With all the income tax, property tax, VAT (21%) and ridiculous gas prices (about $6.60 per gallon) life isn't exactly cheap here. Our middle class has been de

With all the income tax, property tax, VAT (21%) and ridiculous gas prices (about $6.60 per gallon) life isn't exactly cheap here. Our middle class has been demolished by the Satanic trinity: housing, healthcare, and education costs. Tuition: our reputable public universities are comparable to European private ones in cost. Our private ones cost almost $50k per year. It's also competitive enough to get into the top universities that the game increasingly starts in high school or before; in New York, it's very typical for merely middle-class parents to hawk up $30k per kid per year from ages 4 to 18: admissions are that competitive. Health insurance is another nightmare. Decent plans cost $500 per month for an individual in a employer-provided plan (and, increasingly, "employee contribution" of 25-100% is the norm). If you're on the individual market, you're fucked: it's closer to $1500 per month if you're healthy and have no children. Then there is housing. You can actually get a good deal (say, $150 per ft^2) in wide swathes of the country-- but those are in places with imploded job markets. To buy anywhere with an active job market is pretty much unaffordable on the typical software engineer salary, and even rents will typically be 20 to 40% of after-tax income. Europe has a lot of issues and extended liabilities, but the U.S. is far more fucked in the coming decade. I'd gladly pay $7/gallon for gas not to have to worry about healthcare (even if you have insurance, it will often fail you at the worst time) or, in the future should I have kids, education costs.