6 ms·

It depends on your company, but the statutory minimums are awful. You get a minimum of 2 week's extra pay if you have over 2 years service, and Job Seekers' Al

It depends on your company, but the statutory minimums are awful. You get a minimum of 2 week's extra pay if you have over 2 years service, and Job Seekers' Allowance is about 77 quid a week - so imagine living on less than $500 a month. Healthcare access (via the NHS) is unaffected, you might be able to get free prescriptions too. But in general it's terrible. As always in Europe you either want to be an ultra-rich landowning aristocrat (little to no property tax, inheritance tax, etc.) or very poor/unemployed (e.g. a refugee) so you qualify for state housing, etc. - work does not pay. You pay high taxes and then don't qualify for assistance when it matters. The USA is better by far where you can just manage your own savings with your 3-4x higher salary, healthcare is still an issue though.

doetoe 4y ago
> in Europe you want to be [...] e.g. a refugee Have you ever spoken to a (non-white) refugee in Europe?
Jommi 4y ago
this isn't the case in northern Europe at all. First of all you get around 1kish a month no questions asked, more if you have bills etc. you can prove you need to pay and if you opted into "unemployment insurance" while employed, you'd be getting 60-80% of your salary for the next 12 months this insurance costs around 100e a year to opt into
- kioleanu 4y ago
  Chiming in for Germany where unemployment insurance is mandatory and deducted from the salary each month. I personally pay 82 euros per month for 80% over a 1 year period (I think, I haven't checked in a while)
  - denvrede 4y ago
    60% (67% if you have at least one kid) of your average net salary over the last 12 month before unemployment. Capped at ~2k in the old states and ~1.8k in the new ones. Paid for a max of 12 month for ages 49 and below after that it gets slightly longer.
kypro 4y ago
> As always in Europe you either want to be an ultra-rich landowning aristocrat (little to no property tax, inheritance tax, etc.) or very poor/unemployed (e.g. a refugee) so you qualify for state housing, etc. - work does not pay. I just left an inappropriately long comment saying, in effect, actually the same thing. The US isn't perfect, but if you want to work you're generally able to move up the economic ladder easier from what I've seen. High income taxes combined with consumption taxes make wealth creation via employment almost impossible.
- eddsh1994 4y ago
  > make wealth creation via employment almost impossible. Depends on what 'wealth' means here, but you can get a 1% salary in England in your late 20s by contracting in tech and save several grand a month. Put that in shares & buy-to-lets and you'll be very well off by 40 compared to the average person. With the lower cost of living I don't see any issues here... If that's what drives you of course.
  - scarby2 4y ago
    the cost of living isn't lower though.
  - iExploder 4y ago
    used to be like that 20 years ago, maybe still doable in todays economy but the bar is much much higher and there are some new risks involved
- Yoric 4y ago
  > The US isn't perfect, but if you want to work you're generally able to move up the economic ladder easier from what I've seen. According to recent Nobel prizes in economic (Duflo and Banerjee), moving up the economic ladder has degraded so much in the US that it's currently lagging slightly behind Europe. Their study dates back to ~2018, though.
scarby2 4y ago
I was unemployed in the UK once (early in my career) it was not fun, luckily i was able to move in with my mother and scrape by for a few months. When my partner became unemployed in the USA i was amazed that she was getting $750 a week and her healthcare plan was $200 a month due to the marketplace subsidy.
iExploder 4y ago
Exactly on point, Europe is feudal and always have been. It is actually the reason why USA was "invented", when people who were fed up with the system left to start anew. I studied, lived and worked in high demand field all my adult life in Europe, am in my mid 30s and have nothing really to show for it. Salaries are lower than USA, the taxes are ridiculous, (progressive up to 50%), reasonably new house prices in reasonable locations are in millions. And health care... lol.. ok - it just about works, but as you can imagine anything public is prone to corruption and lowest passable quality Seeing USA, the last bastion for people who could make something out of themselves by real work crumbling and crawling to its death is disheartening.
- jjav 4y ago
  > Salaries are lower than USA, the taxes are ridiculous, (progressive up to 50%), reasonably new house prices in reasonable locations are in millions. Marginal tax rates in California are also around 50% as well (above or below, depending on income). Houses are certainly in the millions. But on top of this you get to pay separately for extremely expensive health insurance and education, things that in most countries are very reasonably priced or even "free" (not free since it's paid for by the taxes, but at least you get services in exchange for your taxes, unlike in the US where you pay the taxes and have to pay separately for all the services).
  - iExploder 4y ago
    I'm not an expert on this but a quick check online and I found tax brackets for California: $35,000-$80,000 [25%] $80,000-$170,000 [28%] I'm just going to let you know that in Europe (Austria) personal income of 32,076 to 62,080 is taxed at 42% rate above 60k is taxed with 50%. And this does not include social and health insurance that is mandatory... To give you TLDR of the European experience, you look at the gross salary, multiply by 0.45 and this is the real money you would see landing in your account, .. enjoy .. :)
- nivenkos 4y ago
  Yeah, although the USA didn't get there by itself, it's built on an empire of exploitation and murder in Latin America and Asia, etc.

doetoe 4y ago

> in Europe you want to be [...] e.g. a refugee Have you ever spoken to a (non-white) refugee in Europe?

Jommi 4y ago

this isn't the case in northern Europe at all. First of all you get around 1kish a month no questions asked, more if you have bills etc. you can prove you need to pay and if you opted into "unemployment insurance" while employed, you'd be getting 60-80% of your salary for the next 12 months this insurance costs around 100e a year to opt into

kioleanu 4y ago
Chiming in for Germany where unemployment insurance is mandatory and deducted from the salary each month. I personally pay 82 euros per month for 80% over a 1 year period (I think, I haven't checked in a while)
- denvrede 4y ago
  60% (67% if you have at least one kid) of your average net salary over the last 12 month before unemployment. Capped at ~2k in the old states and ~1.8k in the new ones. Paid for a max of 12 month for ages 49 and below after that it gets slightly longer.

kypro 4y ago

> As always in Europe you either want to be an ultra-rich landowning aristocrat (little to no property tax, inheritance tax, etc.) or very poor/unemployed (e.g. a refugee) so you qualify for state housing, etc. - work does not pay. I just left an inappropriately long comment saying, in effect, actually the same thing. The US isn't perfect, but if you want to work you're generally able to move up the economic ladder easier from what I've seen. High income taxes combined with consumption taxes make wealth creation via employment almost impossible.

eddsh1994 4y ago
> make wealth creation via employment almost impossible. Depends on what 'wealth' means here, but you can get a 1% salary in England in your late 20s by contracting in tech and save several grand a month. Put that in shares & buy-to-lets and you'll be very well off by 40 compared to the average person. With the lower cost of living I don't see any issues here... If that's what drives you of course.
- scarby2 4y ago
  the cost of living isn't lower though.
- iExploder 4y ago
  used to be like that 20 years ago, maybe still doable in todays economy but the bar is much much higher and there are some new risks involved
Yoric 4y ago
> The US isn't perfect, but if you want to work you're generally able to move up the economic ladder easier from what I've seen. According to recent Nobel prizes in economic (Duflo and Banerjee), moving up the economic ladder has degraded so much in the US that it's currently lagging slightly behind Europe. Their study dates back to ~2018, though.

scarby2 4y ago

I was unemployed in the UK once (early in my career) it was not fun, luckily i was able to move in with my mother and scrape by for a few months. When my partner became unemployed in the USA i was amazed that she was getting $750 a week and her healthcare plan was $200 a month due to the marketplace subsidy.

iExploder 4y ago

Exactly on point, Europe is feudal and always have been. It is actually the reason why USA was "invented", when people who were fed up with the system left to start anew. I studied, lived and worked in high demand field all my adult life in Europe, am in my mid 30s and have nothing really to show for it. Salaries are lower than USA, the taxes are ridiculous, (progressive up to 50%), reasonably new house prices in reasonable locations are in millions. And health care... lol.. ok - it just about works, but as you can imagine anything public is prone to corruption and lowest passable quality Seeing USA, the last bastion for people who could make something out of themselves by real work crumbling and crawling to its death is disheartening.

jjav 4y ago
> Salaries are lower than USA, the taxes are ridiculous, (progressive up to 50%), reasonably new house prices in reasonable locations are in millions. Marginal tax rates in California are also around 50% as well (above or below, depending on income). Houses are certainly in the millions. But on top of this you get to pay separately for extremely expensive health insurance and education, things that in most countries are very reasonably priced or even "free" (not free since it's paid for by the taxes, but at least you get services in exchange for your taxes, unlike in the US where you pay the taxes and have to pay separately for all the services).
- iExploder 4y ago
  I'm not an expert on this but a quick check online and I found tax brackets for California: $35,000-$80,000 [25%] $80,000-$170,000 [28%] I'm just going to let you know that in Europe (Austria) personal income of 32,076 to 62,080 is taxed at 42% rate above 60k is taxed with 50%. And this does not include social and health insurance that is mandatory... To give you TLDR of the European experience, you look at the gross salary, multiply by 0.45 and this is the real money you would see landing in your account, .. enjoy .. :)
nivenkos 4y ago
Yeah, although the USA didn't get there by itself, it's built on an empire of exploitation and murder in Latin America and Asia, etc.