Countries are plagued by dictatorships, bureaucracy, big government, bad fiscal and monetary policy, war and security problems, racism bad cultures (like limited social mobility, etc). And don’t forget the unique role of USA dollar.
Where else would people get opportunities that could match the United States? I can't think of any country that would even come close.
Isn’t that comparative?
If you are in the EU then the US seems like a holy grail because pay is higher. If you have dual citizenship you can probably avail of the EU safety nets if you had to go back.
If you’re in South East Asia, any EU choice is a huge improvement. Lately there has been strong immigration to Germany for example instead of coming to the US.
After naturalization and giving up my original citizenship, I am a little envious of people with dual citizenship of US + any EU country. It really doesn’t get better than that.
One of the reasons pay in the US is higher is because the EU taxes ordinary people fairly heavily to pay for those social services. But also because of systematic cultural differences between the US and EU that lead to the US having a more dynamic economy that generally pays people more.
> If you’re in South East Asia, any EU choice is a huge improvement. Lately there has been strong immigration to Germany for example instead of coming to the US.
Lately Alternative für Deutschland has been getting a lot of votes in Germany; what kinds of rules (on top of the existing ones) do they think should be in place for people in southeast asia trying to immigrate to Germany?
In the US, local and federal taxes plus property taxes are easily 50-60 percent of your income.
Inflation runs higher in NYC than the rest of the country, as well.
$300k is probably in the top 10-15% for software engineers if I had the guess. And I assume the top 10-15% in Paris is substantially more than 80k?
Edit: Okay, I guess $300k is near the median in SF if you’re including stock options. (Media base salary in SF is 150-160k)
Please don't. Europe has enough ethnic tensions. At least the US is built to be an ethnic melting pot. It's much better to go there.