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On April 17 2025 05:38 zatic wrote:
As a high earner, in continental Europe only Switzerland will give you disposable income even anywhere near what you can make in the US. And that dissappears as soon as we are talking family and kids. You definitely don't come over for the money.
But also realize that you can live very, very well in Europe with around a 6 figure income. Housing can be tough, true, especially in the red hot spots. But it's offset by a lot of services, universal healthcare, free education and extensive support for children which most countries provide.
This is a bit confusing to me.
If you can live very, very well in Europe with 6 figure income, but housing is tough, how does that work? Right now my housing cost is about 25% of my income. Since my wife doesn't work, no childcare costs. But I'd say around $2000/year on medical stuff since I have really good insurance.
If I can live in a safe neighborhood with all my family's needs comfortably met on my income, there's nothing more I could ever ask for. My hope is Europe decides, similar to the recent defense spending thrust, semiconductor manufacturing is just as critical as weapons manufacturing. Some kinda wonderful poaching program would likely end with me on a plane to Europe.
For the sake of keeping this on-topic and not purely focused on my situation, my assessment of employment opportunities in Europe paints a tough picture. I feel like Europe can't just give up on the idea of attracting top technical talent.
"You don't come over for the money" isn't a winning message. I can understand the raw income being lower due to taxes and all the social services and safety net provided. That part makes sense. But using me as an example, if my wife would need to work and my kids would need daycare for us to afford a house in Europe, that's a really tough sell.
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On April 17 2025 07:06 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2025 05:38 zatic wrote:
As a high earner, in continental Europe only Switzerland will give you disposable income even anywhere near what you can make in the US. And that dissappears as soon as we are talking family and kids. You definitely don't come over for the money.
But also realize that you can live very, very well in Europe with around a 6 figure income. Housing can be tough, true, especially in the red hot spots. But it's offset by a lot of services, universal healthcare, free education and extensive support for children which most countries provide. This is a bit confusing to me. If you can live very, very well in Europe with 6 figure income, but housing is tough, how does that work? Right now my housing cost is about 25% of my income. Since my wife doesn't work, no childcare costs. But I'd say around $2000/year on medical stuff since I have really good insurance. If I can live in a safe neighborhood with all my family's needs comfortably met on my income, there's nothing more I could ever ask for. My hope is Europe decides, similar to the recent defense spending thrust, semiconductor manufacturing is just as critical as weapons manufacturing. Some kinda wonderful poaching program would likely end with me on a plane to Europe. For the sake of keeping this on-topic and not purely focused on my situation, my assessment of employment opportunities in Europe paints a tough picture. I feel like Europe can't just give up on the idea of attracting top technical talent. "You don't come over for the money" isn't a winning message. I can understand the raw income being lower due to taxes and all the social services and safety net provided. That part makes sense. But using me as an example, if my wife would need to work and my kids would need daycare for us to afford a house in Europe, that's a really tough sell.
I mean, I've looked at gross salaries compared to the US and Spain and they're incomparable. I'd earn almost double in the US in a similar role to my current job. You'll notice that with digital nomads. A colleague moved to Miami, and wanted to stay working for our company, but with the salary he couldn't afford to live there. That's because he'd have a lot of costs that he doesn't have here: health insurance for starters. But he also found rent and mortgages higher in Miami than here, and home owner insurance is basically unaffordable to the point people just take their chances with the hurricanes and floods. So while gross salaries are higher, there's more costs as well. There's also greater employee protections. We have far more holidays in a year, firing people needs a serious reason, mother/fatherhood leave are actually a thing, etc. etc. All of that comes at a cost.
But even with all of that, a high-skilled employee on a US salary in the US will no doubt let you put more money aside than the same in Europe. And if you don't actually need to spend that on periods of unemployment, don't care to take holidays, and aren't benefiting from the other protections and legal employee rights, then that will add up to serious savings in the US.
That said, the difference in culture is real. I haven't met many people here who would give up all their protections and benefits for a higher base salary. Not even people who vote for the neoliberals want all of that. I don't plan on ever having kids, but have no issues paying for other peoples' children in many ways. Just as I'm a healthy adult and have no problems that my social security payments far outweigh any costs I cause the system (at least, for the moment). I've also taken 6 months of unemployment benefits in my entire life, and if I can help it will never take more, despite paying into the system. But all these systems are there. For me. For my wife. For anybody who needs them. And I have always voted to strengthen those systems, not dismantle them, despite it clearly being opposite to my own self-interest, as a well-payed, high-skilled laborer.
That system is maybe what Europe should advertise to those high-skilled laborers we might want to entice to move. It'll very much depend on the specifics of whether you could get by with the same lifestyle and luxury without your wife working.Stay-at-home moms are a rarity. Some of that is due to financial pressures, but there's also cultural and societal changes that make that idea a bit antiquated: that type of division of labor inside a family unit makes one person 100% financially dependent on the other, which causes real problems when the relationship falls apart. A more modern alternative is for both parents to share all the duties, so both parents have a part-time job and they are both also responsible for childcare. It isn't very common here in Spain, but in northern Europe I'd say it's the norm rather than the exception.
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Norway28637 Posts
I live in a nice part of trondheim, norway's third largest city. Paid like 450k for 110 m2 a little over 2 years ago.
Kindergarten is like $200 per month for our 1 kid. Health care is basically nothing. School will be free. You won't get the same house as a single working parent unless you are willing to have a longer commute (or find a job in a more rural area where pay is generally lower) but life is very very comfortable for my wife and I, we're working like 30 hour work weeks as a high school teacher / phd candidate, so slightly below median pay for two, but we're still saving $1000+ per month unless there are unexpdcted expenses.
Tbh if 'you're not coming for the money' isnt a winning message for you and you prefer your wife not working maybe trump's america isnt that bad for you, at least if you had been white. 
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On April 17 2025 08:19 Liquid`Drone wrote:I live in a nice part of trondheim, norway's third largest city. Paid like 450k for 110 m2 a little over 2 years ago. Kindergarten is like $200 per month for our 1 kid. Health care is basically nothing. School will be free. You won't get the same house as a single working parent unless you are willing to have a longer commute (or find a job in a more rural area where pay is generally lower) but life is very very comfortable for my wife and I, we're working like 30 hour work weeks as a high school teacher / phd candidate, so slightly below median pay for two, but we're still saving $1000+ per month unless there are unexpdcted expenses. Tbh if 'you're not coming for the money' isnt a winning message for you and you prefer your wife not working maybe trump's america isnt that bad for you, at least if you had been white.
I’ll respond in more earnest later when I’m not on my phone.
But just wanted to quickly indicate that when I said it’s not a winning message, I more so mean that’s just not a good way to even phrase the situation. From your description and others, it’s not even really accurate. You all appear to have more spending money per dollar of income than I do. So it’s not only inaccurate but also just a defeatist way to phrase it. I make $175k/year and you appear to live a better life with more disposable income despite clearly making way less. Or at least I assume a teacher and a grad student aren’t making a combined $175k USD.
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Zurich15325 Posts
I mean I wasn't exactly advertising for Europe, and I would agree that Europe has and will continue to have it very tough to attract top talent.
If the positive sides like extensive family support and free education are not a draw for you (and it doesn't sound like they are) then yeah, it's probably not for you and your family.
With regards to Drone's situation consider that Norway is a bit of an outlier in Europe. For sure in Germany you can't live that comfortably on a part time teacher's salary in a bigger city.
Similar for me I live an unreasonably good life in Switzerland (the other outlier) and would have it much much worse anywhere else in Europe.
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I can only speak on metropolitan Germany and really only speak on my city of stuttgart. If my wife is working again we will have a household income of about 6 to 7 k after taxes per month. We are currently able to afford our live with our little daughter on my income and our luxurious spending because our rent is only 650€. We live in an apartment in an old house with an owner who basically does not want to do much and doesn't care to rise prizes. The rent could be double based on the location alone, being in the most expansive part of town, not exactly a suburb, basically the edge of the city. If we want a second child we will need to find something bigger and then we jump up to 2k per month. That is obviously doable for us as soon as my wife works again. We could also find something for 1.5k 30 to 50k away from where we are. And that's exactly the problem, we would be doing just fine, I can work from literally everywhere in Germany, we have good money. If my wife could not work or we would both make half of what we are doing now, stuff gets really hairy. If we are in the top 10 percent of households, how is everything below the average doing? For you moodoo, houses are expensive in Europe, but if you make comparable money to the states then you will be fine. The equivalence of American suburbs in my area start basically around 15 to 30 km outside of the edge of town where I live. These places are then villages about one bus line away from trans and there you then have extensive one unit housing parks with decent space and where current prices are for objects that you seem to aim for maybe around 800k. That's probably still a lot more then what you would expect from the American housing market but like others have pointed out, the houses are also built different. And you get a lot of quality of live with it. But if the prize alone is what is deterring you, yeah then living in Germany or Netherlands is not for you. If you go towards the real flat land, you can get everything for half that prize, but then you are also in infrastructure wasteland.
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Europe can't fix housing or other issues in the time frame that would make things great for advertising to people who overly focus on money. Salaries won't rise at that rate, and it would be weird if Europeans themselves did not get the same increase. Houses will not be built at a rate that would nearly collapse their prices or at least make them an uninteresting investment for non-European investors. Any European government trying to take direct action would be opposed hard by the existing market, and any acts aimed directly at getting talent from the USA would be unpopular because lower-income Europeans wouldn't benefit from them the same way. Also I think that we absolutely should not fuck up the higher European standards, benefits, and protections to become more like the USA and others. The same actors that make the USA shitty will gladly make Europe shitty if we let them to. Thus, I think we can only highlight the good things about Europe and the bad things about others. This will be hard if we don't ourselves hold onto those things and values behind them. It will also be dickish to rub Trump in the face of people who oppose him.
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Of course. We don't need to fix the prizes of housing to attract people coming in from the US. We need to do it to make it affordable for low income households  Moodoo is allowed to come over and buy a house of the market if he feels the investment is worth it. If housing for everyone is cheaper, then he will profit as well. I think overall the municipalities need to come in and start to build cheap medium density residential areas, zone less low density residential areas instead and use the new appartments as inflation price locked social housing. I would even propose a price distribution for this social housing where higher income households can prop up the amortization of these investments by paying higher rents then low income households. And then a robust and fair way of protecting rent levels in private housing.
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I doubt European right-wing parties would support such public spending and control over the market. Their answer to improving things seems to be mostly improving things for corporations so that they will invest or cut public spending, hoping that people will work more afterwards. Austerity policies are still quite popular in general. Most likely, they would try to create incentives for the private sector to build more. The left has a hard time winning elections when the economy is apparently constantly near a collapse, and governments have too much debt to keep going on.
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Oh yeah, i do not believe that there is a chance for housing to become socialist in germany anytime soon as the neo liberal influence on politics is just too strong these days. The last german government said that x new homes should be created then much less new homes were created by the private economy and then they shrugged and pointed to the market that more was not possible.
It's really no wonder that with housing prizes rising to more and more unrealistic levels and also inflation, the ukraine war and all the other factors make it really expensive and complicated to build more housing the private sector is not incentivized to build more housing. And whatever is build is done for people who literally do not care what the prize is. But i am really tired of people big like, well the market will solve this issue. Then you show that and why the market is not solving the issue. And the next step for all stakeholders in society is shrugging and claiming that non neo liberal solutions can not succeed either.
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You can get incredible cheap housing in Germany. East Germany is pretty much empy. Rent prices are ridiculously low.
On the other hand, Southern Germany is heavily overpriced.
While this remains, politics will never chime in one way or another.
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Why do you all think Europe won't be facing catastrophe too (possibly worse than it is for many in the US) if the US collapses under a fascist Trump?
Besides potentially just being allies with a fascist US, many European countries' economies are reliant on the US's economy not being jerked around by a fascist dictator that habitually bankrupts his projects.
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Well, you can also buy Houses for one Euro in Italian villages in the Mountains. But also, eastern germany is also not the chap everywhere anymore, basically everywhere people want to live in easter germany, the prices are up as well. My in-laws want to convince my wife for a long time to move to the area between Magdeburg and Berlin but there is a reason these villages are dying. No current party has an interest in changing this either, because the market won't solve that your hospital is now 30 minutes away and Lieferado will not deliver Thai to you when the only restaurants in 30 km radius are "Zur Deutsche Eiche" and "Germania".
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And these villages dying out are really fine imo. They're like an optimization thing in the long run. Yes, sucks for people sometimes, but some people will cope and even thrive, living alone in a ghost town, or with 3 other people. You have these remote islands in Ireland where just a single farmer lives for example. They're fine. People don't need or even want all the things modern society and standards dictate all the time. In Europe we're more in tune, seemingly, but I might also be wrong about that.
I still think the biggest devil is social media, at least in its current iteration, so we need to get rid of it or reshape it completely.
@GH, I don't think Europe has a problem with telling the US to fuck off when push comes to shove and we can then just reorient ourselves with China some more. In fact, I think it's going to be the actual strat going forward. China will ease up, we extend our soft power to them (even though they claim they don't give shit, if we can even instill a bit of empathy in the regime it's a win) and then there has never been a more powerful axis in the world.
It all depends on how willing the US is in cooperating. Everyone seems to be willing except the US.
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On April 17 2025 22:04 Uldridge wrote:+ Show Spoiler +And these villages dying out are really fine imo. They're like an optimization thing in the long run. Yes, sucks for people sometimes, but some people will cope and even thrive, living alone in a ghost town, or with 3 other people. You have these remote islands in Ireland where just a single farmer lives for example. They're fine. People don't need or even want all the things modern society and standards dictate all the time. In Europe we're more in tune, seemingly, but I might also be wrong about that.
I still think the biggest devil is social media, at least in its current iteration, so we need to get rid of it or reshape it completely. @GH, I don't think Europe has a problem with telling the US to fuck off when push comes to shove and we can then just reorient ourselves with China some more. In fact, I think it's going to be the actual strat going forward. China will ease up, we extend our soft power to them (even though they claim they don't give shit, if we can even instill a bit of empathy in the regime it's a win) and then there has never been a more powerful axis in the world. It all depends on how willing the US is in cooperating. Everyone seems to be willing except the US.
If there wasn't already a rising right wing in Europe it'd be easier for me to buy into this. It seems currently that Europe is going to follow the US until it's too late not to (if that moment hasn't already occured).
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The market will not solve the housing issue because to solve it means crashing the market.
Every time housing prices drop alarm bells go off everywhere and we keep being told how bad it is, when what the people without the ability to afford a house want is for the market to absolutely crater.
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On April 17 2025 22:21 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2025 22:04 Uldridge wrote:+ Show Spoiler +And these villages dying out are really fine imo. They're like an optimization thing in the long run. Yes, sucks for people sometimes, but some people will cope and even thrive, living alone in a ghost town, or with 3 other people. You have these remote islands in Ireland where just a single farmer lives for example. They're fine. People don't need or even want all the things modern society and standards dictate all the time. In Europe we're more in tune, seemingly, but I might also be wrong about that.
I still think the biggest devil is social media, at least in its current iteration, so we need to get rid of it or reshape it completely. @GH, I don't think Europe has a problem with telling the US to fuck off when push comes to shove and we can then just reorient ourselves with China some more. In fact, I think it's going to be the actual strat going forward. China will ease up, we extend our soft power to them (even though they claim they don't give shit, if we can even instill a bit of empathy in the regime it's a win) and then there has never been a more powerful axis in the world. It all depends on how willing the US is in cooperating. Everyone seems to be willing except the US. If there wasn't already a rising right wing in Europe it'd be easier for me to buy into this. It seems currently that Europe is going to follow the US until it's too late not to (if that moment hasn't already occured). A lot of Euope is not as 2 party focussed as the US. which means the far right has to cooperate with other parties that are not far right and that can't just throw their support behind said alt right party without serious backlash. Which is not to say it can't happen because it already has to some countries (Hungary) but there are a few more breaks on the car.
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Of course, Trump's destruction of the US economy will also hit Europe hard, but we are already seeing how badly the USA is being viewed now. If politicians try to push more austerity because of the crisis, that will make people even angrier. The cause of this crisis is so overwhelmingly on the USA that the actions need to reflect that. Thus, there is hope that things won't get worse quite so soon. We also had many elections recently, so we have at least a year or two before the far right can rise to power. It is hard to see how Trump continuing for a couple of years would not make the USA and like-minded people look like total idiots and deepen the dislike of appeasing them.
If Trump had not destroyed the economy and had kept the alliances intact, most of Europe would not have much of a problem with the USA being fascist. We are already dealing with Turkey, Israel, China, and so on, without as big an issue. It would be easy to sell the idea that the USA is just dealing with immigration in the same way that Europe should be doing too. Now ties to Trump are becoming more of a burden to these parties.
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On April 17 2025 22:21 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2025 22:04 Uldridge wrote:+ Show Spoiler +And these villages dying out are really fine imo. They're like an optimization thing in the long run. Yes, sucks for people sometimes, but some people will cope and even thrive, living alone in a ghost town, or with 3 other people. You have these remote islands in Ireland where just a single farmer lives for example. They're fine. People don't need or even want all the things modern society and standards dictate all the time. In Europe we're more in tune, seemingly, but I might also be wrong about that.
I still think the biggest devil is social media, at least in its current iteration, so we need to get rid of it or reshape it completely. @GH, I don't think Europe has a problem with telling the US to fuck off when push comes to shove and we can then just reorient ourselves with China some more. In fact, I think it's going to be the actual strat going forward. China will ease up, we extend our soft power to them (even though they claim they don't give shit, if we can even instill a bit of empathy in the regime it's a win) and then there has never been a more powerful axis in the world. It all depends on how willing the US is in cooperating. Everyone seems to be willing except the US. If there wasn't already a rising right wing in Europe it'd be easier for me to buy into this. It seems currently that Europe is going to follow the US until it's too late not to (if that moment hasn't already occured).
You're unlikely to get extremist right wing governments like Trump's in major European countries like you are in the US.
Even in the UK with our massively right wing population Nigel Farage's party only got 4 MPs in Parliament, the same as our laughable Green party.
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Yeah, that's why i asked my big question o the last page. Let's say Germany intentionally craters the market by trying to remove the aspect of investment from it. What would the consequences be? I am genuinely interested in it.
2008 "housing crisis(which really was a banking regulation crisis)" levels of market crash? Or worse? Or simply a lot of people already very rich losing in the ability to become even richer without having to work for it? I 100 % believe the housing market needs to be cratered to better correlate with median income again and i am willing to eat some rich pople for it, just not enough of them to cause a greater depression because usually it's then not the rich that are being eaten...
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EPT
