Last time I considered moving to Europe and ran the numbers, it didn't come out "fairly close" in any major city, even Oslo and Zurich. Zurich was closest though.

Some cities were ridiculously out of wack, like London where the pay cut would be like 30-50%. When you can swing an after tax savings rate of near 30-50% on the west coast, it becomes really, really difficult to make the numbers work out.

But then again this is anecdotal for a specific level. Though when I did a more brief look for levels above me, the difference was even more stark (we got some serious income inequality for upper levels in the US).