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Comment by gpm | Hacker News Reader

The health check is paid for out of taxes though, in the end money/goods/services aren't free.

I mean sure, France's government and health care system is probably a bit more efficient than America's, but I doubt it's order of magnitude different. Maybe more importantly, but in the other direction, as a developer in France you're probably paying more for healthcare than you use (subsidizing the average person who pays less taxes). Quite arguably differences like those are things that you are purchasing with your salary by choosing to live in the US instead of France, I don't think it's either desirable or really possible to eliminate them.

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Hence my inability to compare a 150k$ offer in California to a 62k€ offer in Lyon.

I mean, completing my argument with those numbers

62k€ = 75k usd, 150 - 75 = 75. so assuming both numbers are before tax (and neglecting things like bonuses, benefits, equity, etc that you probably need to add into both numbers), there's your comparison.

Now the question to you is "is Lyon worth 75k/year over California". That's not a question of compensation, that's just a question of how much you value the difference in culture and society. Do you want to spend 75k$/year on purchasing universal healthcare (edit: I.e. your share of healthcare for everyone instead of what you purchase in the US, which is approximately just healthcare for you), a better public education system, a better social security system, less... American... neighbors, and/or whatever else you think Lyon gives you over California.

Edit: Accidentally had this saying "after tax" instead of "before tax" for an hour, I think everyone replying to me mentally corrected that anyways, but noting that I fixed it here in case they didn't.

French always use before taxes numbers ("brut"). €62k is about 41k after taxes.

I'm the first to admit I have no clue about the French tax system, but a quick search finds this [1] that suggests there are both employer and employee paid taxes. Would I be right in assuming that the reported numbers are after the employer paid taxes and before the employee paid ones?

[1] https://www.cabinet-roche.com/en/payroll-taxes-in-france/

TBH for the average employee it doesn't matter if the company or you are paying, it gets deducted automatically anyway.

There are websites [0] that will help you do the conversion Brut/Net easily

[0] https://www.salaire-brut-en-net.fr/

> I.e. your share of healthcare for everyone instead of what you purchase in the US, which is approximately just healthcare for you

This is getting off-topic, but maybe surprisingly, Americans pay more to subsidize other people's healthcare than the average French taxpayer does, despite the American system not being universal. Some back-of-envelope numbers,

France: Total French healthcare spending in 2017 was $337 billion, of which 77%, or $259 billion, was publicly financed. [1]

U.S.: Total U.S. healthcare spending was $3.8 trillion in 2019, of which 45%, or $1.7 trillion, was publicly financed (29% federal, 16% state/local, 55% private). [2]

Adjusting for the two countries' population sizes, that puts publicly financed healthcare spending at about $3900 per capita in France, versus $5200 per person in the US. Basically the somewhat lower public share for the US (45% vs. 77%) is outweighed by costs being about twice as high.

[1] https://www.commonwealthfund.org/international-health-policy...

[2] https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta...

Maybe off topic, but I appreciate the information, that's pretty surprising to me. The numbers do seem to check out, and once you actually say it makes sense.

Thanks :)

Yeah, I was surprised by it when I first looked it up also. I think partly because most people who are demographically similar to me are on private health insurance, so I think of the US as having mostly a private system. But a little over 40% of the U.S. population has public coverage: 20% are on Medicaid or CHIP (lower-income), 18% Medicare (age 65+), and 5% military/veteran.

> The health check is paid for out of taxes though

In Europe most of those taxes are paid by your employer, on top of your "before taxes" salary.

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