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To compare with the US you would need to adjust for hours worked (Americans work more hours per year) and pick some numbers for the employer paid health plan, a

To compare with the US you would need to adjust for hours worked (Americans work more hours per year) and pick some numbers for the employer paid health plan, and employee paid unemployment insurance (to get equivalent cover as the dole in France). Hours worked makes a huge difference to the percentages. AI said: USA: ~1,705 hours/year France: ~1,487 hours/year You actually need to convert that to non-working hours (since we live and work for our non-working hours not our working hours), plus on top of that you would need to adjust for commuting time (AI said 54 minutes for US and 50 minutes for France per working day - difficult because highly location-dependant). Raw money is highly misleading.

mamonster 1y ago
You also need to understand 3300 EUR net in France is good money. Its probably something close to 80th percentile in terms of salaries in France.
- Arnt 1y ago
  It's good money for a reason. In France, you don't pay US prices for daycare for your children, you don't have to save up to send your children to university, and so on. This sort of comparison is difficult to do well. Say you compare Paris with Los Angeles. Should you include a car since that's necessary in one of the cities you compare, or leave it out since living in the other without a car is perfectly reasonable?
mytailorisrich 1y ago
This is from the point of view of employers so the fact that worked hours are also on the lower side in France makes it even worse.
dns_snek 1y ago
> pick some numbers for the employer paid health plan Don't forget to account for real annual healthcare costs, insurance premiums are just one part of the story, but you still need to pay out of pocket for deductibles and copays. It feels like there are so many benefit that we take for granted in much of EU (even if not all of them apply universally) that you have to budget for in the US and they also incur poorly understood but very real psychological cost. I'm not in France but I graduated from university with 0 EUR in student loans because there were no tuition fees and the accommodation, food, and public transport were heavily subsidized and easily paid for with a part-time job. I don't need a car because we have a decent and safe public transport. When I took a sabbatical from work and quit my job I didn't qualify for benefits which means that I had to pay around ~50 EUR a month for health insurance. I could continue seeing specialists the same as I did before and I didn't pay a single cent out of pocket all year. I've seen people talk about how they pay $100-$200 a month for the same medication and that's with expensive insurance and then hundreds more for appointments, how they're having to fight insurance companies, scavenge for deals on medications at various pharmacies and it all sounds so exhausting. If I lived in the US, I think trying to repeat what I did here would've put me at serious risk of homelessness and inescapable life-long debt, especially if I had some bad luck with my health.

mamonster 1y ago

You also need to understand 3300 EUR net in France is good money. Its probably something close to 80th percentile in terms of salaries in France.

Arnt 1y ago
It's good money for a reason. In France, you don't pay US prices for daycare for your children, you don't have to save up to send your children to university, and so on. This sort of comparison is difficult to do well. Say you compare Paris with Los Angeles. Should you include a car since that's necessary in one of the cities you compare, or leave it out since living in the other without a car is perfectly reasonable?

mytailorisrich 1y ago

This is from the point of view of employers so the fact that worked hours are also on the lower side in France makes it even worse.

dns_snek 1y ago

> pick some numbers for the employer paid health plan Don't forget to account for real annual healthcare costs, insurance premiums are just one part of the story, but you still need to pay out of pocket for deductibles and copays. It feels like there are so many benefit that we take for granted in much of EU (even if not all of them apply universally) that you have to budget for in the US and they also incur poorly understood but very real psychological cost. I'm not in France but I graduated from university with 0 EUR in student loans because there were no tuition fees and the accommodation, food, and public transport were heavily subsidized and easily paid for with a part-time job. I don't need a car because we have a decent and safe public transport. When I took a sabbatical from work and quit my job I didn't qualify for benefits which means that I had to pay around ~50 EUR a month for health insurance. I could continue seeing specialists the same as I did before and I didn't pay a single cent out of pocket all year. I've seen people talk about how they pay $100-$200 a month for the same medication and that's with expensive insurance and then hundreds more for appointments, how they're having to fight insurance companies, scavenge for deals on medications at various pharmacies and it all sounds so exhausting. If I lived in the US, I think trying to repeat what I did here would've put me at serious risk of homelessness and inescapable life-long debt, especially if I had some bad luck with my health.