Umm what?
Have you seen the salaries and house prices in the EU.
Their average salary is about $150k for software engineers, in the EU it's about 50k. None of the taxes or any other differences make up for that.
Americans have got it easy.
You don't have to have capital (social/economic or cultural) to have the bourgeois mindset. It two things in my opinion: either you're aware that your capital, your capital esperance, or your comfort is iniquitous and you're justifying this iniquity by any myth or legend you can invent, either you're not even aware of the iniquity and how your less fortunate peers are doing.
I've been thrice in the US. California, Ohio/West virginia, and New-York/Maryland. I've talked to people trying to get the tenderloin moving, i've talked to dockers and construction workers, and i've spent a lot of time with back-to landers but also "rednecks", ex-miners or truckers in WV. I guaranty you, a Polish trucker have a better life quality than a West Virginia one. And i would rather be a construction worker in europe, anywhere, even in Croatia, than in Maryland. At least i could hope to survive my 60s.
Our standard of living don't mean much. I mean, i go sail as a leisure almost every day, i'm 2 minutes away from the sea (by foot), i've got enough money to buy a house outside the city if i want to, my main issue this day is that i need to weld a support on my bike to be able to bring my kite board with me, as the best place to kite is 20 minutes away, and doing it by bike would be shorter.
Having more than 55k/yr at 30 wouldn't make me any happier. The new fablab and engineering "courses" i will try to make for the less fortunate kids of the city with 3 friends next year will probably though.
But the education and healthcare costs might.
Also, you're much more likely to be shot or put into prison in the US, which are quite some costs too.
I don't know the numbers, but it seems to me that despite being payed better, the average US citizen carries a much bigger risk to their life than the average EU citizen, even when you include the east of the EU.
That may be true in the Valley. The media US salary is $36k. Only about top 16% of the US population gets $150k aor over.
Sure there is less corruption in EU healthcare, but outside of that sector Americans get better homes, cars, and disposable income.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...
[2] https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.j...
[3] https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6753
[4] https://mebassett.info/healthcare-ppp.html
PS Am a US citizen who lives in the UK and travels (or did precovid) to the east coast and west coast of the US and to EU capitals regularly.
Ignoring people's actual health in exchange for more expensive things seems like a backwards metric.
A country is much more than just one of its higher paying industries, especially if that industry is such an outlier like SV.
Even in the US, the compensation is bimodal. You have companies like FAANGs where SWEs are paid into the mid or even upper six figures and even juniors are making six figures. Then you have most companies outside of the SV tech industry where you'd be lucky to break $200k (in a HCOL city) retiring after many decades of work.
In terms of countries, the US now considers SWEs a "hot" or prestigious line of work. In many other countries, this is not the case. You're just another salaryman, far, far, far below the ranks of doctors, lawyers, accountants, government civil servants, etc. etc. and your compensation reflects that.
Otherwise, if you look at PPP-adjusted disposable income, even after factoring in non-monetary income (e.g. welfare), Europe is significantly poorer than US states[0]. If France were an American state, it would be the 8th poorest.
[0] https://mises.org/wire/these-us-states-have-higher-incomes-n...