3 ms·

It's not 1:1 for other reasons either besides just pay, like you don't have to pay anything for college tuition in Germany and they have universal healthcare, s

It's not 1:1 for other reasons either besides just pay, like you don't have to pay anything for college tuition in Germany and they have universal healthcare, so you pay a ton less for healthcare expenses also, so that helps close the gap for lesser pay (also, you're working 30% less hours on average, so you have more free time to pursue other things, including a part time job if you really need to). $400/month of my take home pay for over a decade was just in student loan payments, and I got off easy compared to a lot of Americans there. My wife, for example, is still paying about $1000/month, and that's after knocking it down by about $30k recently thanks to a couple windfalls. And she's been paying hers for almost 10 years at this point as well. They also pay about 80% of your prior salary in unemployment, whereas here it's a hard cap at a really small amount (I think last time I was on it I was getting about a third of my previous salary, and my salary was a lot lower then).

listenallyall 4y ago
You seem like a rational person. Why haven't you moved to Germany?
- cableshaft 4y ago
  I don't know German, I don't think it's in the best location for geographic and geopolitical reasons (see Russian invasion of Ukraine, energy crisis, climate change), my family and friends are here and I value that a lot (also why I haven't moved to Silicon Valley despite living in the US), I already own a house where I'm at and it would be a pain to move, I've never visited and I don't tend to move to a place I haven't at least visited first (I had an opportunity to go in 2019 to volunteer to work a booth for a friend's company at the Essen board game convention, but got too busy), etc. Personally Canada appeals to me more and I might move there at some point (or at least closer to the Canadian border), but I can still acknowledge there being good things about Germany while having reasons not to move there myself. I do think I should probably move somewhere with universal healthcare before I get too old as I will probably have enough health problems that would either bankrupt me or wipe out my retirement if I stayed in the US, like has happened to several of my family and friends.

listenallyall 4y ago

You seem like a rational person. Why haven't you moved to Germany?

cableshaft 4y ago
I don't know German, I don't think it's in the best location for geographic and geopolitical reasons (see Russian invasion of Ukraine, energy crisis, climate change), my family and friends are here and I value that a lot (also why I haven't moved to Silicon Valley despite living in the US), I already own a house where I'm at and it would be a pain to move, I've never visited and I don't tend to move to a place I haven't at least visited first (I had an opportunity to go in 2019 to volunteer to work a booth for a friend's company at the Essen board game convention, but got too busy), etc. Personally Canada appeals to me more and I might move there at some point (or at least closer to the Canadian border), but I can still acknowledge there being good things about Germany while having reasons not to move there myself. I do think I should probably move somewhere with universal healthcare before I get too old as I will probably have enough health problems that would either bankrupt me or wipe out my retirement if I stayed in the US, like has happened to several of my family and friends.