Why does this matter so much when there is affordable healthcare, lots of social programs to save you in case things don't go so well?

I am honestly asking. I am in Europe and my salary is half of what I could make in the US, but it never bothered me. I have a very chill life and more money wouldn't make me significantly happier.

Because when things are going well it means you lose out on a lot of economic opportunity and not everyone feels the same way about the probability of things not going well, or who has the responsibility to cover them in the case that things don't go well. As I said in another comment, increased medical costs which impact uninsured or underinsured people in the US basically don't exist for tech workers who have high-quality employer-paid medical benefits in the US. So those factors don't detract people from moving here if they see other benefits to go along with the economic benefits.

Certainly, it is the case that this has it's trade-offs. I'm not making any value judgement on what the correct decision is for anyone but myself, but just trying to share some of the reasoning I've heard (from a probably biased subset of people).

Also by making more money, you can retire early and then work on whatever hobby project you'd like. I know in europe with generous social programs you kind of can do that already to a certain extent, but with money you can actually do that for a long time.

World class healthcare is included on top of the compensation at FAANG. Also, what are these social programs you refer to?

Furthermore: 1. yeah, triple the money, quadruple the life costs, and no social security safety net, or at least poor one. 2. what? 3. FREEDOM - very US centric view on the "freedom"

I think there's inherent selection bias in the way we perceive this: we see someone "leaving" only if we're involved with them at the moment they depart; we see someone "arriving" if we encounter them any time after they came our way.

EU to US immigration is about 60,000 per year. It's about 20,000 in the other direction. Of course, EU has about 1.5x the population of the US, so it's more like double the rate of immigration, not triple.

> triple the money, quadruple the life costs

My short experiences living in Germany and the UK each seemed more expensive, denominated in dollars, than here, one of the highest cost of living regions in the US.

At FAANG salaries I sure as hell bet they love life here since they're basically part of the 1% top earners in Europe but not every skilled worker in Europe can achieve FAANG levels of compensation. In other words, your sample size has too much room for selection bias and is purely anecdotal.

1. Life costs are nowhere near quadruple, in fact they are roughly equal to lower in the US. I have no idea where you think this costs more, but I feel like this is a politicized statement taking averages and applying them to a subset of people who have the necessary affluence where the transition makes sense. Increased medical costs which impact uninsured or underinsured people in the US basically don't exist for tech workers who have high-quality employer-paid medical benefits in the US, as a simple example where this line of reasoning is flawed.

Social safety nets are something that only really matters to people who think they may end up using those social safety nets. People are often wrong about this, but that's just how people think. A lot of the affluent people who see themselves becoming more affluent in the US clearly understand it's partly due to not having to cover the social safety net for others. Actions speak louder than words.

2. and 3. I don't understand your "what?". In regards to #2 and #3, there's a massive difference in lifestyle and freedom of choice in your daily life when you own a sizeable single-family home on a city outskirts or in a suburb vs live in an apartment in the middle of a city. Each of these has pros and cons and attracts different people at different stages of their life. Meaningfully, the sizeable single-family home on the outskirts is mostly out of reach for people in Europe, even highly skilled individuals who would be solidly middle class in the US. This is only one of the myriad differences in lifestyle and freedom and how it affects daily life for someone living in both places.

A simple example from my own life, is that a good friend of mine moved near me from Germany because we both have a shared interest in racing cars. While Germany has fantastic things like the Nurburgring where you can simply drive on during open days to the public, TUV regulations and the significant increased costs of components, as well as difficulty in owning enough property to have space to work on your own cars makes it a lot more difficult to be a serious hobbyist gearhead in Germany vs the US. Here, he has a decent sized single-family home with a 3-car garage with high ceilings and a lift, as well as easy low-cost access to 6 race tracks within a one day drive, all at a fraction of his salary.

Obviously, YMMV and there is no one-size-fits-all answer. I loved Europe, but I came back to the US after many visits and living in Europe on a temporary residency for a year, largely for many of these same reasons myself. My sample set may be biased, but the Grandparent asked why some Europeans want to move to the US, I'm just sharing the reasons which were expressed to me. You may disagree with them in your own personal opinion, but it doesn't change that these are reasons which matter to some people.

That is unlikely. Metropolitan areas in the US are expensive as f. But assuming they are the same. Health care and education of your children will kill you financially.

A small number of metropolitan areas in the US are expensive, basically all other metro areas offer near similar lifestyle options while being massively cheaper. I live in the 7th largest metro in the US by population, it's exceptionally diverse and cosmopolitan, my cost of living is 1/6th what it is in the Bay Area and 1/5th what it is New York City. Not every metro area in the US is NYC and SFO. I've lived in numerous places abroad, and my cost of living in this city is on par with places a lot cheaper than Europe and the only places I lived or visited in Europe cheap enough to compare was Prague and Lisbon. Everywhere else in the EU was significantly more expensive to live in.

Again, you're repeating the healthcare issue, while ignoring the comment you're replying to. It is standard, basic, benefits in the tech industry (and in many other professional industries) in the US to have quite competent employer-paid healthcare. Tech and Finance are certainly blessed industries compared to others, but even in other industries any middle-class professional will have employer-paid healthcare. The plight of the average person (the majority of Americans are lower-class, not middle-class, which heavily skews the average) is not the plight of tech workers, who are among the most well compensated and most privileged individual contributors in the US economy. If you're single, it's even better. In my entire career, spanning almost two decades, I've never once had to pay even a single dollar towards my healthcare premiums and I've had high quality non-stop uninterrupted healthcare coverage the entire time. I've also never worked at a FAANG and grew up in the Midwest. This is just how the tech industry is, nation-wide. For people with families, they usually have to cover some of the premium cost either directly or being taxed on it as imputed income (if your partner is not your spouse, legally). Even then, most employers cover spouses and children at no premium cost to the employee in the tech industry, although that's not as universal.

Educating your children for K-12 is free at the point of service, paid for by tax dollars (primarily property tax) across the entire US. Different areas have different qualities of public schooling, but a tech worker salary makes it more than affordable to buy a single-family home in an area with good schools in most cities in the US (but not all). If you feel the need for private education, that's on you, but that's a cost you'd have to bear in Europe as well. European public schools aren't really any better than public schools in the US unless you compare to the worst quartile. Suburban school districts in the US are pretty well-funded. College on the other hand, is another story. But if your kids perform well academically, scholarships are very plentiful in the US, and there are tax-incentivized ways to save to cover the cost of college, and college isn't really necessary to enter the middle-class in the US unlike in Europe (however it does certainly help). Since you'd be residing in the US while maintaining EU citizenship in this hypothetical scenario, it's also likely your kids could go to Europe for college at a significantly reduced cost as well.

There are ton of totally valid and reasonable criticisms of life in the US that would not incentivize someone to move here, but for the subset of affluent people we're referring to in the context of this thread, healthcare costs is simply not one of those things. The economics /clearly/ favor the US, many other things do not.

"s I lived or visited in Europe cheap enough to compare was Prague and Lisbon."

Lisbon is a bad example. Real Estate is out of control there. A decent apartment will set you back at least 500k, thanks to supply and demand due to the Golden Visa.

" employer-paid healthcare." If you have an employer and everything goes smooth

"Educating your children for K-12 is free at the point of service, paid for by tax dollars"

There are a few excellent k12 schools if you live in the right place (did we mention real estate costs?). But if you want your children to go to a good school you likely have to pay for private school. Then the universities fees later. I think my school in the US bills you 60k or something per year. 4 years, two kids, this sets you back already about 1/2 million. If you pay for k12 we are talking easily 1 million for education alone.

"There are ton of totally valid and reasonable criticisms of life in the US that would not incentivize someone to move here, "

No sure. If you do the right thing at the right time the US is great. I immigrated, got a STEM PhD, got naturalized and then left to China. Never looked back. And if I see not how my friends that stayed are struggling, it was a really good decision.

Not everybody works in IT my friend.

That's the thing that interested me about TacticalCoder's comment: it didn't seem to be some small preference or economic factor but seemed to have a lot of vehemence behind it.

Freedom at times kinda looks a lot more like selfishness.

The EU has a lot of other problems, but at least people here does not have to think twice before doing "normal things" like going to the doctor. I mean it is primarily important to think about one self, I get that, but what happens to others is really important and will affect us eventually!

PS: I left Buenos Aires in 2009, now I live in Spain, even though here it is not perfect at least I can sleep without regrets.

It very much does. I think that one of the great philosophical debates that's never really been resolved is the moral quandary between individualism and collectivism. Individual freedom, at it's most fundamental level, is the freedom to do what is good for yourself, rather than being forced to do what is good for your community. It is the freedom to make the moral choice of what "good" is for yourself. In many many ways, freedom /is/ selfishness. It's not clear to me that this is a bad thing, except at the extremes. It's clear that the "best" society would be one that finds a balance, but that is very hard to do.

2 Could you clarify a little what you mean with lifestyle?

3 Not so important in a big city IME.