Science is pretty global. The cutting edge of fusion is in France, CERN is in Switzerland, the SKA is in South Africa, and so on. On the other hand, VC money f

Science is pretty global. The cutting edge of fusion is in France, CERN is in Switzerland, the SKA is in South Africa, and so on. On the other hand, VC money for nothing more than a good pitch is certainly easier in the US. Although even there it's limited to very small (very expensive) parts of the US. One measure of QOL is indeed immigration. The US and Europe both struggle with illegal immigration. The US likely attracts more legal immigration, but to be fair even that is mostly from non-European places. It's not like there's an army of European plumbers desperately trying to get into the US. The weather is better in Europe (but both are waaaay worse than Australia. ) And yes QOL is very subjective. Which speaks to my point, simply plucking a single metric like salary out the air is meaningless- even within the US that 7k will mean different things depending on where you live.