[dominotw]

employees here have employer sponsored healthcare. The gap is huge even if you take out of pocket expenses into account.

[explorigin]

Don't just look at salary, compare against cost-of-living. There are gaps, I'm not denying that. It's just not as large as is looks on paper.

[dominotw]

Yes its not that large if you work for some enterprise in midwest. I have mid career friends in bay area pulling in 500k tc in the bay area. This is next to impossible in europe and certainly not a possibility for average engineer.

[explorigin]

The bay area is all kinds of insane in many ways. :-)

[void_mint]

Not always, and that oftentimes doesn't account for partners/children. Childcare in the US is insane. Thousands and thousands of dollars.

In the US, all kinds of expenses are pushed off of the government/employer and onto the employee. Salaries have to be way higher.