It's because the most massive costs an American has like healthcare, child care, and higher education are free or vastly less expensive in Europe. Americans spend all their time at work for a very impressive number on their paystub while they're still one accident or illness away from homelessness or bankruptcy. Europeans get higher quality of life/happiness scores and spend far less time slaving away for their boss. Just because the number on your paycheck is bigger, it doesn't mean you're winning.
Many of the states[0] have started offering free or low cost tuition for their public community colleges and trade schools, and low cost tuition for their colleges and universities. For example, Minnesota offers tuition at a state college starting at $6k a year[0] and free tuition at community colleges if you're earning under $80k[1]. Those prices are before financial aid, grants, scholarships, etc which are widely available from multiple sources.
As for the rest of your comment, you have a very distorted of what life in the US is like. Also, nothing you list is "free" in Europe, there's just a lot of rather regressive taxes that are collected to pay for it all. The US federal tax structure is actually rather progressive, but that also means there's less money for the feds to pay for all of those "free" things.
Not sure we do have better quality of life in Europe. We may have in the 2000s, but we're in decline relative to the US. Even if you take things like healthcare into account:
US average disposable income is $51,000, while it's $32,000 in the UK (with higher rents in the UK than the US).
Citation? Median earnings is less than that. And median household income is only marginally more.
the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the median annual earnings for all workers (people aged 15 and over with earnings) was $51,370; and more specifically estimates that median annual earnings for those who worked full-time, year round, was $63,360.
According to the CPS, the median household income was $70,784 in 2021.
I suspect the difference is that "full-time wage and salary workers" is a much smaller group than "all workers". I admit that I used the word salary in the original post though.
It's because the most massive costs an American has like healthcare, child care, and higher education are free or vastly less expensive in Europe. Americans spend all their time at work for a very impressive number on their paystub while they're still one accident or illness away from homelessness or bankruptcy. Europeans get higher quality of life/happiness scores and spend far less time slaving away for their boss. Just because the number on your paycheck is bigger, it doesn't mean you're winning.
> higher education are free
Many of the states[0] have started offering free or low cost tuition for their public community colleges and trade schools, and low cost tuition for their colleges and universities. For example, Minnesota offers tuition at a state college starting at $6k a year[0] and free tuition at community colleges if you're earning under $80k[1]. Those prices are before financial aid, grants, scholarships, etc which are widely available from multiple sources.
[0] https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/states-with-free-tuition/
[1] https://www.minnstate.edu/admissions/affordability.html
[2] https://www.nhcc.edu/free-college-tuition-nhcc
As for the rest of your comment, you have a very distorted of what life in the US is like. Also, nothing you list is "free" in Europe, there's just a lot of rather regressive taxes that are collected to pay for it all. The US federal tax structure is actually rather progressive, but that also means there's less money for the feds to pay for all of those "free" things.
Not sure we do have better quality of life in Europe. We may have in the 2000s, but we're in decline relative to the US. Even if you take things like healthcare into account:
US average disposable income is $51,000, while it's $32,000 in the UK (with higher rents in the UK than the US).
Citation? Median earnings is less than that. And median household income is only marginally more.
the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the median annual earnings for all workers (people aged 15 and over with earnings) was $51,370; and more specifically estimates that median annual earnings for those who worked full-time, year round, was $63,360.
According to the CPS, the median household income was $70,784 in 2021.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...
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The UK is still better a lot of ways but there's a reason it's called "the America of Europe"
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Not at Walmart. They want their employees to get on government assistance to justify paying them less.
https://factually.co/fact-checks/business/walmart-workers-go...
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-...
The median salary in the US is $43k for the latest year I see data (2023). Median salary in the Netherlands and Germany was €44-48k or ~$50-55k.
We might make half as much (rather less for me actually) because of our specific industry, but that's not generally true.
Not sure where you're getting that $43k number. The most up to date number is $65,052[0].
"Median weekly earnings of the nation's 120.9 million full-time wage and salary workers were $1,251 in the second quarter of 2026"
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf
Taken directly from ssa.gov:
https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/central.html
I suspect the difference is that "full-time wage and salary workers" is a much smaller group than "all workers". I admit that I used the word salary in the original post though.
What does that matter when cost of living is commensurately expensive?