Also there are a lot of social programs in Europe that are unavailable in the US though our tax rates are not that far off when you factor in state, federal and

Also there are a lot of social programs in Europe that are unavailable in the US though our tax rates are not that far off when you factor in state, federal and sales taxes. Medical alone, for a family is a pretty sizable chunk of expenditure. Factor in that many states only have rudimentary mass transit and you can see that 60K in Europe actually starts to look a lot better than 100K in the Vally where cost of living is astronomical.