9 ms·

> Compared to the US, Western Europe is paradise on earth for employees. No, it isn't. For example, > 80% of the French earn less than €3k a month (equivalent

by blfr 4y ago

> Compared to the US, Western Europe is paradise on earth for employees. No, it isn't. For example, > 80% of the French earn less than €3k a month (equivalent to $36k a year) and 50% less than €2k a month ($24k a year). This is BEFORE taxes on income. https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1564868574879129600 https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1564868574879129600

random314 4y ago
In terms of median income, France and USA don't seem far apart 16K vs 19K https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-income-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...
- klyrs 4y ago
  Moreover, a normal work week in France is 35 hours. Assuming Americans work 40 hours a week, the implied median hourly wage is just about the same.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > median income, France and USA don't seem far apart 16K vs 19K After taxes and healthcare, adjusting for instability, the median European worker is better off. The top-performing American, on the other hand, is far better off than their European counterpart*. This is the design. Immigration + better life for the ambitious at the cost of a worse life for the median. It’s a recipe for brain drain and it works, though we must be honest at what cost. *non-aristocratic
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > lucky Sure, it’s a stochastic process. But it’s also not stationary. Providing an agglomeration incentive for those who believe they have non-stationary characteristics is a valid strategy.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        > Providing an agglomeration incentive for those who believe they have non-stationary characteristics is a valid strategy. Sorry, but I have absolutely no idea what this means.
    - UmbertoNoEco 4y ago
      lucky well connected belonging to the 'right' race;gender;social class; nationality
- MontyCarloHall 4y ago
  That is extremely far off from what other sources report. For instance, it does not match what the OECD says [0]: median individual income in the US was $42k in 2019; in France, it was $28k. It also does not match what the St. Louis Fed says [1], which says the US median individual income was $36k in 2019. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income#Median_equivalent_adult_income https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income#Median_equival... [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
slively 4y ago
In the Twitter thread folks mention it is after taxes. Looking at income alone and not other benefits is also pretty misleading. I’m not here to say I know how much better/worse it is in France, just that this doesn’t seem like a good argument.
- blfr 4y ago
  This is before employee's taxes but after employer's taxes. OP explains > Net in France means after the taxes your employer pays but before the taxes you pay on your income. I know it's confusing! https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1564875547792080898 https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1564875547792080898 The benefits would have to be really, really sweet to consider making half as much a "worker's paradise."
  - slively 4y ago
    Please keep going, it’s worth trying to compare all compensation and benefits, and we both might learn something.
  - Klinky 4y ago
    You really do need to look at the whole picture of cost of living & quality of life. Sure someone in the Bay Area could make 5x that, but that doesn't mean they're living 5x better or things aren't 5x more expensive.
    - KronisLV 4y ago
      > ...or things aren't 5x more expensive. While I agree with you in regards to things like quality of life, health care, food, housing and many services, in a globalized economy certain goods that one might want to purchase don't scale that much depending on where one lives. For example, consider an iPhone 13, in this case a black one with 256 GB of storage and not bound to any particular carrier: https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-13 https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-13 It costs 929$. Now here's the same model in a local store here in Latvia, also an iPhone 13, black color, 256 GB of memory: https://www.1a.lv/p/mobilais-telefons-apple-iphone-13-melna-4gb-256gb/cs5d?cat=7nh&index=8 https://www.1a.lv/p/mobilais-telefons-apple-iphone-13-melna-... It costs 939€ or around 934$. You hear a lot about people in US making over 100k$ (with varying taxes) per year, over here this year I'll probably make around 36k$ before taxes and 24k$ after taxes. So essentially when the cost of goods in a globalized economy (for these products that cannot be produced locally) remains consistent across different nations, someone in the US will realistically have a purchasing power that is many times larger than mine. Actually I wrote about my personal finances on my blog a while ago "On finances and savings": https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings Note: I don't consider myself as someone who can actually afford Apple devices, just using them as one example of that kind of a good; nobody is going to give you a car 2-3x cheaper just because you're from Latvia either, or a computer, or many other goods. Of course, your argument does hold true for other things, for example it's possible to rent a studio apartment here for around 300-400$ per month. Also my university degrees were free (though people with worse grades might have to pay if there are not enough budget places allocated) and I haven't had any significant healthcare expenses myself as of yet.
jorblumesea 4y ago
In Europe, many things are provided by the government and at high quality. This means their quality of life is better, even if they don't earn as much. They don't "need" a high income to have a nice life. It's really not that useful or relevant to look purely at numbers, it's what you get out of your current political system. In the US, you need to make good money because everything is out of pocket. If you don't, your quality is life is poor. This is also why whenever Americans compare their life to Europe, it's always numbers based. It's all we know: big numbers, better life. Not to mention things that are not easily qualified by pure numbers, such as work culture, vacation time, public transit. Europe has vastly more progressive and people friendly political, economic system and cultural setup. This is speaking as an American in tech with a relatively high income.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  High quality when an American is in the room or high quality all the time? My experience with family members and their friends, who live in countries with many social services, is that they only call them high quality when Americans are present. The rest of the time you'd think they were being marched to the gulag when trying to make use of said services.
  - jorblumesea 4y ago
    Americans oversell the quality of their healthcare. American healthcare is actually just as bad as "socialized medicine", we just spend more on it and have less access. "But you have to wait months for a specialist in Canada!" That's different from the US system, how? Have you ever tried to get appointments? We're also booking many months out. "Want this live saving surgery? Let's see if insurance will cover it first, you might impact our profits. " K... It all sucks, but at least everyone gets it in some places as opposed to the system working for a privileged few. Ironically, the US does have socialized medicine, it's called Medicare, which is wildly popular. The US healthcare system is one of the strongest arguments for government take over.
    - xenospn 4y ago
traceroute66 4y ago
> No, it isn't. For example, Its not only about the money my friend ! Please read the next line of my post, the one with the word "rights". I think you will find it is an indisputable fact that employment rights in Western Europe are centuries ahead of the US. I mean, there was another thread right here on HN posted yesterday about some guy worrying about mat/pat leave in the US. That's a given in Western Europe and woe betide the employer that tries to mess with your mat/pat rights !
- drstewart 4y ago
  What were European maternity laws like in the 18th century?
rozenmd 4y ago
You could live with dignity here in France on minimum wage, how about the US?
- jdhn 4y ago
  What does dignity mean in this context?
  - Marazan 4y ago
    It means an adverse medical condition doesn't financially cripple you for life.
    - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
      How do you objectively measure that? Overall quality of life umbers suggest the opposite of what you say in the above comment. We should always go by data and objectivity: https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=France https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/compare_countries_res... Also, HDI for the US is higher that of France: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/hdi-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/hdi-by-co...
      - ben_w 4y ago
        I think you first link mainly demonstrates that quality of life is composed of many things. It's OK for different people to weight each of those things differently.
      - jerojero 4y ago
        If you use the inequality adjusted HDI then the USA falls below France. It's up to you to decide if that's a more fair comparison or not, but we are not most people so I find inequality an extremely important measure to adjust for. I think I'd rather be poor or middle class in France than I would the USA. But I would prefer to be wealthy in the USA than in France.
capableweb 4y ago
Not sure how it is in France in particular, but €2k/month would allow you to live a pretty relaxed life in most places on the Iberian Peninsula (metropolitan areas is doable with that, but less comfortable of course)
ben_w 4y ago
Money's one thing. Quality of life for that money is another. My statutory minimum holiday allowance is 20 days[0], plus public holidays, plus sick leave[1], plus extra leave for things like weddings and funerals, plus parents get 3 years parental leave[2]. [0] my actual paid holiday allowance is higher than that [1] for example, I opened a tin of tomatoes badly during the pandemic, and gouged out a 2 mm x 2 mm x 20 mm region of skin on my finger, bleeding profusely. I got a paid week off work for it to heal. [2] Not sure the details, looks like it changed recently, but I think at least some of that is paid leave, between €(300+150) and €(1800+900) per month.
- nunez 4y ago
  what does having high amounts of leave matter if you can't afford to do much with it?
- culi 4y ago
  > 3 years parental leave As an american worker, this is unimagineable. My company just announced that they've increased the maternal leave to a whole 3 weeks... To show off how progressive and forward they are Meanwhile heavily unionized casino workers in Las Vegas are having the company help them finance their houses, months of maternal leave, and will even help people pay for school. All for blue collar work
  - pyuser583 4y ago
    Amazon has pretty good parental leave. Most tech companies do.
    - xenospn 4y ago
      “Pretty good” in the US is 12 weeks with a heavy side dish of guilt.
- mgraczyk 4y ago
  A good software engineer in SF with ~5 years experience takes home more than 3 years of top tier French pay in 1 year, so 3 years of parental leave doesn't sound so good to me.
mrtksn 4y ago
For this kind of stuff it's usually better to check things like life expectancy, satisfaction etc. Many times, it's just a different way of money routing to run the services that sustain a society. Nothing is free, it doesn't really matter if you first get the money into your bank account and then distribute it to hospitals and schools personally or you don't see the money in your account and it's distributed on your behalf to schools and hospitals. Fun fact, in Europe they sell plane tickets to America where you can go and pay for your education and healthcare like just like an American. The real plight of our times is housing anyway and that unfortunately is a global plight.
SettembreNero 4y ago
The chart literally says "net"(s) salary. ~1400€ is also the minimum wage in France, and if you count in that you have a kinda decent welfare (still light years ahead of US) it means that you can live a better life than the equivalent in the US

by blfr 4y ago

random314 4y ago

In terms of median income, France and USA don't seem far apart 16K vs 19K https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-income-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...

klyrs 4y ago
Moreover, a normal work week in France is 35 hours. Assuming Americans work 40 hours a week, the implied median hourly wage is just about the same.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> median income, France and USA don't seem far apart 16K vs 19K After taxes and healthcare, adjusting for instability, the median European worker is better off. The top-performing American, on the other hand, is far better off than their European counterpart*. This is the design. Immigration + better life for the ambitious at the cost of a worse life for the median. It’s a recipe for brain drain and it works, though we must be honest at what cost. *non-aristocratic
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > lucky Sure, it’s a stochastic process. But it’s also not stationary. Providing an agglomeration incentive for those who believe they have non-stationary characteristics is a valid strategy.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      > Providing an agglomeration incentive for those who believe they have non-stationary characteristics is a valid strategy. Sorry, but I have absolutely no idea what this means.
  - UmbertoNoEco 4y ago
    lucky well connected belonging to the 'right' race;gender;social class; nationality
MontyCarloHall 4y ago
That is extremely far off from what other sources report. For instance, it does not match what the OECD says [0]: median individual income in the US was $42k in 2019; in France, it was $28k. It also does not match what the St. Louis Fed says [1], which says the US median individual income was $36k in 2019. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income#Median_equivalent_adult_income https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income#Median_equival... [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

slively 4y ago

In the Twitter thread folks mention it is after taxes. Looking at income alone and not other benefits is also pretty misleading. I’m not here to say I know how much better/worse it is in France, just that this doesn’t seem like a good argument.

blfr 4y ago
This is before employee's taxes but after employer's taxes. OP explains > Net in France means after the taxes your employer pays but before the taxes you pay on your income. I know it's confusing! https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1564875547792080898 https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1564875547792080898 The benefits would have to be really, really sweet to consider making half as much a "worker's paradise."
- slively 4y ago
  Please keep going, it’s worth trying to compare all compensation and benefits, and we both might learn something.
- Klinky 4y ago
  You really do need to look at the whole picture of cost of living & quality of life. Sure someone in the Bay Area could make 5x that, but that doesn't mean they're living 5x better or things aren't 5x more expensive.
  - KronisLV 4y ago
    > ...or things aren't 5x more expensive. While I agree with you in regards to things like quality of life, health care, food, housing and many services, in a globalized economy certain goods that one might want to purchase don't scale that much depending on where one lives. For example, consider an iPhone 13, in this case a black one with 256 GB of storage and not bound to any particular carrier: https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-13 https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-13 It costs 929$. Now here's the same model in a local store here in Latvia, also an iPhone 13, black color, 256 GB of memory: https://www.1a.lv/p/mobilais-telefons-apple-iphone-13-melna-4gb-256gb/cs5d?cat=7nh&index=8 https://www.1a.lv/p/mobilais-telefons-apple-iphone-13-melna-... It costs 939€ or around 934$. You hear a lot about people in US making over 100k$ (with varying taxes) per year, over here this year I'll probably make around 36k$ before taxes and 24k$ after taxes. So essentially when the cost of goods in a globalized economy (for these products that cannot be produced locally) remains consistent across different nations, someone in the US will realistically have a purchasing power that is many times larger than mine. Actually I wrote about my personal finances on my blog a while ago "On finances and savings": https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings Note: I don't consider myself as someone who can actually afford Apple devices, just using them as one example of that kind of a good; nobody is going to give you a car 2-3x cheaper just because you're from Latvia either, or a computer, or many other goods. Of course, your argument does hold true for other things, for example it's possible to rent a studio apartment here for around 300-400$ per month. Also my university degrees were free (though people with worse grades might have to pay if there are not enough budget places allocated) and I haven't had any significant healthcare expenses myself as of yet.

jorblumesea 4y ago

In Europe, many things are provided by the government and at high quality. This means their quality of life is better, even if they don't earn as much. They don't "need" a high income to have a nice life. It's really not that useful or relevant to look purely at numbers, it's what you get out of your current political system. In the US, you need to make good money because everything is out of pocket. If you don't, your quality is life is poor. This is also why whenever Americans compare their life to Europe, it's always numbers based. It's all we know: big numbers, better life. Not to mention things that are not easily qualified by pure numbers, such as work culture, vacation time, public transit. Europe has vastly more progressive and people friendly political, economic system and cultural setup. This is speaking as an American in tech with a relatively high income.

Mountain_Skies 4y ago
High quality when an American is in the room or high quality all the time? My experience with family members and their friends, who live in countries with many social services, is that they only call them high quality when Americans are present. The rest of the time you'd think they were being marched to the gulag when trying to make use of said services.
- jorblumesea 4y ago
  Americans oversell the quality of their healthcare. American healthcare is actually just as bad as "socialized medicine", we just spend more on it and have less access. "But you have to wait months for a specialist in Canada!" That's different from the US system, how? Have you ever tried to get appointments? We're also booking many months out. "Want this live saving surgery? Let's see if insurance will cover it first, you might impact our profits. " K... It all sucks, but at least everyone gets it in some places as opposed to the system working for a privileged few. Ironically, the US does have socialized medicine, it's called Medicare, which is wildly popular. The US healthcare system is one of the strongest arguments for government take over.
  - xenospn 4y ago

traceroute66 4y ago

> No, it isn't. For example, Its not only about the money my friend ! Please read the next line of my post, the one with the word "rights". I think you will find it is an indisputable fact that employment rights in Western Europe are centuries ahead of the US. I mean, there was another thread right here on HN posted yesterday about some guy worrying about mat/pat leave in the US. That's a given in Western Europe and woe betide the employer that tries to mess with your mat/pat rights !

drstewart 4y ago
What were European maternity laws like in the 18th century?

rozenmd 4y ago

You could live with dignity here in France on minimum wage, how about the US?

jdhn 4y ago
What does dignity mean in this context?
- Marazan 4y ago
  It means an adverse medical condition doesn't financially cripple you for life.
  - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
    How do you objectively measure that? Overall quality of life umbers suggest the opposite of what you say in the above comment. We should always go by data and objectivity: https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=France https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/compare_countries_res... Also, HDI for the US is higher that of France: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/hdi-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/hdi-by-co...
    - ben_w 4y ago
      I think you first link mainly demonstrates that quality of life is composed of many things. It's OK for different people to weight each of those things differently.
    - jerojero 4y ago
      If you use the inequality adjusted HDI then the USA falls below France. It's up to you to decide if that's a more fair comparison or not, but we are not most people so I find inequality an extremely important measure to adjust for. I think I'd rather be poor or middle class in France than I would the USA. But I would prefer to be wealthy in the USA than in France.

capableweb 4y ago

Not sure how it is in France in particular, but €2k/month would allow you to live a pretty relaxed life in most places on the Iberian Peninsula (metropolitan areas is doable with that, but less comfortable of course)

ben_w 4y ago

Money's one thing. Quality of life for that money is another. My statutory minimum holiday allowance is 20 days[0], plus public holidays, plus sick leave[1], plus extra leave for things like weddings and funerals, plus parents get 3 years parental leave[2]. [0] my actual paid holiday allowance is higher than that [1] for example, I opened a tin of tomatoes badly during the pandemic, and gouged out a 2 mm x 2 mm x 20 mm region of skin on my finger, bleeding profusely. I got a paid week off work for it to heal. [2] Not sure the details, looks like it changed recently, but I think at least some of that is paid leave, between €(300+150) and €(1800+900) per month.

nunez 4y ago
what does having high amounts of leave matter if you can't afford to do much with it?
culi 4y ago
> 3 years parental leave As an american worker, this is unimagineable. My company just announced that they've increased the maternal leave to a whole 3 weeks... To show off how progressive and forward they are Meanwhile heavily unionized casino workers in Las Vegas are having the company help them finance their houses, months of maternal leave, and will even help people pay for school. All for blue collar work
- pyuser583 4y ago
  Amazon has pretty good parental leave. Most tech companies do.
  - xenospn 4y ago
    “Pretty good” in the US is 12 weeks with a heavy side dish of guilt.
mgraczyk 4y ago
A good software engineer in SF with ~5 years experience takes home more than 3 years of top tier French pay in 1 year, so 3 years of parental leave doesn't sound so good to me.

mrtksn 4y ago

For this kind of stuff it's usually better to check things like life expectancy, satisfaction etc. Many times, it's just a different way of money routing to run the services that sustain a society. Nothing is free, it doesn't really matter if you first get the money into your bank account and then distribute it to hospitals and schools personally or you don't see the money in your account and it's distributed on your behalf to schools and hospitals. Fun fact, in Europe they sell plane tickets to America where you can go and pay for your education and healthcare like just like an American. The real plight of our times is housing anyway and that unfortunately is a global plight.

SettembreNero 4y ago

The chart literally says "net"(s) salary. ~1400€ is also the minimum wage in France, and if you count in that you have a kinda decent welfare (still light years ahead of US) it means that you can live a better life than the equivalent in the US