After taxes, but before healthcare and the fact that most employment is at-will.
I'll take higher taxes, healthcare through general taxation and relatively strong job security over a fixed dollar amount any day. Everyone is different though.
> After taxes, but before healthcare and the fact that most employment is at-will.
That combined doesn't even remotely cost that gap of 60k per year (plus strictly speaking this is not true since many employers would provide IT people with insurance).
> I'll take higher taxes,
It's not higher taxes. It's much lower salaries + much higher taxes combined. 60k a year in savings will provide you far more security and bargaining power than any strictest EU trade code would (and this is IMO one of the reasons for higher salaries in the US).
Well. On the other hand, I can not be laid off easily, and will need to be told at least three months in advance; if my girlfriend gets pregnant, I can take a few months off, too; if the child is sick, I can stay at home too*; if I get sick, I’ll continue to get paid; if I have back pain, I can request to get expensive ergonomic equipment from my employer; if I need to see a specialist, or get insanely expensive treatment, I don’t have to worry; I have 30 days of vacation, of which I must take at least two weeks of consecutive time off, without any negative consequences for my job; if my children go to university, it’s pretty much free, as it was for me; I can’t ever get paid less by my employer, only more; I can take a few days of external educational courses of my choice every year, and my employer has to accept that (and pay for it!); and I probably forgot a bunch of other advantages here.
Specifically on insurance: how much is that worth if it’s bound to your employer? What if you get laid off and don’t find a job in time, then get sick? What if your father is laid off at 55, nobody wants to hire him anymore due to his age and he develops cancer? I can tell you what happens in Germany: nothing. Both of you go to the MD and get treated as appropriate.
You’ll never get me to trade all of this for a bit more money that I need to spend on health care, ridiculous tips, and overpriced apartments anyway.
You'd be surprised. Tech is full of special snowflakes who don't need a union because they're one of the deserving extremely talented net contributors who earned their special privileges and don't have any problems working unpaid overtime because their employer would certainly have their back if they ever needed time off or their productivity declined because of bad health or personal issues and don't want the undeserving underperforming underachievers and talentless diversity hires to get a leg up and steal their glory.
I'm not even kidding, this is almost verbatim the attitude of plenty of (white, male, able-bodied tho at times mildly autistic) developers I've talked to throughout my career and at meetups and conferences, though few would be bold enough to spell it out this explicitly. Of course in those cases where they did end up having bad luck (be it health or otherwise) their employers did not in fact have their back, at least not longer than possible without harming profitability. If anything, developers working at smaller tech companies or in technical roles at non-technical companies were worse because they'd often see unions as only relevant for jobs that were "beneath them".
Granted, most of the people I talked to were in Central and Eastern Europe.
> Of course in those cases where they did end up having bad luck (be it health or otherwise) their employers did not in fact have their back, at least not longer than possible without harming profitability.
If you think unions or taxes will “have your back” in any real sense if you fall seriously ill you will be sorely disappointed.
> Granted, most of the people I talked to were in Central and Eastern Europe.
Could have something to do with these countries having experienced full blown communism not too long ago.
> Could have something to do with these countries having experienced full blown communism not too long ago.
That's a bit of a non-sequitur if you have any idea of how the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence treated unions. Just look at modern China if you need a refresher on what authoritrian states think about workers unionizing.
Also unions are not communism and neither did any of those countries ever experience "communism". The USSR never claimed to have "achieved communism", in fact the expression "real socialism" (or "actually existing socialism") was coined by these governments to denounce critics who demanded steps towards communism as "utopian" idealists. China today even has a full roadmap towards communism with different labeled steps to justify why it hasn't achieved communism yet and needs to be authoritarian for just a little while longer because the state will wither away eventually really soon trust me bro.
> If you think unions or taxes will “have your back” in any real sense if you fall seriously ill you will be sorely disappointed.
Not with that attitude they won't. Do you think we got legally mandated 40 hour work weeks, paid sick leave and mandatory rest periods out of the goodness of the hearts of business owners?