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Comment by toberoni | Hacker News Reader

This looks like a heavily opinionated article with a questionable use of data.

Others have mentioned the lacking focus on inequality already, so I want to add some other points:

While European countries have lower GDPs, their citizens work less hours than Americans[1] and spend less on health care[2] while having similar or longer life expectancies. Privatized education might similarly inflate GDP numbers without improving the actual quality of life.

The author - funnily enough a specialist for tax competition and board member of the Cayman Financial Review - is way too eager to draw political council from this apples to oranges comparison.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time [2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS

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If inequality within a country matters, then inequality between countries also matter. For instance back in the 60s at least European countries produced cars and other things to compete with American cars. Today when a new technology comes out, like Facebook, it captures nearly all the value in America itself. American investors and their 401k, capture a bigger share of it (the more money you have to invest, more money you'll make, which makes it disproportionately go towards America, and yes, more towards some Americans). Even in America, HCOL (high cost of living) areas capture more value than LCOL areas.

This trend is just expected to accelerate. No to mention the strengthening of the dollar and flight towards the Dollar is another wealth transfer from ROW to the US.

Speaking in the very narrow view of tech, if you work in tech in the US you are likely to make anywhere from 2 to 5 times as much as in Europe, including taxes and healthcare costs.

There simply is no comparison. Switzerland comes second, with the UK or Canada next.

Europeans always mention free healthcare. But when your salary in the US is triple before taxes then the healthcare costs are irrelevant.

The absolute truth is that by choosing to work in Europe rather than the US, you're losing potentially millions of dollars by time you reach retirement (with compounding interest investments) -- as an average individual contributor. If you're a high performer, you might lose far more than that.

Entry level grads in the US can in some cases be paid more than senior developers in the EU.

I agree the US provide a very high materialistic living standard if you are well-educated or rich - but as you said, focusing on the tech sectors is a very narrow view on societies as a whole.

As an European working in tech I really don't care about those millions of dollars. My income - very low on the SV-scale - is more than enough to live a comfortable life.

Compared to the Anglosphere this also means that there is a lot less pressure in regard to getting priced-out with a median salary. Public transport & infastructure is great, university education is cheap and housing is affordable (not just for me, but also my friends in other industries).

Personally, this feels more egalitarian and I prefer it to a society with higher GDP that comes with more inequality.

Sadly true. How often do I see this bay area etc. "whining" that some house means a couple years of saving up cash.

Here most people I know first save up for 10 years and then pay back 1300-2000k€ a month for 30 years for their house. And that's with lots of construction work done by themselves.

Most devs I know make less than 3.5k€ a month before taxes, end up with about 2.5k€.

I work for a US startup and while they all got big houses in Boston, we struggle to find anything below 600k€ here in some small Mountain town ;) , and that's usually not more than 1000 square feet.

I do earn more than twice what I did before. Working only part time and fully remote. Devs usually earn less than the business people. We got lots of free education in that regards so you can easily get a cheap 19 year old coder with 5 years from a technical school.

But if you're not out for money you can have your relaxed 38.5h/week job with 5 weeks paid vacation, obviously unlimited sick pay, up to 3 years paid maternity/paternity leave and lots and lots of protection (for example my wife is protected from being dismissed from her job until our kid is 8 years old).

Literally any discussion about EU vs US: „But what about healthcare??“

Disclaimer: I’m European.

If you can afford it, it's very good in the US.

If you can afford to have same living standards as poor Europeans, it's pretty good in the US.

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