> Then I started looking into what does the average British citizen make and found it was incredibly low at 38K.

There are many ways to define and measure this (mean vs median, pre vs post tax, everyone vs just fulltime), so I don't know if the numbers are directly comparable, but US median earnings are $45K[1], which isn't that much different, especially once you take into consideration differences in government benefits.

[1] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-27...