A lot of the price difference between Europe and USA now are wages. US wages for construction workers in NYC or SF are 2 or 3 times that of Madrid. Lots of things are cheap just for this reason alone.
Yes, but that cuts in the other direction. In the U.S., skilled work like subway construction will provide employer-paid healthcare. U.S. employers pay $1.3 trillion a year in healthcare benefits. You have to account for that on top of the reported wages. So that makes U.S. workers even more expensive relative to workers in Europe, where healthcare will be paid from taxes on the wages paid to employees.
people making this argument always forget the most critical aspect - people generally need healthcare when they are not working, almost always when retired.
Your argument is then essentially that people should be working indefinitely.
We’re talking about how labor costs impact subway construction costs. Retirees aren’t relevant to that. (And the U.S. has universal healthcare for them anyway.)
In Madrid where the average monthly pretax salary is below 1500 a shared room with four strangers costs 400-709 a month and small aprtments in bad neighborhoods cost 3000-4000 a square meter to buy.
Also, a shared apartment costs as much as you say. Not a room (source: idealista.es).
Purchase prices are high, but I'm curious as to what you consider a bad neighborhood, given the overall safety statistics in Spain, and Madrid in particular.
Housing affordability is a real problem, but misrepresenting data is counterproductive, as it can be easily disproven.
The US project prices are not just 3X the EU project prices. It’s just that the construction companies & consultancies overcharge. In the US the overhead is insane. From construction, to universities, to hospitals. Insane overheads everywhere.
This is an interesting one. I live in NYC and have spent lots of time in Spain - the cost of living differential is easily within the 2-3x range, maybe more if you're talking housing specifically.
I can't confidently say whether one feels more comfortable working construction in a globally VHCOL city like NYC or SF or in a MCOL city like Madrid.