[refurb]

The US has a good social security system, better than Canada’s in terms of providing retirement pension (where I’m from).

It also has very high quality (Berkeley, UMich, etc) public universities where you won’t pay $40k per year in tuition.

And for healthcare, a good tech job will provide good coverage.

So it’s kind of a “eat your cake and have it too situation” for some.

[ranguna]

Compare that social security system with EU average. You don't pay 40k/year, but do you pay 0 and get top eduction ?

Good tech job? What about everyone else, are we that selfish?

[refurb]

I actually did compare the retirement/disability payouts to one European country at one point (a Scandinavian country - Norway I think) and the US was comparable. Shocking I know. Sure the US doesn’t have the same extent of programs, but acting like US has nothing is just fake news.

And no, the education doesn’t cost $40k (that was my point) and the higher salary easily offsets the loans for a lot of careers.

And no, there are plenty of good paying jobs in the US, not just tech (I’m not in tech).

[ricardobayes]

I think it pretty much evens out for the average person - not a tech high earner but not someone living on benefits either. In Europe the average salary is 1695 Euros (2050 USD) a month, while in America it is 2136 Euros (2594 USD). In Europe we have free healthcare and mostly free* education. So on paper it evens out on the long run. But in Europe we have diverse countries - the top tier are having it better than the US, while the bottom tier are having it much worse. For example, Bulgarians earn an average salary of a measly 550 Euros (667 USD).