alt Hacker NewsI've done that math too and the other reality is that most of those costs are optional in the US.
It is 100% possible for me to have a high salary in the US and save most of it while temporarily exposing myself to larger risks. And it is far more useful for me to be able to say and show that I have a high salary, for access to credit and resources, private investments that give me the best shot of escaping a permanent underclass.
Of course, I don't want to budget, nobody wants to given the choice, so I pay for the conveniences and assurances that I can afford.
But even if the margins are smaller, the absolute numbers are great. If you aren't living paycheck to paycheck due to debt and lifestyle inflation, then you are really saving thousands of dollars a month. potentially many thousands. a single one of those is enough to travel around the world, it's just the irony that we have to come back to the US very soon in order to continue making that money. its enough to attempt to make a homerun in our capital markets on a equity name.
So, sorry commonwealth and Europe, you really don't compete on that front for people that don't already have capital. The wages are just too low.
In fact, the wages are ironically sooooo low that their main selling point - social welfare - is at parity to Americans on welfare! Who do have healthcare without premiums in some states, subsidized higher education in some cities, and more. So the systems aren't really as different as billed. Saying it another way, a European/Commonwealth citizen making their same salary in USD would get the same benefits in some parts of US, just losing all of their social standing in the process.
And finally, when Americans do earn their freedom back, with unlimited sums of money, Europe and Commonwealth countries once again become uncompelling, because the US has a more expensive, larger, funner version of everything those countries have to offer, while our US Gentry experience a different form of social welfare supporting themselves.
The incentives to really exit the US system aren't quite there. As another person mentioned, Switzerland is closest. Switzerland and schengen access is pretty appealing to me as well.
> I've done that math too and the other reality is that most of those costs are optional in the US.
If you're very young, single and childless, sort of. You can pick the lowest tier of health coverage from your employer which is often fully covered by the employer and have no other major costs. If you're young and single and healthy this can work out. Of course, if you have some kind of accident or medical emergency, expect to be bankrupted, which is not how it works in other countries.
But once you have to cover childcare and school and university, and the lack of time off for parents (add expensive babysitters on top of daycare and school) and pay for good medical coverage for a whole family and of course contribute maximums towards retirement because social security won't be there and so on. Suddenly that large gross salary is mostly gone and what little is left over isn't very different from what may be left over from a much smaller salary in a different country.
And of course here in the US we get to work our nice 60 to 80 hour weeks instead of a regular 40 hours and disconnect from work. And we might two weeks vacation, if you can afford to take it, instead of 4 to 6 weeks.