*average US person makes. Not even software engineering. The average electrical engineer in Spain makes 20k a year. What? How can we pay so much more? Surely this can’t be sustainable? Why doesn’t everyone just move to the US and retire abroad? In 1 year I make 50 years worth of the average Hungarian’s salary. TC: G L4 320k
Let me introduce you to the concepts of productivity and cost of living. People in US make more they produce more and it takes that much to live there. And also petro dollar.
I know, still crazy. Imagine a country where the average salary was 10 mil and the COL was similar. You’d just take your 4 mil bags (or whatever) and retire in Spain after 1 year of work. This is the US at a lower scale.
^ this is an option for anyone in the us at any time. FIRE in a lcol country is OP
You need to adjust for cost of living and also include net government benefits when comparing
- it’s not easy to move to the US - the republicans are working feverishly to turn us into Hungary so that gap will probably narrow over the next generation
The US is great at leveraging cheap labor from immigrants or from abroad. The dollar is strong and that helps. It’s not the only thing, but productivity is probably not really the whole explanation. People to whom you can delegate for cheap is certainly something that makes you artificially more productive. Same business model as in times of slavery, I have to say. Oh, but another important ingredient is the size and infrastructure in the domestic market. You can leverage a huge market immediately.
They have revenue that can pay you so much in US. Period. It is about economy.
The United States is the wealthiest, most productive nation on the planet by a wide margin. Up until the early 2000s the margin of its economy to anyone else was frankly ridiculous. Others nations are catching up either in gross (china) or per capita (Germany), but the gap remains. However, poor policy and governance has more or less wasted all of that wealth in the States. We spend 100x the amount on education and get shit outcomes. We spend 1000x on infrastructure, medicine, etc. with subpar results. I assure you all of this is sustainable (in fact the majority of Americans can and maybe should be making 3-4x). Those "high salaries" you see are a fraction of their relative adjusted model if the US decreased wealth inequality back to even 1970s levels. And if the US ever got a working government the obscene wealth could lead the US to actually be the best nation on earth.
You have to accept living in this shit hole third world country. That's the catch.
The yield of a US farmers, construction workers, carpenter, producer is much higher than anywhere else.
How long have you been at G?