Childcare is probably true but Europeans in general completely misunderstand American healthcare for employees. In the US, healthcare is provided as an additio

Childcare is probably true but Europeans in general completely misunderstand American healthcare for employees. In the US, healthcare is provided as an additional benefit on top of your gross salary. Whereas in Europe it is taken out of your gross wages in the form of tax. Obviously there are still issues with copays etc, but the bulk of the cost is actually additional to your salaries. On apartments, I'm not sure how true that is these days. You can easily pay 2k+ EUR/month for a nice apartment in Berlin or Munich (even Lisbon, where I lived recently - where the local minimum wage is close to $3/hour!). Cheaper than the NYC or SF, but nowhere near the difference it was a few years ago. There are also many low cost of living places in the US where you'll pay a fraction of European housing costs but still get vastly more salary. Most Europeans seem to have their head in the sand in this (I say this as one). They completely underestimate the salary differences between Europe and the US for middle class jobs, and vastly overestimate the benefits they get from the higher taxation. It is just not possible to say someone earning 3k EUR/month after tax is doing better fiscally than someone in the US earning $200k for the same job, paying 30-50% less tax.