> healthcare does reimburse less each year The part that matters is the one about serious conditions: accidents, cancers, infarctus etc. Paying a few hundreds

> healthcare does reimburse less each year The part that matters is the one about serious conditions: accidents, cancers, infarctus etc. Paying a few hundreds a months to get a few thousands back when you break a tooth or your glasses isn't a life-changing service, it merely regulates your cash-flow for a fee. What matters is knowing that if you need a 6- or 7-figures treatment, you'll get it. You won't be bankrupt because of it, your insurance won't weasel out of paying for it, and your employment status at the time you discovered your disease is irrelevant to the way you'll be treated. All of those life-threatening and/or chronic conditions are handled by public insurance, and 100% reimbursed (except for convenience services like individual hospital room with TV, which indeed you have to pay for, directly or through your private insurance). You're right that the 20% discount claimed by the presentation is probably meant "out of the company's pocket", net salary differences are way beyond 20%. I think a regular developer with a few years of experience but no super-sexy skill will get around €2000-€2500 net of taxes in Paris. That's not a lot if you want to rent a decent flat inside Paris. People know how much they actually cost to their employer, it's written right next to their net salary on their salary sheet every month, and it's regularly reminded to them in public debates. About education, there's another advantage to its public funding: prices don't get ridiculously inflated as they are in American universities. There's no education bubble in countries supporting public education. Also, it (somewhat) improves meritocratic social mobility, which means a higher rate of smart kids actually becoming skilled professionals. Finally, as a potential employer, schools which don't treat their students as customers tend to force-feed them more of the unpalatable curriculums such as maths, algorithms, etc. You tend to get a better trained workforce. To sum it up, European prefer lower risk lifestyles, on average. There's more redistribution of wealth, less opportunity to become very rich, and less violence (I count denying a life-saving chemotherapy as violence, although social safety nets also alter crime rates). This appeals more to the kind of people who happily stay salaried than to risk-loving entrepreneurs. But as an entrepreneur, there's value in settling somewhere that appeals to the kind of people who will happily remain your employees: you don't have to pay them the opportunity cost of renouncing to become Mark Zuckerberg. What this presentation unfairly brushed off war the amount of bureaucracy you have to face in order to get anything done, and how even harder to navigate it is when you aren't a native.