[barry-cotter]

No, even after any attempt to account for healthcare, pension and education the US will still look vastly better off. Unfortunately we don’t have figures on average individual consumption but by household Hong Kong consumes about $1,000 more a year than the US and the next closest is Switzerland, consuming about $10,000 a year less[1].

Generally the US pays better and at the top of any field you care to mention except perhaps finance it pays far, far better.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household...

[Judgmentality]

> except perhaps finance it pays far, far better.

I hear this a lot, but I've never seen it. I know plenty of people in tech making the better part of $1 MM a year at FAANG, and a few who even breach that. Most people I know in finance never break $500k.

So how much do people make in finance?

[ipaddr]

Pre 2008 a lot of people were retiring in 4 years. Things have changed (smaller parties) but people are still getting rich. The top tier are crushing faang salaries. A million a year is a lot but more can be available when you are trading.

[cellis]

The top tier in finance are NOT crushing the top tier in tech. No way. All these IPOS + Faang are making 10s of thousands of millionaire mid-level engineers, thousands of decamillionaire VPs and angels, and dozens of billionaires, year after year.

[ptudan]

Top traders at hedge funds are the people who become billionaires. You can easily make 2, 5, 10m+ once you become a partner.

[pvarangot]

A friend retired with more than 1M after four years in finance and living the life in NY, like he was not saving much. Most of his comp was commissions on what his algorithms or the stuff his team worked on was marking on the market. His base salary and comp were a little bit above Google, were he worked before switching to finance.

[harikb]

I take it that is not pure finance, but fin tech?

[hogu]

Algorithmic trading and quant finance count as pure finance in my book

[milesskorpen]

Hedge fund and PE folks can make way more than that (performance dependent).

[IdiocyInAction]

US households are slightly bigger than European households (2.6 vs 2.2-2.3), but yeah, the US is on average much richer than most wealthier European states. A good comparison is states to countries - Germany is about the level of Alabama and UK is like Mississippi I think.