re: German engineer earning 41k Euros turns down American job earning 350k, cites insurance

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My cousin Dietrich is one of the best paid engineers in Germany

He makes €41,000 a year before tax

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No he is not LOL. He ain't even an entry level engineer at that salary. Could be some sort of tradesman, entry level, whose job title includes engineer in some manner but he ain't a degreed engineer. If he was offered a job in the US for $350K....he wasn't....he would be making about 350% of what the average engineer in the US is making....that means he'd be making somewhere in the neighborhood of $245k euro a year in Germany, or about $280K.

German professionals do not, typically, make as much as their US counterparts. Trades people in Germany make about what they do in the US and manufacturing and service sector employees make slightly more than their counterparts in the US.

I worked for a German company, in Germany and Europe wide, as an engineer for nearly 7 years in the mid 2000s. My salary was around 60 euro a year (I got raises every year so it varied). At that time the conversion rate made that salary about $90k a year. The entirety of my tax burden at that income level was 47%. This sounds staggeringly high BUT it included all income tax, almost all health CARE, including dental and eye glasses, not just health insurance, the entire amount of social security, workers comp, unemployment, employment liability, reunification and religious taxes. I had 4 weeks off in August, 18 paid holidays and 200 hours of leave for personal or medical reasons, all paid. I also had short term disability (up to 6 months for any medical reason and that 6 month period reset after 1 month or going back to work, long term disability that paid 100% of my salary until I reached retirement age should I become disabled. At that time family and dependent leave was 6 months, 100% of your salary, and could be extended for up to 24 months. Unemployment, if I was to be laid off OR fired for cause would pay 80% of my salary for up to 6 months and could be extended.

So I am sure someone will tell us that people die waiting to see a doctor. This is categorically not true in Germany. I could call my dentist by 10 am Monday - Friday and be in the dental chair for routine visits by noon. The same was so for any medical appointment with any specialist. I had 3 surgeries while in Germany that I had been putting off in the states because of expenses and my daughter had 4 due a minor birth defect. NONE of these cost us anything out of pocket other than one of my Daughter's surgeries and it cost us 15 Euro because we parked in the wrong parking lot for a week while we stayed in her private room with her. Had our German been better we'd have known that was a pay lot and not the free lot. My daughter was conceived in Germany and my wife was 42 when I knocked her up (or our German neighbor) and, in Germany this meant she was a high risk pregnancy and was therefore entitled to unlimited exams by specialists and tests associated with high risk pregnancy and there was never a wait time for an appointment and we never spent a penny out of pocket.. No out of pocket cost for any prescription, no out of pocket cost for eye glasses UNLESS you wanted designer frames and hearing aids and medical equipment covered 100% if needed. Maternity leave at that time was 100% paid for 24 months and paternity leave was 100% paid for 6 weeks. I am told paternity leave is now a year, not sure if this is so. This was the basic insurance policy that EVERYONE in Germany, citizen, employed or not, is covered by. I could have bought supplemental policies but, being accustomed to US health insurance at the time I did not see the point.

Had I lived in Germany long enough to have retired my SS benefits would have been 80% of my highest 5 year average salary during my career. From the age of 57! Again, a basic retirement plan with no other pension or savings. That benefit is adjusted annually to macth cost of living increases. I would have had EXACTLY the same insurance policy with NO direct cost to myself. When I died my surviving spouse would have received the same benefits until her death. Had I become disabled I would have received 100% of my salary until retirement age.

Our auto insurance was MUCH lower than it was in the states because there is no medical cost in accidents in Germany because health care is provided through health insurance for everyone in the country.

When you add it up the high tax rate and lower salaries are comparable OR slightly favorable to that in the US. I know none of you will buy this because you've been told for years by corporate America and politicians that Germans are being fleeced by the taxman and dying in the streets due to wait times for medical care. I know for a certainty that this is not so, from personal experience.

There are 2 MASSIVE and obvious reason why this is possible. The first is Germany pays almost nothing for its own defense and even less to secure markets around the world....unlike those of us in the US who foot the entirety of the latter almost completely. The second reason is Germany does not have nearly as many billionaires and near billionaires. They have about .02 billionaires per 100,000 people. We have .3 per 100,000 people. That's 15 times more in the US. We could have the same kind of social safety net in the US and we could provide most of the worlds security but it is not possible to do so and protect a class of people the size we do in the US who hold an immense amount of wealth and power unlike anything anywhere in the world. And that is why we do not have that sort of social safety net, not because non existent wait times for medical care is causing people to die in droves.

I can’t believe people fall for these accounts.

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This is a known parody account and he is usually quite hilarious

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That won't stop a liberal or one of these weird libertarians from reading that, thinking it's true, and then going to vote for socialism.


I didn't know it was parody, I just knew the math didn't math.


And reading the comments, a lot of people think it's real. Even the posts saying europeans suck at math think it's a real post by an actual retard.



People claiming healthcare is free isn't parody. People actually believe that.

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libertarians

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and then going to vote for socialism

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What?

And

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thinking it's true

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It's not the libertarians thinking this tweet is true

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That's your takeaway from idiots falling for a parody?

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cope is a strange drug

That is a parody account. Geez.

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AwgustaDawg

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I saw the wall of text and said to myself "I know who that is" and I was right

I ain't reading all that shite.

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Go read the comments. Most people don't see it that way. So again, it's fueling anti American sentiment.

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Anti-american sentiment is already at critical mass and has been for a while.

If the dumbasses who read this parody account want to take it seriously, let them. It makes no difference.