Pay for same $100k Job: USA vs EU
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Exactly, they are the same. They also only apply to individuals, not businesses. Consider it a anti consumerist tax which is higher on stuff like alcohol but lower on essential things like groceries. VAT also does not apply on rent or utilities.
They are fucked up in Finland too, nowhere in the Nordic countries do you pay 50% income tax. That's complete bullshit. Every country has 0% income tax up to a certain level. Sweden are the biggest assholes here allowing you to earn only $2000/yr tax free, Norway allow you to earn up to $50 000 tax free per year.
The next rate of income tax is municipality and county tax, this obviously varies between municipality and county. But is usually around 30%. This covers tax funded education, tax funded, healthcare, mass transit, social security, public parks and all of that stuff.
Once you earn more than $60 000/year you start to pay capital gains tax to the national government. All this means in reality is basically that if you plan to make a shitload of money, just become a consultant and you don't have to pay these taxes. Or it means that you limit your work hours to 40hr/weeks, because why would you work more if you don't get paid more.
Below $60 000/yr will get you very far in the Nordic countries. If you own a big house with two cars in a double garage your utility bills for that is likely no more than $500/mo. Healthy eco groceries and other essentials for a family of 4 is around $500/mo. The rest you can spend on luxuries.
This rabbi just hates Finland for some reason.
You don't pay capital gains tax on income, anywhere. I know the Finnish are special, but even they can't be that retarded to tax income as if it was capital.
Norway allows you to earn up to $50k tax free? Lol, that is some insane bullshit. Maybe $5k.
Nanny state countries with progressive taxation do indeed tax you 50% on parts of your income.
Absolutely do not believe. Just googling average rent in some Scandinavian cities, and it's in the order of $1k for two bedroom apartments, nevermind a home.
Checking on price comparison cites, groceries in Finland is just 20% less expensive than somewhere like LA.
You got it wrong, part of those "muh 50%" is the included capital gains tax. You only pay that if you make more than around $60 000 yearly. Anything lower means lower tax.
This is why people don't work longer than 40 hour weeks in the Nordic countries, because there's no gain in that. I know because I live there. For most workers your income tax is 25-35% depending on country, county and municipality.
$1k for a two bedroom apartment? the hell did you look? a 5 star hotel with room service and all inclusive? I paid $300/mo for a two bedroom apartment. $500/mo gets you a house. Assuming you choose to rent. But that's retarded since owning is just as cheap.
Some brand new apartments could cost more, but that's also retarded because why would you wanna live in a apartment where just 3m from your window is the next building and surrounded by libtards? Commie blocks are much nicer inside and has plenty of space between them full of parks with big trees.
All prices in Scandinavia includes 25% VAT, remove that for comparison.
I looked up Helsinki.
Where in scandinavia are you paying $500/m for a house?
That's irrelevant to the point. From whatever money you get after all taxes, you have to buy stuff, and the stuff you're buying is hardly cheaper than in one of the most expensive cities in America.
Anywhere outside the capital cities. Smaller cities are usually cheaper. If you gonna compare Helsinki, capital of Finland and Finland's largest city then you'll have to compare to New York or Los Angeles which is many many times more expensive.
I'm not rich, but I still own a couple of houses with no debt, good luck doing that in America.
It's very relevant because all of EU includes VAT, while the US does not. You're comparing the final gross price with your net price. Don't they teach you in school how taxes work?
I'm comparing net salary to net salary.
How is that hard for you to understand?
If one person gets $50 and an apple is $1 and another person gets $20 and an apple is $0.80, then the first person can buy more apples. It's irrelevant that the second person is being screwed by taxes.
Now you're doing it again, but with wages instead of grocery prices. You're not making $70 000/year net in the US by working for McDonalds, that's just bullshit.
Where is the income tax 50%? I know no such place in Sweden. Here you can see them all, highest is 34.30% and that's a very small municipality with just a few thousand people who all expect plenty of services.
Over roughly $70 000 you pay "marginalskatt", a form of capital gains tax straight to the national government. That is 55%, and anyone who make that much knows how to avoid paying it anyway, only retards and government simps pays it.
Finland and Norway are terrible examples for grocery prices because they both import a lot. It's cheaper in Sweden, but it's gone up here too because of inflation. Norwegians often cross the border because it's cheaper to buy stuff in Sweden.
I never paid more than $200/mo in utilities for a house I own, paid $5000 when I bought it, most houses here don't cost more than $30 000. And since I installed solar panels and got rid of the electric bills I'm actually making money from living here. Basically rent free.
First of all, just googling "highest tax bracket sweden" I get 52% (Municipal + County). Did you just count the minicipal tax?
Secondly, you can add around 10%-15% to that. You have to count the portion that the employer pays, that's just income tax by another name.
So yeah, not 50%, more like 60%, sorry my bad.
Gulag is lying to you. 55% is the absolutely highest you would ever pay. And that's Municipal + County + Government. The last one serves only the purpose to stop you from working too much. You only pay that if you make more than $70 000/year. This system is better for low and middle wage workers.
It's a separate tax yea, labeled "fee" and often hidden from you. But it has nothing to do with your income tax. It's your health insurance, vacation days, sick leave and other benefits you would only ever see at extremely well paid jobs in the US. And that's for low wage workers too.
If you worked at McDonald's in the US you wouldn't have nay vacation days, no paid sick leave, no insurance if you hurt yourself at the job, no unemployment security in case you lose your job and it's not your fault. On the other hand there's no minimum wage either so the system is perfectly balanced.
Not if you're a low or mid income worker. Try harder next time.
Take a trip to LA or SF, notice all the homeless living on the street. That's your life as a low wage worker when your government waste all your taxes on pointless wars allover the world. Because with your 25% income tax plus sales tax you certainly don't pay much less than in Scandinavia.
This is such a weird sentence. Like hearing a cult member talk about how the assraping is really only for their own good.
First of all, $70k is not even a high salary. The average salary for a teacher in the US is nearly that at >$60k, an engineer in the US is making >$90k. For IT, doctors, lawyers, middle managers it's >$100k.
These are normal jobs, and we're not even talking about the type of jobs that can net >$200k like in finance or at the tech companies, or management jobs >$400k.
Secondly, "to stop you from working too much."..... Fucking puke.
Normal jobs have those in the US. And with the extra purchasing power, better healthcare is still cheaper.
The US might not be better if you're working in Mcdonalds, where btw you should not have fucking workers protections, I mean what the fuck are you doing working at Mcdonalds if you're above 18yo. But for pretty much every job it's better.
We were talking about the top tax bracket. But not if yeah ya think? Having a hard time sticking to the topic at hand?
The homeless aren't working you absolute retard.
They also work twice as many hours as their European colleges. Of course they should make more money then or are you saying US workers should work for free? Fuck off retard.
And those combined for 100k just so happened to total exactly 25% in the US and 50% in the EU? Yeah right.
Just admit you eyeballed some numbers in a word doc for the post, don't double down on the bullshit. It doesn't matter that your auditing is bad unless you're an actual accountant, in which case god help your clients.
Only place in Europe where you pay over 50% income tax is if you have a high wage job in the Nordic countries, so called margin tax. Average income tax in the Nordic countries are around 30%, and every other country is lower.
He also picked the highest VAT, 25%, also from the Nordics, all of EU is lower than that, and not all items charge VAT, there's reduced vat for essential groceries, all the way down to 6%, and that's in Sweden which has the highest VAT. Rent and utilities also don't have VAT.
He pretends that EU has both sales tax and VAT, which is not the case, sales tax is the US version of VAT, EU does not have any sales tax.
Look closer and you'll notice that all of his math is wrong too, for instance he "forgot" the sales tax for the US, but doubled it for EU.
He also assume that living cost in EU is almost $2000/mo, while in the us you could cover all your living costs by only $666/mo. 🤡🤡🤡
21% VAT here so not far off.
He use a mix of the Nordic countries to get the most expensive metric possible for every tax, then apply margin tax (extra tax for high income workers) on a low wage wage. The whole meme is retarded.
Now let's flip it! I make 2600€ before taxes and deductions in Germany. I live with my parents and after taxes, I take home.. 1700€. I don't own a car and I can get by commuting and entertainment stuff. I have 30 vacations days minimum per year. I work 6 hours per day, two days home office. I chip in 350€ every month for expenses, so 1200-1300€ of savings every month. Healthcare is "free". I can call in sick 3 calendar days consecutively without a writ from the doctor, just because I want to.
I've lived on my own for short bits and time and here is from what I know looking at rent and other things - alone, I'd be spending 900-1200€ a month depending on how the food is I want to eat and how big my apartment is, plus some extra maybe because of obscene energy costs right now.
I don't think there is any job like that in the US, maybe if you run your own company.
I think the tl;dr's is this: It's better to be poorer to mid-income in a rich Euro country, and better to be rich in the US.
I think accounting for everything, even on this level the US sounds better after reading your comment. I'm trying to become a freelancer (funnily it's with webdesign) and honestly, it's such a huge pain in the ass to do it here, it's crazy. Meanwhile in the US that would be a million times simpler.
OP's whole calculation is retarded, he stick in taxes that don't exist and can't do math for shit. He also ignore the fact that the average US worker works twice as much time as their EU colleges, of course you're gonna make more money in America then, because you sell more of your time.
You're basically forced to live with your parents with no car. And thats a good lifestyle? Thats how poor americans live. It's not really a way to ever get ahead. You're spinning your wheels economically. For 2000$ a month take home I can work like 2 days a week too.
But now I'm sincerely interested to see the counterpoint from an American who thinks it is better in his country.
This is retarded:
You picked the highest VAT in all of EU.
Sales tax is the US version of VAT, EU doesn't have sales tax, only VAT.
You picked the highest income tax, plus margin tax. The only place in Europe you pay 50% income tax is in the Nordic countries, if you earn more than $70 000 yearly, anything lower than that and your income tax will be closer to 30% depending on municipality. The rest of EU is even lower.
Average wage in EU is obviously lower, because the EU average includes eastern Europe, which is a lot of very poor countries. The US also have more big tech and office jobs while EU has more blue collar work in factories. Here's a list of average wages by country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage
Cost of living is not higher in EU, once again Eastern Europe pulls down these prices, you purposefully picked the most expensive country for your fake comparison.
Even more retarded is that you think money is worth 30% less in EU, that's bullshit.
You then use the fake currency value difference to pretend that 50% of 100 is 35. Don't they teach you math in your shithole country?
Then you pretend the 10% US sales tax does not exist, if you have 67k and remove 10% of that you don't have 67k, you have 60.3k.
Same in Europe, 25% of $23k is not $13k, it's $17.25k. You added the fake sales tax and some more random value from God knows where. VAT also don't apply on rent, utilities and many other essential things.
Last but not least, you claim that cost of living in the us is $666/mo while the cost of living in Europe is $1833/mo, from where do you even get these numbers?
EU pay is much lower than the US for the same job, I've read 20% but it could be 30%. The caveat to this is that Euros work far less hours, since they have basically a whole extra month off per year in vacation time. So it's more of a choice of working more and getting paid more (US) or having tons of vacation time (EU).
2022 US federal taxes on 100k = $17,835.5, so 17.8%. That's a single filer. Married is a bit lower. I looked up a calculator for California and the total state and federal would be $28k, so 28%. California is a higher tax state.
Cost of living varies a huge amount in the US. It can be super low which it is in like 90% of the country, or super high if you like in San Francisco. Where I live in LA is one of the highest in the country, but it's still a lot lower than Western Europe.
That's definitely part of it. Also, the confiscatory taxes we pay cover unemployment insurance, disability insurance (which is a large % of your salary and not a token payment). OTOH, employers do not cover health insurance.
30% is an enormous difference. We have more vacation days, but not 30% of the year (which would justify the difference) - which would be 76 days. You do have unlimited so called 'sick days', basically no overtime, no wage theft. If you exit the company, even of your own accord, they have to pay your remaining vacation days.
All in all, this does not justify 30%, and I think as it is always said, productivity of US workers is just higher. And because employees are more easily fired, they move to the places where they are most productive, at least in the opinion of the employer. If you can't fire an employee, but want him gone, you're at least going to give him as few pay increases as possible.
I know someone who moved from Western Europe to LA.
He'd beg to disagree. Even rent is about 3 times the grossly inflated rates that we pay here in similar, decent neighborhoods.
I think Americans think Western Europe means "Norway or Switzerland", for which this may hold true.
You just explained why "at will" employment is the superior system. It just works better as a whole. It means people are more likely to be in the jobs best suited to them. In aggregate this makes a big economic difference.
LA is a big place and has some extremely expensive areas, one of which he probably went to. I never lived in those places because I don't like to burn money. Most of LA is not that expensive. I seriously doubt you can call your places "similar" to the high end places in LA, though. They're expensive for a reason.
The problem with LA is that it has a huge hispanic population (50%) & some black (10%), and white/asian people really don't like living around them. It costs a lot of money to not live in or near an area full of mexicans. I've always lived in "nice enough, not ghetto, but also not 'fancy'" areas, and I'm sure the rents are cheaper than equivalents in London/Paris etc.
That is a question of values. I couldn't give a damn about the "big economic differences", same for most people in Europe. We're perfectly fine being a bit poorer, as long as people have job security (and you don't take it too far like ze French). It's not all about money, contrary to your American mindset.
It's no Beverly Hills. Just a normal neighborhood. He's a stingy European, he's not going to get an expensive house. And in fact, the house itself was very similar to my own: an apartment of about equal size. As for the rest of cost of living: I think goods are cheaper in LA, but services are more expensive.
I would not compare Paris and London to LA, they are actual capital cities. But I'm not familiar with housing prices there. Most European countries have the same kinds of counterproductive housing policies that exist in California, but I guess population growth has been worse in California.
Humanity is a competitive enterprise. If it's not all about money for you, it will be for someone else, and they will outpace and dominate you.The world is lucky the dominant power is the US, because we - contrary to your claims - do not empire build like everyone else would have. We basically leave everyone else alone and let them even free ride off of us.
But let's say the "all about money" power who left you in the dust was Communist China. Well, in that case, you'd better learn Chinese and get ready to have the Han nuts on your chin, because China would absolutely conquer and vassailze you and everyone else in the world, and then you'd lose sovereignty and the Chinese way would be imposed on you.
Whether a city is a capital or not means nothing. Washington DC is the capital of the US and it's a shithole. LA Metro area has 18.5 million people.
I'd rather be able to live my life in comfort, with a lot of vacation days, with job security. Than in some sort of state of nature where I may be out the very next day, because it increases GDP by 3%.
Note that most people here think that at will has no benefits whatsoever. But I can see both sides, and I prefer this side.
Like we are already.
Europe does whatever the US wants. Blow up our pipelines? Yes, master! Sanctions against our primary energy provider? Yes, master. Buying crappy, overpriced LNG? Yes, master!
As if it makes any difference whether you're a vassal to the duke of Normany or Brittany.
It means a great deal, because demand for housing is obviously greater in a capital. If LA were your capital, things would be way worse.
More like the opposite. "Waaah! Clinton bomb Milosevich for us! He is bullying some muslim
terroristsfreedom fighters! We'll be your best friend!" Clinton: omg you guys will really be my friend and praise me?? The might of the US taxpayer is as your disposal!!! "Waaah! Obama, bomb Gaddafi & Assad for us! We don't like them even though they generally obey our rules and Gaddafi even gave up his WMD programs! We will give you the Nobel peace prize again!" Obama: "your wish is my command, euros! everyone knows you're the purest leftists in the world! we all follow your example!"Fuck the EU and fuck the Democrats acting like their free whore mercenaries.
told on yourself, kek.
Idk about Normans or Britons, but Han Chinese will fuck your shit up just as bad as the Imperial Japanese did. Have you seen the videos of them being racist to the African workforce they have in Africa? They don't play by "new age" rules. CCP China would do straight up nazi shit, except with the Han as the Master Race™. The United States is the best caretaker hegemon the world could hope for. It's too bad we are being rotted from the inside by the trannies, faggots, feminists, and racist intersectional coalition of the Woke, aka globohomo. I'd much prefer Russian cultural values to globohomo, though not economic values because I don't want to live in a society dominated by corruption. I think we are already too corrupt as it is, and it could get far worse.
The only thing that matters for a capital is some government jobs. Sacramento is the capital of California, and it's a shithole. I just looked it up. There are 78,000 state workers in Sacramento. That's basically nothing compared to LA's population.
C'mon man, you're going to blame us for that? Right now, the US is threatening Serbia to sanction Russia - saying that it will be perfectly fine with ethnic cleansing if Serbia does not obey. I hope Serbia does not obey its butchers.
It's German critical infrastructure. Ergo, European critical infrastructure.
Then again, you did catch me - because I've been criticizing the Germans for allowing their pipelines to be blown up by the Muricans, while also criticizing crazies who say that Russians blew up their own pipelines.
We are not Africa though. Unfortunately, Africans get abused by everyone who comes across them.
And I actually agree. I just don't think that Russia being victorious in its own sphere will lead to their even worse corruption spreading to us.
I wonder what it is in Russian culture that led to corruption under the tsars, communists and post-communists.
There's also ambassadors and their worthless families. Be happy you don't live in a capital, because those diplomats run red lights with zero consequences.
Cost of living might be true in Kansas, but cost of living is way higher in places like New York and LA than it is in most major European cities.
And none of these stats are correct. The US doesn't have a 10% sales tax. The EU doesn't have a flat 50% income tax.
And VAT replaces sales tax. No country has a VAT and a sales tax.
The USA is the best country to live in, in the entire world if you care about wealth/material possessions and you happen to be decently skilled at something.
FTFY.
If you care more about quality of life, rather than being a workaholic to buy a Lamborghini to impress your neighbors, then there are other places that are better.
Not at all to suggest that these shitholes in Europe are "good".
He also fails miserably with his math, adding random fees that doesn't exist, calculate wrong and even pretend that money is worth 30% less in EU for some reason. He doesn't even use EU average, he picks the most expensive country for every single metric. 🤡🤡🤡