Literally every job salary on good is double or even tripled in the USA compared to the uk for the same job whilst u guys also have lower taxes as according to Google people making over 200k salary pay the same amount of tax as people in the uk do when they make 60k why is this ?

33 comments

  2. The only professions I’m aware of where there are huge gaps between US and UK salaries are in certain professional services: software development, medicine, certain legal specialties. Other than that, as far as I know salaries are pretty comparable.

    Taxes are lower in the United States because we have fewer entitlements; in the US you are expected, for example, to pay for your own health care rather than have the UK pay for it. That allows our tax rates to be lower–but it does mean for some people who don’t plan ahead, they get screwed when suddenly they get a large health care bill and don’t have savings to cover it.

    (And of course that doesn’t help those who don’t have the income to cover the bill in the first place–though to be fair, this seems to be a more recent development.)

    The cultural belief in the United States leans towards individuality and individual decision making, but with a smaller safety net, than Europe, which tends to socialize these decisions, but which provide a better safety net for those who may have problems.

  4. 1. Most people are paying for their healthcare through their employers and deductions from their paychecks. How much comes out for that depends on how good the insurance is and how much your employer subsidizes it.

    2. The cost of living varies widely from place to place. 60,000 dollars is barely getting by in some places and a comfortable living in others. Childcare costs in this country is incredibly expensive.

    3. We usually don’t take as much time off.

  5. We don’t have government-paid healthcare. Most of us can’t expect pensions, so we’re expected to save for our own retirement. Most of us don’t rely on public transit and have to pay to purchase, maintain, fuel, and insure cars. People with small children often pay huge amounts for daycare. The cost of college tuition has increased at a rate well above inflation over the last couple of decades.

    I’m also told that food prices are much higher here than in the UK.

  7. Some stuff has already been mentioned (like healthcare, timeoff). I’m also working without a net — I can get fired 10 minutes from now simply because my boss doesn’t like me. And unemployment, at least in my state, tops out at $350 a week for 12 weeks with no healthcare.

    I need to be better rewarded for the higher level of risk.

  8. Salaries are high *because* taxes are low. That’s how that works.

    However, federal minimum wage in the US has been stuck at $7.25 per hour since 2009 because Congress tells voters that raising the minimum wage would double the price of *eg* fast food when what’s actually raising prices so high so fast is corporate greed and the irrational desire for all the money. Corporate bosses don’t care about consumers if that costs them money.

  9. The healthcare point is bad. The jobs that have the highest salary differences usually also have healthcare entirely paid for. That just makes the gap larger. Less taxes result in higher salaries (marginal utility of raises is higher). Less regulations and protections so there’s less risk to the employer when paying higher wages. And just culturally, robust individualism means more people are willing to try to get higher wages, as well as, not ashamed to demand more. All of this creates positive feedback loops that result in higher incomes. Of course, that’s really only applicable to the above average earning jobs in the US. For below average earning jobs, there’s not much difference and you may often come out ahead in Europe instead.

  10. Very productive economy. US has everything from natural resources, to innovative startups.

    US also skews paychecks to higher earners, so comparing high earners to high earners works in the US favor.

  11. We don’t have government funded healthcare or retirement like many other countries do.

  12. I work for a company that targets hiring engineers in Europe because they can pay them less than half as much. I can’t answer the why, but it’s common.

  13. As far as I am given to understand people in the UK only pay a national income tax and there are no state and local income taxes. The US just spreads out the taxes people pay, and some states and even localities pay more or less taxes depending on what they choose to use As an example people in California will probably pay much more in taxes than your typical Brit with federal, state, and local taxes, property taxes, special taxes, sales taxes, use taxes, excise taxes, capital gains and inheritance taxes. Heck, people with no other income get taxed on government payouts – “Here is money from taxes that we are going to tax you on to give you more money in the future to tax you on.”

  15. If you want to be in the tech industry move to the US because that’s where most high profile software development is happening and those are the jobs that pay higher

  16. It’s a different mindset between Europe and the US. I spend a lot of time in Europe, and the attitude there is that the government exists to provide for the people. Public transportation, healthcare, pensions and more. Vacations are generous and guaranteed. Job terminations come with generous periods.

    In the US, the mindset is that the government should provide for those only if they aren’t able to provide for themselves. It’s a safety net. Things like wage and vacation are negotiable, especially for more desirable employees. People can be let go immediately, but also leave on their own immediately.

    As a result, more corporate and individual taxes go towards the government in Europe, making profits smaller and wages smaller. As a result of this, the EU tries to protect companies in the EU by increasing regulatory costs in an attempt to level the playing field against international competitors. But this also leads to additional costs and slower progress for EU companies, further lowering wages.

    As for other countries, it’s a variety of things. Notably, they have much smaller economies.

  17. A few years ago i was working in a low cost of living metro at a small company doing some data analyst work. Had a call from recruiter trying to place at a large global firm in London. I was intrigued until i found out the salary was roughly what i was already earning. Was really eye opening to see the same salary but what would have easily been double the cost of living.

  18. The “extra” money goes towards things that European countries typically pay for within their taxes, such as education, healthcare, and retirement. Then there are American “necessities”, such as car payment/fuel, high property taxes and mortgage insurance (if you own a home), etc.

    I think the primary premise of American taxes is “freedom of choice”. So you can have “extra” money with a low tax rate, but you have to be smart about *how* you choose to spend that money.

    Personal example: My university education was about $30k/year x 4 years. My car payment/insurance/gas is about $700/month (public transit is not a viable option). Fortunately my employer partially pays for healthcare, but my out of pocket maximum is still $12k/year. OP, how much would you say you’ve had to spend on those items?

  20. (I have an econ degree btw)

    A lot of that is because our government runs very large deficits due to the low interests rates we have had since ’08. So we only pay for about 2/3rds of government expenditures. If we had to pay for everything we spent, taxes would be about 50% higher. We also have the world’ reserve currency, so we essentially get nearly another trillion dollars worth of goods and services for free from the rest of the world.

    Finally we have an extremely competitive economy. We have one of the highest average years of education in the world (like 2 years higher than Britain), and most of the world’s competitive companies are also based here. We also still have lots of economic growth, which hasn’t been true in Europe for a long time. Our workers are therefore able to produce a lot of value so our wages are high.

  21. More things are privatized, but also most people in the us, even in cities, don’t even make half of that. There are a handful of places in the us where the average household makes over 100k but I don’t think the average single salary anywhere is over that point but I haven’t looked it up in a while.

  22. Cost of living in higher ? Not only food, rental, insurance, car payments everything is more expensive

  23. I was thinking of moving to Europe to get my Masters. This is the main reason I couldn’t do it. For my career path I’d be making less than half starting in the two best cities in Europe for my career ( London and Brussels) compared to most cities in the US. Not to mention the connections I would make wouldn’t be as meaningful than if I were in DC, NYC or Boston.
    I know healthcare is a point, but my state has good healthcare and I have good insurance so that doesn’t affect me personally. I just think that Americans will generally take less social safety nets for higher wages ( but we still need to work on our safety nets regardless).

  25. My uneducated opinion is that if you have a shit job, you are way better off in europe. If you work in specialized fields America is the way to go every time.

    There is a lot of nuance in between of course, you can make great money in the states if you are in a service industry where tipping is expected but that is the general trend.

  26. Maybe in certain industries? I’m a global team manager at a pharmaceutical company and my employees in EU are paid a lot more than their US counterparts. By far. This is for all roles in the company.

  27. What is the point of paying a lot of money to your government if it’s incompetent and can’t spend it correctly. We are also individualistic and have a culture of self-reliance and personal responsibility. The government handing people money for shits and giggles isn’t popular… Especially if the vast majority of that money is going to be spent on wars and s*** that doesn’t benefit the average person.

  28. We have a strong economy with a lot of natural resources, a gov’t that makes it relatively easy to start a business (compared to other countries), competitive salaries state to state, and a culture of working hard to get money (not saying this is an all-good thing at all). Our low taxes are the pay off of non-nationalized health care & college education.

  29. Because we need to pay thousands a year for healthcare… all we get for our taxes are roads and bombs.

  30. One thing I have yet to see people mention is that simply, there exist high paying jobs here that don’t exist anywhere else.

    My friend teaches english to Israelis who are immigrating here and half of them state the reason they are moving is because in America is some research or development that is being funded here, that no other country is doing and it’s the cutting edge. So if you are the best in your field in your country, but you want to make more money or work on the cutting edge, America is the only place funding it, because they have the large industrial, knowledge, and financial base to do it.

  31. Because they get fuck all from their governments in terms of social safety net. For example, people pay thousands per months for health insurance and still have to pay thousands deductible if something happens. The lack of safety net applies to all facets of life, (unemployment, subsidized housing, vacations,etc)

  32. The labor market is very dynamic in the US. I don’t know about the UK, but I work in Japan which offers much more protection to workers and have been a hiring manager in both the US and JP.

    You’d think that at-will employment and no mandatory severance is a negative, but believe or not it has upside. You can hire people quickly, you can open new jobs quickly, and you can manage talent better (the mediocrity in Japan is phenomenal). Plus the economy is broad and deep in the US.

    So the result is that nobody in the US in 2023 really expects a “social contract” with their employer and rather sees themselves as an agent while the dynamic nature of the job market allows them to effectively take advantage of demand for their talent.

  33. Actually one of the reasons often forgotten are the high non wage labour costs in European countries so in most European an employee costs the employer between 1.3 and 1.5 times the Salary.

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