[Tinyyy]

I make $400k/yr as an immigrant, and boy do I feel exploited :)

Edit: Sorry for being sarcastic and flexing here. I’m friends with many IMO and IOI medalists (per the paper) who are studying/working in the US and I think it’s an amazing opportunity for them. Where I grew up in Singapore, tech salaries are way lower, and as a new grad I think I easily 3xed what I could’ve made back there. I’m not representative of all immigrants but I believe I can represent a class of highly skilled immigrants who appreciate the opportunity. It’s extremely insulting to call people like me exploited, because the next line is - I’m bringing down your wages.

[arkitaip]

Imagine thinking you are representative of US immigrants.

[nostrademons]

The paper is specifically talking about highly skilled immigrants in math & science, though. Their dataset was a few thousand IMO gold medalists. Grandparent poster's experience is a lot more representative of this sample than a random agricultural worker who crosses the Rio Grande.

[terse_malvolio]

Doing what?

[papandada]

Post history seems to say he won a trading competition. To whoever downvoted this did you think I needed to add "so presumably he works in something along those lines"?

[dkdbejwi383]

How much of that do you spend on health insurance?

[cdash]

Probably almost nothing. People who make salaries like that also have incredibly good insurance that is also mostly paid by their company.

[esoterica]

Probably $0? People usually get health insurance on top of their reported compensation.

[bobthepanda]

The health insurance isn’t usually free. And a lot of employer plans have either lots of restrictions or high deductible or some other gotchas.

[danans]

When group health insurance is provided in the US, employers and employees usually split the cost of insurance premiums. Both employers and employees can treat their premium portion as a tax deductible expense.

Additional copays and out of pocket expenses are completely on the employee.

[np-]

Even some of the worst possible HDHP plans that employees can get have a max out of pocket of $10k/yr (pre-tax) with HSA. So you can say in the worst case OP makes $400k and pays $10k in insurance if he has some major health issues to be addressed. Or maybe just say he makes $390k and has totally free insurance? Even if he’s spending something ridiculous like $50k/yr on a family of eight’s insurance he’s still way better off.

[danans]

Yes, affording health insurance is not much of a concern for someone making 400k/yr. The financial concerns faced by the vast majority of people are never experienced by someone in that privileged a situation.

It's a much bigger story for people make closer to the median income.

[Tinyyy]

You’re right, sucks that you’re downvoted.

[cccc4all]

Could you make that or higher amount in your former country? If not, why not?

[jokethrowaway]

The US did good economically in the past couple of centuries.

There's significantly more money in the USA than in a lot of other countries.

Even accounting for the ridiculously high taxes and the work-80hrs culture, the high salaries can be worth it for some people.

[anxrn]

Irrespective of which of the myriad ways you use to compare tax raters, the assertion that the US has "ridiculously high taxes" does not hold up.

https://www.crfb.org/blogs/us-highest-taxed-nation-world