[chrneu]

they're pointing out that the US is insanely stupid when it comes to healthcare and retirement. the stuff we do in this country is so much extra work/effort/cost and all of it comes at the worker's cost.

they were being sarcastic.

[distances]

My reading was that nothing of that applies in Europe. No earning 6 figures, no way to invest pre-tax or in any other tax advantaged way, no way to optimize healthcare costs, early retirement unlikely.

[urxvtcd]

Retirement accounts are a thing in Europe though. In Poland for example there's IKE and IKZE. IKE is a bit simpler of the two. If you hold your money on IKE until you're 60 you're not paying taxes on that. Can invest in stocks or bonds.

[distances]

Yes, as always it depends on the country. Germany and a bunch of others have nothing except completely useless insurance/capital guaranteed options.

For investments, you invest post-tax and pay capital gains when withdrawing.

[ljm]

UK has the state pension which comes from NI (National Insurance) contributions which in a way acts like a Defined Benefit pension in that you work for X number of years and get state pension of Y in return(currently adjusted for inflation, wage growth, or 2.5% annually, called the 'triple lock'). Not based on income so you don't get a massive state pension by earning 6+ figures.

Then more recently (as in, as of around 2012 and up to 2018) we got auto-enrollment into private pensions, which are more like Defined Contribution (DC). Employer has to pay a percentage into the pot and so do you. Usually 5% employee and 3% employer by default but many will offer better (or contribution matching) as a perk. I think this is probably the same or similar to the 401k in US terms. The employer chooses the pension provider but you need to proactively switch to a high risk scheme to see any growth from it.

At a certain point the tax rebate from the government doesn't cover your whole income so you have to file a tax return to get the rest of the rebate. You can instead choose to 'salary sacrifice' which means you are lowering your income on paper but the sacrifice is put directly into pension (or otherwise can be used to get a car on lease or a bicycle via another scheme). Salary sacrifice is used by a lot of higher earners to bring their gross income down in order to avoid being cut off on certain benefits like child-care.

After all that you have SIPP (Self-Invested Personal Pension) which gives you more control over what you can invest it. Not just stocks, ETFs, and all that, but can also be commercial property (so the pension itself owns that asset). This gets the same tax treatment for pensions.

Finally there is the ISA and LISA. The first is a savings account where any interest or capital gain is free of tax, the second gets a 25% boost by the government to help buy a house or flat, but you can only use that money for a mortgage deposit.

Most people won't see all that much from their auto-enrollment given they could just opt-out to get the extra cash in their paycheque (especially when a low earner), or might not know to switch to the high risk fund, so the state pension and other benefits for OAPs will be there still. Those with more disposable income or a long term view (e.g. doing FIRE) are likely to max out the various vehicles available to them but at that point you're gonna be earning too much to care.

No need to optimise healthcare costs or any of that unless you want to go private.

[Cthulhu_]

There are options to save extra for retirement, if you take a private pension or a bank account that you can't withdraw from until retirement for example; in that case, you don't pay wealth tax and only pay taxes when it starts paying out. Sometimes the money you put into it is tax deductible, too. But, that's in NL, I don't know anywhere else. Source: https://www.nibud.nl/onderwerpen/pensioen/pensioen-opbouwen/

6 figures is possible, there are/were some software companies (VC backed, US based, US startup style, FAANG) that pay that much, otherwise there's highly paid jobs like management, doctors/dentists, landlord, public motivational speaker, drug dealer, etc that can earn you that much. But it's not handed to you like it feels like it is in the US / SF, but I realize that's very much a unique bubble.

So yeah, basically none of your comment is true, it's just not talked about as much because our basic systems are alright for most people and few have the extra income to think about doing more with it.

[distances]

The investment taxation was already discussed in a sibling comment. As always in Europe, it depends on a country. Good for you if that's possible in Netherlands.

Of course some roles can earn six figures or more, hopefully everyone knows there isn't a hard cap on earnings. Should've been obvious that wasn't my claim.

[unmole]

> the stuff we do in this country is so much extra work/effort/cost and all of it comes at the worker's cost.

The GP described tax optimizations for the highest earners. The idea that they would be better off in Europe is plainly ridiculous.

[markus_zhang]

Or, very smart for the establishment.