> The US, UK, EU and realistically most developed countries I would say have fairly similar quality of life within margin of error.
Ahem... Have you seen the standards in the UK get diluted year after year post-Brexit?
There's more to the story than the listed examples.
Environmental standards dictate your risk of developing various diseases later in life so are a big difference in quality of life. E.g., if you drink tap water from UK vs other countries, with high PFAS levels, where it essentially comes from a spring in the mountains - that's a huge difference.
Another difference is job security which again has a huge impact. Consider France: If you get an unlimited contract at a company you're essentially set for life (unless the company goes busy, or you mess up in a very bad way). Compare that to the scare many US dev employees hat to ensure in spring 2023 when all the big tech companies were doing layoffs. Also, France had a much shorter work week.
So, no, quality of life doesn't even compare remotely between these countries. Only perhaps for the upper 3% it is similar - if you're an average tech dev, your life will be much much nicer in Paris than in a random SF/LA suburb.
I guess I have a physicist mindset but basically I feel that these things are within margin of error. We're talking 20%, 40%, whatever. And because the lifestyle is so different it's hard to compare directly, it depends on your personal vision of what you want in life, as I mentioned some people want Paris, some people want the mountains.
I do think that if you're going to live in a Big City(tm) then the old world just does cities better. Then again I haven't visited SF, just NYC.
Job security isn't something I've ever cared about in my life. Starting from zero (no parental wealth), beyond about age 20-22 I've always had a minimum of six months savings, who cares, just find another job. It's business, you're not married. If you're an actual adult and you need a job continuously to get by you've fucked up somewhere.
It kind of just feels like a leverage decision, anyone middle class or above has a net worth in the x00k's, it's just about whether you have anything liquid vs locked up in home value etc.
If you have 0 in the bank then unless you're in North Korea or something you have bigger issues than "which country has better QoL" in my opinion, you need to work on yourself first.
Not every adult plays the game of life on easy mode, to get most rewarding experience one has to invest some serious time and energy into matters.
Also, for most folks here its trivial to be independent and successful financially if alone, past decades have been good in ways mankind has not experienced ever before. Get 2 or more kids into the equation of life with everything that they bring and challenge goes up tremendously. But as said, there are rewards, and most of them can't be achieved in any other way (that is coming from somebody doing fair amount of extreme sports, mostly in mountains).
Also, these matters are not within margin of error. Quality of life is way more important than cashflow once one is not poor. Also in Europe extremely expensive matters like universities for kids or more intense healthcare are simply non-topic when it comes to finances, you simply need less money to have similar quality of life and peace of mind. You are always just 1 error, often not even yours, to have quality and quantity of your remaining life massively dependent on quality of the healthcare, or just bad luck with genetic lottery. If you feel invincible now, give it a decade or two and you will reconsider.
Ahem... Have you seen the standards in the UK get diluted year after year post-Brexit?
There's more to the story than the listed examples.
Environmental standards dictate your risk of developing various diseases later in life so are a big difference in quality of life. E.g., if you drink tap water from UK vs other countries, with high PFAS levels, where it essentially comes from a spring in the mountains - that's a huge difference.
Another difference is job security which again has a huge impact. Consider France: If you get an unlimited contract at a company you're essentially set for life (unless the company goes busy, or you mess up in a very bad way). Compare that to the scare many US dev employees hat to ensure in spring 2023 when all the big tech companies were doing layoffs. Also, France had a much shorter work week.
So, no, quality of life doesn't even compare remotely between these countries. Only perhaps for the upper 3% it is similar - if you're an average tech dev, your life will be much much nicer in Paris than in a random SF/LA suburb.