse off.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
It can be even worse than that if you’re buying your insurance yourself and you have a family. But if you have insurance through your work, it’s usually not that bad, it’ll probably be under a thousand.
avar 5y ago
> In Holland it's around 100 i think and here in Spain it's free. You personally pay around that amount in "insurance", but a big part of your healthcare costs are being taken out of your general taxation. The Netherlands spends around 13-14% of its GDP. That's pretty far from 100/EUR/month per person. I live in The Netherlands and I'd take Western European healthcare over the US's any day, but let's not sugar coat it by hiding the ball about how it's being paid for[1]. Before I moved to The Netherlands I paid 0 EUR/month in "health insurance" (a country with a true single payer system). Does that mean I wasn't actually paying anything for healthcare? No. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Well yes but if you're unemployed you don't pay a lot. This is what makes it much less of a pressure.
adventured 5y ago
The US out of pocket expense for healthcare is a lot lower than you probably think: https://i.imgur.com/kZlS6pC.png https://i.imgur.com/kZlS6pC.png The overall US healthcare cost per capita is around double the median of affluent Europe typically; higher than double vs Britain, and lower than double vs eg Switzerland or Norway. A lot of US healthcare is covered entirely or partially by employers. If you're a software developer making near or over six figures, it's very common that your healthcare costs are covered by your employer. What you're talking about when you say "100" for Holland is subsidization by way of taxation for covering healthcare costs. When you say it's free in Spain, you're talking about subsidization by taxation. Around 1/4 of the US population also gets "free" healthcare (ie the higher income brackets are paying higher taxes to cover those people). US healthcare is artificially very expensive, for numerous reasons. The employer provided system can also make unemployment quite risky, definitely. There is no free lunch however, someone is paying for the healthcare in France, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, and so on. Whether it's $7k (Germany), $8k (Switzerland), or $11k (US) per person, it's a lot of money.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > ower than double vs eg Switzerland or Norway. Norway? Really. Health care costs here in Norway are capped at about 350 USD per year. If you pay more than that you get a card that exempts you from paying for things like GP visits, X-rays, MRIs, prescriptions, etc. Anything you did pay in excess of that you get refunded in the next tax settlement.
  - Turing_Machine 5y ago
    > Health care costs here in Norway are capped at about 350 USD per year. You are confusing "individual out of pocket extra costs" with "total costs". Norway's annual per capita expenditures on healthcare are about 71883 krone (about $7,000 USD). Only the United States and Switzerland are higher. Source: https://www.ssb.no/en/nasjonalregnskap-og-konjunkturer/statistikker/helsesat/aar/2021-03-18 https://www.ssb.no/en/nasjonalregnskap-og-konjunkturer/stati...
    - 5y ago
twic 5y ago
My understanding is that the important difference is in the tail of the distribution. In the US, your employer will buy you health insurance, which covers some but not all of your healthcare costs. If you don't need much medical care, your costs in the US will be small or nothing, essentially the same as in Europe, probably with much more expensive and luxurious service. But if you do need extensive care, then even when a good insurance policy, you may be facing substantial costs. A friend who moved to New York with a big tech company told me (lightly paraphrased to anonymise): > I’ve had a surgery, a ton of dental work, and a new child. It’s cost me tens of thousands of dollars, but the experience has been consistently better than in the UK. If that child had been ill and needed special care when it was born, that could have been hundreds of thousands. Whereas in Europe the cost is still zero, or only a little more. There's also the issue that the insurance is tied to your job, and it's extremely hard to get decent insurance directly from an insurer. I'm not sure if this is still true in the Obamacare era, but I've read of extremely rich people being unable to get decent insurance.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  That's weird, if you're extremely rich, couldn't you just set up an LLC and employ yourself? And then you can give yourself health benefits :) I thought most of these guys do this stuff anyway for all the tax breaks. I know all the self-employed and entrepreneurs in the Netherlands do this, they all have "BV"s and "Holdings" so they pay less income tax.
CSSer 5y ago
This is one of those questions where knowing the median value won’t do you much good. The true cost is highly individualized, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that, yes, it’s more expensive, and yes, it can be more treacherous, especially if you have existing medical conditions you must maintain or that could cause you to become unemployed. To answer your question directly: roughly on average for families it is, yes. However, even that isn’t so cut and dry. For example, some plans just have a family rate, whereas other providers will offer plans tailored to family sizes. Anyway, for individuals, the average is around $500 from what I can find. It’s going to vary a lot by employer. Regardless, for the kinds of jobs we have, it’s usually better across the board. I, for instance, pay less than half that.
lnsru 5y ago
I Germany you pay close to 1000$ monthly too for public health insurance. It covers whole family, that is single advantage. However better treatments cost something, but mostly <500€. That’s ok too.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Wow I had no idea it was that expensive in Germany. How do people cope that are on minimum wage?
  - sawmurai 5y ago
    Half of it is payed by the employer. You pay around 7.5% of your income before taxes (up to a certain limit aka Beitragsbemessungsgrenze).
    - lnsru 5y ago
      Many countries use this trick “payed by employer” trying to hide the real amount of taxes. 385€ does not sound that bad, but in the reality it’s twice that with another half “paid by employer”.
  - masta 5y ago
    It's not, see here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29373722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29373722
- masta 5y ago
  Sorry, but that's just wrong, the maximum you're paying for public health insurance (as an employee) in Germany is around 7.5% of your pre-taxed income. BUT, there is a limit called "Beitragsbemessungsgrenze" which caps the amount of yearly income when calculating the amounts. The cap is currently at 58050 Euros, which translates to roughly 385 Euros. Only if you also include the public pension and unemployment insurance deductions (both of which are also percentage based and capped) you'll max out at about 1050 Euros.
  - 5y ago

Winterflow3r 5y ago

That makes a lot of sense. I've moved UK-> SWE and am not liking it here in SWE at all. I studied in the US for a few years so I totally understand missing public transportation and school systems. However, the software salaries here are low when you compare it to the cost of housing :(

FundementalBrit 5y ago
What didn't you like in Sweden? I'm a brit looking to buy land out their for the hunting opportunities.
- Winterflow3r 5y ago
  Don't know anything about hunting other than it appears to be a very popular hobby here. There is a really strong brand of Sweden being a "come here, everyone speaks perfect English here" type of country but the reality is something completely different. In my experience, you definitely get treated differently based on how accented your Swedish is or if you speak any at all (and I live in the largest city here in Sweden where there a lot of people with a foreign background).
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    In what way are you treated differently?
    - cosmodisk 5y ago
      Usually it's very subtle, definitely not in your face. For some it will be the glass ceiling at work they'll never manage to break,no matter how good they are, for others it will be people simply not wanting to interact beyond 'hi, bye' level.
      - thorsten11 5y ago
        Sounds like you've been unlucky. Not my experience at all.

lumost 5y ago

One item of note - public transit is pretty common in the northeastern US. In the major metros (Boston, NYC etc.) most people do not own cars.

TulliusCicero 5y ago
I think this is a bit of an exaggeration. Maybe in the major cities proper it’s true that a majority don’t own cars, but I doubt it’s true for the metro areas as a whole.
in3d 5y ago
This is true about NYC but not about Boston or any other U.S. cities.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  According to https://www.valuepenguin.com/auto-insurance/car-ownership-statistics https://www.valuepenguin.com/auto-insurance/car-ownership-st... even in new york the vehicle ownership rate is only half (23) of the highest state (Delaware with 44 registered cars per 100 inhabitants). Assuming basically every family has one or two cars in Delaware (that's the impression I get of what is the norm in an average USA state), that translates to nearly every family having a car on average in New York as well. Then again, the Netherlands reportedly (https://longreads.cbs.nl/european-scale-2019/car-ownership/ https://longreads.cbs.nl/european-scale-2019/car-ownership/) has 48 per 100, which would be higher than the highest USA state, while I think most people are aware of the difference in car mentality between the two countries so something doesn't add up here. I'm not sure what I'm missing.
  - flicken 5y ago
    America has low car ownership rates compared to western Europe, possibly due to income inequality. See this 2012 article. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/its-official-western-europeans-have-more-cars-per-person-than-americans/261108/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/it... > The U.S. is ranked 25th in world by number of passenger cars per person...The Carnegie paper explains that car ownership rates are closely tied to the size of the middle class.

nextos 5y ago

I'm interested in the same question as the OP but referring to Academia instead of Industry. It's probably pretty comparable, as academic salaries in the US are significantly higher than anywhere else, except perhaps Switzerland.

nautilius 5y ago

Especially the school system, transportation, healthcare, and housing require much higher expenses in the U.S. than in Europe for a comparable standard and security of living, to the point where it may consume all of the extra salary. If you don't have kids that need a school or daycare (or have the luck to live in one of the few areas with good public schools), that alone may be a 5 digit difference.