Comment by kkfx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kkfx | Hacker News Reader

Two neighbors, ex-USA Citizens have give up the Citizenship to cut their tie with the IRS... They often say "America is here" (France).

IME if you plan a short migration for a project, witch means go, earn enough money, come back and you do not need ANY KIND of health services in the foreseeable meantime it's ok. If not...

USA level of services is third world compared to EU, bureaucracy is byzantine, surely you might earn much more in absolute terms, just to spend much more in countless fees, you get, perhaps depending from a place to another, very nice nature, nice colleagues, parties, spaces, ... It's an experience, but definitively not a country I'll ever choose or recommend compared to EU. Financially is a nonsense if not for a limited period of time, being healthy, etc.

My suggestion is NOT just asking about salaries but also about cost of living, about all the bureaucracy you need, about how to find a lawyer (because yes, you need one, even just to subscribe to a local gym) etc.

The inherent view so many Europeans have of the US based solely on news or anecdotes from expats is pretty amusing sometimes.

Nobody is getting a lawyer just to sign up at a gym, and our incomes are comically higher for skilled persons than European salaries. I literally make 10 times what my French counterpart would in my profession and with a much lower tax rate so the real difference is even larger. I could work for 5 years and retire in France wealthier than if I had worked a 40 year career in France. Would I rather be disabled or unemployed in France? Probably, but that's not exactly the HN audience.

> Would I rather be disabled or unemployed in France? Probably, but that's not exactly the HN audience.

But it's also about knowing that your friends, your family, the people who make your coffee, the people you meet in the park etc. will have a safety net to fall back on.

I do think that I'm not the only person who finds that reassuring.

re. the "I make more money", I realise as a person without kids, I have a skewed perspective but I don't find myself lacking a lot in life. I don't understand the obsession with wanting to get as rich as possible, and if society provides for a lot of things (including kids' college tuition) you may not need to save as much.

It's less the desire to be grotesquely wealthy and more than ability to work less time for the same quality of life. I've taken several 6+ month breaks between contracts now and they gave a lot of clarity and perspective to what life could be. Time is our most valuable and limited asset.

Many people in Europe, at least in the tech sector, seem to work less overall, whereas when I worked for an American company, our colleagues over there seemed to routinely work overtime, be on call without compensation etc.

I work 32h a week, I earn enough money for myself and I feel that my work-life-balance is pretty good. I think I prefer this to working really hard for 10-15 years, almost burning out and retire and do nothing.

You've begged the question a little by choosing France, a country with roughly the same cost of living as the US or Germany, but with programmer salaries more in line with smaller or eastern European countries.

It's true French programmers may be able to swing 10x in (parts of) the US, but they can find 2-5x just by moving to Germany or northern Europe.

Healthcare is complicated as mentioned, but I imagine his wife will get family health insurance. Despite all the true horror stories, the US has top notch health services if you are properly insured and have reserve funds for the inevitable "gotchas" in the system. Don't even dream of showing up without health insurance - the EU beats the US hands down in this scenario.

No comments about needing a lawyer to subscribe to a local gym, it's utter nonsense, perhaps even malicious.

Do family plans still frequently have extra charges for spouses who could get their own plan (via employer or by passing some base income level) but don't? This could cause issues if freelancing.

Different plans have different rules and I don't know Princeton's. I think that family plans won't generally require a freelancer spouse to obtain health care (my employer's excellent plan doesn't require my freelancing wife to do that), but I can't speak for every plan out there...

The US has a lot of issues but needing a lawyer to join the local gym is a gross exaggeration. Nobody is doing that.

You also "need a lawyer" to cancel gym memberships in Western European countries. Do some minimal research yourself.

You need a lawyer just to subscribe to a local gym?

That's an exaggeration yes, but not that much: I was in the USA for a project, I want to try a local gym and they give me a 60+ pages or so contracts!

Here, and at least in most EU country, the contract is just one page with the list of services and the relative monthly or per-entry fee + privacy notice. It's not even a real contract in the end. All I need is a generic medical certificate that declare I'm healthy enough to go to the gym.

Surely it's not a valid meter for a country, but still a significant sign of really exaggerated bureaucracy where a lawyer might be needed just to be sure not get trapped somewhere.

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