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> Situation wrt to teen mental health is similar in Europe, but there's a much smaller graduation debt. But Europe has far lower professional salaries than the

> Situation wrt to teen mental health is similar in Europe, but there's a much smaller graduation debt. But Europe has far lower professional salaries than the US. Also economic conditions definitely have a big impact, I could finally buy a small flat after years of renting and it's such a great change to be able to make changes in your own home and buy your own things. My father did that at 23, not 30.

ben_w 4y ago
Both for you and the person you are replying to, I would caution that “Europe” isn’t one country like the USA, even just the EU is 27 smaller countries in a trenchcoat — the average may be lower, but bits are higher. University tuition is wildly variable and not directly proportional to income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuition_payments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuition_payments (Housing costs are also wildly variable, but I don’t know where to get enough data to tell if that’s proportional to incomes or not).
- nivenkos 4y ago
  Yeah, I am European, I've lived and worked in 3 different EU countries. But Americans really don't appreciate how lucky they are. An American CS college grad can earn more than almost all senior/staff engineers anywhere in the EU e.g. ~$150k.
  - MonaroVXR 4y ago
    I figured this out too.
  - lupire 4y ago
    That's an extremely small group of lucky Americans, who happen to hang out on HN.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  Almost every Western country shows similar issues, especially given professionals working jobs most prevalent in cities and expected to go to office. It'd be more apt to name the exceptions that confirm the rule.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  Generally speaking, cost of living is proportional to income; I could move inside my small country to a place twice as big, but if I were to get a job close to where I live it'd slash my wages by a lot to the point where I wouldn't actually be able to live there. That said, if you can work remotely, you can move south or east and live a lot cheaper. It just has to be your thing to move to a new country.
  - yunohn 4y ago
    > if you can work remotely, you can move south or east and live a lot cheaper. It just has to be your thing to move to a new country. “The solution to these problems is to exploit systemic economic inequalities by leveraging remote work for income arbitrage” I don’t understand why HN keeps repeating this “solution”.
    - nivenkos 4y ago
      Because it's the only way most of us can afford to own our residence.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      In addition to what @nivenkos says, it lowers geographic demand for goods/services in the place you moved from, so costs in the old place go up slower (or even down) because you moved, while also increasing demand (and in turn potentially increasing overall economic output) for geographic goods/services in the new place. It’s a levelling effect in both cases. Of course, remote working also seems to often cause pay cuts to match local cost of living, and also opens the possibility of being outsourced to extremely low income nations (same effect to a larger degree, especially as it might not be the same person doing the work).
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- holdonasec 4y ago
  The idea that the United States is conceptually a single country is our single greatest flaw. We’d all be so much better off if we just admitted strong consensus is vanishingly unlikely between every state and territory. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. People can disagree and chip in on a military to defend their shared interests, like staying alive, together. I don’t think the EU and the US are very different. Then again, Texas isn’t exiting. (No disrespect, just pointing out the difference.) But divisions in the EU are very familiar to Americans and understandable for the exact same reason. Asking a Californian to understand and relate to the issues of a Missourian deeply, and vice versa, is a little unfair to both and we’d all be so much happier if we were simply fine with that. People are different. The idea of the United States has been forcing it in a lot of unwilling minds for a long time, I think, and the consequential bitterness that really has no reason whatsoever to exist is unfortunate.
  - engineeringwoke 4y ago
    No offence, everyone is the same in the United States. You talk of left and right but you're both playing the same ball game. I'm from the American South and I lived in Europe for four years with the rest in the Northeast US, so I do actually know. Just because people pick the different color team doesn't make them different than you. The same unstable people in New York go hard left and the same unstable people in Mississippi go hard right... and the issues just don't matter. Identity politics are some random anti-boomer gotcha thing. Abortion isn't even a subject unless you're Roman Catholic because it's never mentioned in the New Testament... and uh, abortion is legal in Italy by the way. It's the lowest brow, dumbest nonsense you could ever imagine when you come back from living in the real world. Ever heard of a different language? What about a dialect? How many dialects are there in, say, the Netherlands? Hundreds are commonly spoken, and they are not mutually intelligible. Histories thousands of years old, deep cultural divisions, and we're "the same"? Lol, read a textbook. Hop on a plane, please. For the love of god
    - Jcowell 4y ago
      While we surely have more similarities than The people of the Netherlands have differences, we also have enough differences to not qualify us as the same. I think what’s not really understood is that picking democrats or republicans is not an end sum game. A sizable people probably don’t even know or care of either parties full platform. For some, certain beliefs that a party posses are enough for people to align with them and some of these beliefs are fundamental to who they are. Can a person from Kentucky and New York share beliefs ? Of course. Are we the same ? Women and LGBTQ+ people might disagree.
mschuster91 4y ago
> But Europe has far lower professional salaries than the US. We don't have to pay ludicrous amounts for healthcare though, and rents are also way way WAY lower here than in the US - even London, Berlin and Munich are nowhere near US levels.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  What are you comparing with? I'd really like to see some comparisons in Numbeo or similar. Rent takes similar portions of the budget in several of these cities for professionals, even compared to several American metropolises.
- xioxox 4y ago
  Uh, Munich has incredibly expensive house prices. It's over 1M Euros to buy for anything of a reasonable size. Developer salaries are around 65k. You can get a little cheaper by going to a neighbouring towns, but the stupidly high prices continue for many km. The main problem is the very low interest rates leading to crazy inflation. Rents are a bit better, but compared to developer salaries it's much more expensive than the US. It's also extremely hard to find places to rent, and landlords are very picky about who they will let to.

ben_w 4y ago

Both for you and the person you are replying to, I would caution that “Europe” isn’t one country like the USA, even just the EU is 27 smaller countries in a trenchcoat — the average may be lower, but bits are higher. University tuition is wildly variable and not directly proportional to income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuition_payments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuition_payments (Housing costs are also wildly variable, but I don’t know where to get enough data to tell if that’s proportional to incomes or not).

nivenkos 4y ago
Yeah, I am European, I've lived and worked in 3 different EU countries. But Americans really don't appreciate how lucky they are. An American CS college grad can earn more than almost all senior/staff engineers anywhere in the EU e.g. ~$150k.
- MonaroVXR 4y ago
  I figured this out too.
- lupire 4y ago
  That's an extremely small group of lucky Americans, who happen to hang out on HN.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
BlargMcLarg 4y ago
Almost every Western country shows similar issues, especially given professionals working jobs most prevalent in cities and expected to go to office. It'd be more apt to name the exceptions that confirm the rule.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
Generally speaking, cost of living is proportional to income; I could move inside my small country to a place twice as big, but if I were to get a job close to where I live it'd slash my wages by a lot to the point where I wouldn't actually be able to live there. That said, if you can work remotely, you can move south or east and live a lot cheaper. It just has to be your thing to move to a new country.
- yunohn 4y ago
  > if you can work remotely, you can move south or east and live a lot cheaper. It just has to be your thing to move to a new country. “The solution to these problems is to exploit systemic economic inequalities by leveraging remote work for income arbitrage” I don’t understand why HN keeps repeating this “solution”.
  - nivenkos 4y ago
    Because it's the only way most of us can afford to own our residence.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    In addition to what @nivenkos says, it lowers geographic demand for goods/services in the place you moved from, so costs in the old place go up slower (or even down) because you moved, while also increasing demand (and in turn potentially increasing overall economic output) for geographic goods/services in the new place. It’s a levelling effect in both cases. Of course, remote working also seems to often cause pay cuts to match local cost of living, and also opens the possibility of being outsourced to extremely low income nations (same effect to a larger degree, especially as it might not be the same person doing the work).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
holdonasec 4y ago
The idea that the United States is conceptually a single country is our single greatest flaw. We’d all be so much better off if we just admitted strong consensus is vanishingly unlikely between every state and territory. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. People can disagree and chip in on a military to defend their shared interests, like staying alive, together. I don’t think the EU and the US are very different. Then again, Texas isn’t exiting. (No disrespect, just pointing out the difference.) But divisions in the EU are very familiar to Americans and understandable for the exact same reason. Asking a Californian to understand and relate to the issues of a Missourian deeply, and vice versa, is a little unfair to both and we’d all be so much happier if we were simply fine with that. People are different. The idea of the United States has been forcing it in a lot of unwilling minds for a long time, I think, and the consequential bitterness that really has no reason whatsoever to exist is unfortunate.
- engineeringwoke 4y ago
  No offence, everyone is the same in the United States. You talk of left and right but you're both playing the same ball game. I'm from the American South and I lived in Europe for four years with the rest in the Northeast US, so I do actually know. Just because people pick the different color team doesn't make them different than you. The same unstable people in New York go hard left and the same unstable people in Mississippi go hard right... and the issues just don't matter. Identity politics are some random anti-boomer gotcha thing. Abortion isn't even a subject unless you're Roman Catholic because it's never mentioned in the New Testament... and uh, abortion is legal in Italy by the way. It's the lowest brow, dumbest nonsense you could ever imagine when you come back from living in the real world. Ever heard of a different language? What about a dialect? How many dialects are there in, say, the Netherlands? Hundreds are commonly spoken, and they are not mutually intelligible. Histories thousands of years old, deep cultural divisions, and we're "the same"? Lol, read a textbook. Hop on a plane, please. For the love of god
  - Jcowell 4y ago
    While we surely have more similarities than The people of the Netherlands have differences, we also have enough differences to not qualify us as the same. I think what’s not really understood is that picking democrats or republicans is not an end sum game. A sizable people probably don’t even know or care of either parties full platform. For some, certain beliefs that a party posses are enough for people to align with them and some of these beliefs are fundamental to who they are. Can a person from Kentucky and New York share beliefs ? Of course. Are we the same ? Women and LGBTQ+ people might disagree.

mschuster91 4y ago

> But Europe has far lower professional salaries than the US. We don't have to pay ludicrous amounts for healthcare though, and rents are also way way WAY lower here than in the US - even London, Berlin and Munich are nowhere near US levels.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
What are you comparing with? I'd really like to see some comparisons in Numbeo or similar. Rent takes similar portions of the budget in several of these cities for professionals, even compared to several American metropolises.
xioxox 4y ago
Uh, Munich has incredibly expensive house prices. It's over 1M Euros to buy for anything of a reasonable size. Developer salaries are around 65k. You can get a little cheaper by going to a neighbouring towns, but the stupidly high prices continue for many km. The main problem is the very low interest rates leading to crazy inflation. Rents are a bit better, but compared to developer salaries it's much more expensive than the US. It's also extremely hard to find places to rent, and landlords are very picky about who they will let to.