[vmarsy]

Unfortunately comparing European and US salaries is comparing apples to oranges.

Not only there's vacation as other people mention, but most importantly and often ignored : tax rates and retirement.

In those 55k, you also probably have a bigger tax bill, so it would be more fair to compare money that ends up in your pocket.

Retirement: you probably have a national system, with a formula that tells: if you worked X years at salary Y, your retirement income will be Z. You might also have extra retirement plans if you want to save more. In the US, retirement pensions is not a thing (except maybe public servants etc?), So you're responsible of saving by yourself. The employer will sometime help (like for every dollar you put in your retirement plan, they'd match 50 cents, up to ~20k per year), and that money you put in the retirement plan is tax free, but the point is that it's money you theoritically should not access until retirement.

With those 2 factors, the money you actually get to use is different, and then the cost of life is different: raising kids in the US until college, would be a different price than a kid in the Netherlands until the end of university.

[hellofunk]

Income tax for a California resident is quite a bit higher than Dutch income tax for most income brackets.

Dutch income tax more closely resembles the tax bracket in midwest America.

My income tax percent in Holland is slightly lower than it was in the U.S. and my pay is a bit higher than it was in the U.S.

[ricardobeat]

Are we looking at the same Netherlands? A quick search tells me California's highest bracket is 13%. In NL you're lucky to get ~25% effective rate as a knowledge migrant, going steeply up to 52%.

[hellofunk]

13% for the state tax is huge, now add that to the U.S. Federal income tax as well, and see what your actual tax percentage is.

[vmarsy]

13% would be the state income tax.

On top of that you need to pay the federal income tax, as well as social security and Medicare tax!