| I agree with your point about Europe squandering engineering talent. Overall, it's a trade-off, though. You are right about the US opportunities, but there are downsides, too: - crime (you get crime everywhere, but the US has a particularly and unnecessarily high level of serious crime like gun crime - e.g. school shootings happen pretty regularly); - not everyone has good healthcare & social services (I am aware you will not personally be exposed to that, as you will have private healthcare; but it even bothers me if people around me are ill and cannot afford to get cured. I don't want to live somewhere where I can get a regular check at the Mayo clinic and my neighbor cannot afford their emergency dentist); - low average education level (people generally don't know much of the world, history, literature). - cultural life (theater, classical music etc.) is very uneven distributed. Also, US taxation isn't that low in general, it dramatically depends on the state you live in (TX 0% state tax versus NY, MN etc. >40%). There are places in Europe that have small tax rates (CH, LU), but they are not the best places to live for everybody. Everyone needs to weigh their priorities and match with the overall "package" (e.g. Canada is a good compromise: near-US salaries but Europe-like education of the general public) - and in any case, not everyone is free to leave where they currently reside. Austria in particular has rather low salaries (but also low rents) - but places like Vienna have a magic feel to it that just doesn't exist on other continents. In comparison, in neighboring Switzerland are very high (anyone with a tech Master's degree would be on a six digits salary), but with a huge salary gap between locals and expats for doing the same job. (I have lived in the UK, US, CH and DE.) |
I love Europe: its history, its music, its art, its architecture, its legacy - yes! the good and the bad -, its food, its cultures. But from my point of view we are killing ourselves, choked in an endless decay, metastasizing bureaucracy, and never-ending hopelessness.
I'm sure the Nordic Country are happy though, and that's the problem: American tend to compare the worst of their country with the best of our continent.