[waps]

What would be more interesting is to see a comparison on take-home pay, that you can actually spend. The numbers don't seem very accurate at all on the site. Furthermore it's sort of beside the point : you're not working for money, you're working for value.

Eu generally has 50%+ tax rates, and a ~20% VAT on anything you want to spend, combining (roughly) to between 60% and 70% of your income disappearing in govt. coffers.

California seems to have slightly under 50% taxation, combined with 4.7% VAT. Which combines to 53-55% taxation.

So US is not just well-paid, but you actually get to keep a bigger part of that. From a $76k pay you could have ~$30k disposable income after rent (outside of SF proper), while the $50k in the EU, you'd be lucky to get $15k disposable income after rent out of that (and that's ignoring that tech stuff is more expensive to start with before the tax even comes into the picture).