This. I was lucky enough to fall for a German woman who was studying in the states. We married and moved to Berlin when we realized having a family in the US would be a struggle. We could have moved to the suburbs, but we really hate car culture and wanted to live in a biking city. I worked in tech - didn't have to learn German or jump through hoops to get a job.
Now, on a single high 5 figure salary, I'm 15 minutes biking to work and live in one of the nicest parts of the city. We have two kids in free day care. My wife works part time, and she is finishing a year off of 60% paid maternity leave. She really doesn't earn much after taxes, but we save all her income - more than 15k per year.
Salaries are lower here and things are getting more expensive for sure. But for 400k+ EUR, we should be able to buy a place for a family of four and bet set for a long time.
Urban design in the United States and North America has generally been evolved in a way you'd expect. Larger spaces caused people to spread out further. North America is a (relatively) new place where people seeking land struck out from their ancestral homes for places with space.
The return to urbanization and need to be around other people is only now really starting to take hold as people see the benefits of european cities, which by North American standards are ancient.
Maybe they were that way for a reason? Imagine that...
I work in tech. I make less than I would in the US (though with a new job that's fully remote, the delta isn't as big as it might be).
My wife, however, makes a good deal more than she would in the US. She doesn't work in tech.
Also, she gets a full month off a year. 6 months' paid maternity even if the job itself is crummy. Paid public holidays (or double-pay if she has to work).
On top of all that, we don't have to drop thousands of dollars a year on car ownership.
The USA tried to balance this with crazy tax rules and brackets, where you will get rewarded if you massively out-earn your partner. My buddy was actually lamenting the fact that his wife got a nice raise at the public library because it would actually mean less take-home money after tax day.
> My buddy was actually lamenting the fact that his wife got a nice raise at the public library because it would actually mean less take-home money after tax day.
There are relatively few scenarios where this would occur. It would have to be something like a sharp phase out of a deduction or credit or some sort of benefit. I don't think the usual graduated phase outs would do it for any material change.
Are you sure that this is not just a misunderstanding of how marginal tax rates work?
I am not GP, but I know that there are massive cliffs in Obamacare credits for people that use them. When you exceed 400% of the federal poverty line you can lose >$10,000 of credits because of a single marginal dollar of income.
The US tax code has a lot of interests competing against each other (revenue vs benefits for different constituencies); I agree it should be simplified, but that takes substantial effort and political will. Changing your 401k contribution is 15 minutes.
Taxes yes - in addition to occasionally checking tax calculators I know what our after-tax income is in both places.
Commodities - not in a rigorous fashion. I know we have more at the end of the month. If it's because we just buy less stuff that's OK with me. As I mentioned, we save a lot just not having to own or operate a car; we walk or cycle most places. Health insurance is also far, far less expensive (about 2500 EUR per year for a family of three), and even if that was "included" in my pay in the US, somebody was paying for it.
I'm not sure what you consider the suburbs but I'm confident you could find that same situation or better so long as you looked at medium size and smaller cities or towns in the US.
You can't. US cities are uniformly car-centric. The exceptions to the rule are too expensive to buy property in anywhere close to city center.
Aside: I lived (and grew up) in several small-to-medium sized US cities prior to settling in Berlin. None come close to offering a similar range of cultural infrastructure to the typical medium-size European city, and quality of life is totally incomparable - again in Europe's favor.
Amen. I live in a US locale that is routinely described as one of the top 5 bike friendly towns in America. I bike around, look around, and all I can think is, are you kidding me? Narrow shoulders, aggressive drivers, high road speeds, poor air quality, no shade, etc...
Don't get me wrong, there's lots of good, but it's sad to think this is the best the US has got.
> I don’t know what your vision of cultural infrastructure is, but I feel culturally satiated.
Multiple theatres, a decent opera house. A regular meetup for my favourite obscure card game. Being able to reasonably expect that essentially all the bands I like will play my city sooner or later.
This more or less describes every medium-sized U.S. city, from Cincinnati to Nashville to Phoenix to Pittsburgh to St. Louis to Cleveland and so on.
There may be specific things you care more about that one city might have more of than the others, but, in general, all cities have this stuff (and it's a tragedy of human flourishing that people on the coasts think they don't).
Certainly not the case for a typical 100k-sized city, unless my hometown is unusually badly off. One and a half theatres, no opera house at all, an MtG community but nothing for anything smaller, most bands didn't bother going there on their tours.
I don't know about 100k. That seems small. I'm talking about metros of well over a million people.
But, also, don't get confused by looking only at the statistics for core cities. People look at, say, St. Louis, see that it has only 300k people, and stop there. But that's a wildly misleading number that's really more of a reflection of the fact that lots of people in the U.S. live in what are called "suburbs," even if those "suburbs" are actually still part of the urban core.
The St. Louis metro has 2.8 million people. 1.3 million of those people live in the core, urban city/county. That 300k number isn't useful at all. It's based on silly, irrelevant historical border-drawing.
That's basically true as a default state. But you can make it work if it's something you care about. Most of those cities have at least one walkable neighborhood that's (more or less) car-optional. I think you'd still want to own a car for those things that can't be accomplished without one, but you could live most of your daily life on foot.
That's two blocks from a Whole Foods, walking to everything else you'd need, and 4 blocks from the light rail, which can take you to each of the region's two largest employment centers (Downtown and Clayton), its two largest universities, and the airport.
Where do you live that a decent 4br/2ba goes for 200k? I’m in the Midwest and that’s at least 100-150k lower than I’d expect in an urban area (rural communities, sure - but not the city).
I bought my 3 bedroom 1.5 bath house in Richmond, Va for 250k and it takes me 7 minutes to bike to work. I could have gotten a place in a less desirable part of the city for even cheaper. It is a pretty bike friendly city.
I think the point that is missed isn’t that Richmond is “better” than Berlin, but that among the thousands of cities and towns in the United States, some of them offer most or all of the amenities that are being discussed at a reasonable cost!
I doubt there is anyplace on the planet that fully meets the HN-Platonic ideal of a magical land with no cars, cheap rent in exclusively brand new or prewar mid-rise building, and bountiful jobs at hundreds of tech companies.
I’m in the "Midwest" and that’s at least 100-150k lower than I’d expect in an urban area.
The parent was not talking about Berlin, but about affordable housing in an urban environment. I would hardly classify Richmond as even a mid sized city despite the fact it's metropolitan area population is over 1 million, but it is definitely urban. I can walk to anything I need and like I said, bike to work. I mean it is the capital of a state so not exactly a "village"...
My sister is in Tulsa and has a _very_ nice 4+2 (or maybe 3+2, idr, but it's a well-built, big house on an acre); it cost her $250k. Where I live (central Illinois, 200000 person metro area), prices are even lower.
I can't tell if this is sarcasm. Being in NY is a negative, not a positive. NY has some of the highest taxes in the country and much of the money gets funneled to NYC.
They're affordable because not many people want to deal with 10 feet of snow every year (unless there are nice big mountains nearby, which NY state does not).
When I was living in suburbs for a few months, getting from A to B on a bike took a long time. 40 minutes to work. 30 minutes to the next mall/shopping street. Just one small house after another, with no amenities nearby. Vast low-density residential areas make for a long commute.
After I got back to the city it felt incredible to bike through it. Everything you need is within a few minutes driving distance. Work is 20 minutes on bike and I don't live particularely close to it. No worries about parking either, because there is always some place that you can lock your bike to.
How many different tech jobs are there at a medium size city? In Berlin hundreds of companies in a small area are competing to attract talent with the best pay, perks and work life balance. Even if you have kids and prefer stability, you get some of the benefits of that. And if a job change becomes necessary, you'll have a much higher chance in Berlin of finding a good fit without moving home or lengthening your commute.
There can be a huge number. I mean look at Baltimore for example. Median home price is $260k and salaries for engineers range anywhere from $60k - $250k. There was a post here the other day about how Grand Rapids had some huge amount of tech companies. Many towns with Universities are built for biking and walking and also have strong presence of companies looking for engineers.
> There was a post here the other day about how Grand Rapids had some huge amount of tech companies
You really have to be careful with those articles -- most of them are basically marketing fluff. Grand Rapids has a good welcoming inclusive, but tiny tech scene. GR is only 'huge' when compared to smaller neighboring cities, which have practically nothing.
This isn't a comprehensive measure or anything, but just for a quick sense of scale, on Stack Overflow right now Chicago has 79 tech job listings. Seattle has 68. Detroit has 15. Grand Rapids has 2.
Grand Rapids isn't even remotely comparable to Detroit, much less any actual tech-focused city. And that's just jobs, ignoring all housing / transportation / cultural amenities and all other quality-of-life differences.
I've lived in Baltimore for 5 years(to escape DC), but I'd never work in Baltimore. I came here to because it isn't technically advanced. Beyond that it's packed to the brim with dope fiends. You've gotta be in third world don't get robbed mode 100% of the time, there are 17k abandoned townhouses in Baltimore, garbage everywhere, but the rent is super cheap if that's what you're into.
I've never been to Grand Rapids. If all goes to plan it'll stay that way.
Berlin is one the most incredible cities on earth right now.
There's definitely going to be cultural differences since Grand Rapids is in west Michigan and not eastern Germany. The food's decent, and there are a few art festivals, museums, venues and arenas. Lansing is an hour away which has more of the same. Holland is a little closer and on Lake Michigan. Chicago is only a couple hours away if you're yearning for the big city. I can't speak much about the night life but last I knew we had multiple bars and clubs if that's your thing. The only public transportation is the Rapid (bus system).
> I'm confident you could find that same situation or better so long as you looked at medium size and smaller cities
Are you certain? In my experience, there really isn't an "affordable medium size city" in the US. There are affordable suburbs of medium sized cities. There are affordable suburbs that technically lie within the cities legal boundary lines, and are so-called 'urban' (by legal/taxable status only).
But if "city" is being used as a measure of minimum density (and not a line on a map) then there is no such thing as an "affordable for families" large or medium-sized city in the US. Any urban area developed enough to have an average building height of 5 stories or higher is unafforable to the vast majority of US families.
This remains true even in the so-called "low cost of living" mid-sized cities.
"Are you certain? In my experience, there really isn't an "affordable medium size city" in the US."
Minneapolis.
A very, very rich urban environment (there are two cities there, after all) and cultural scene. Is currently, very affordable - even in the most desirable neighborhoods.
I don't consider Minneapolis much of a city - more like a giant suburb with some nice bike paths. I grew up on the Northside. Same for the few times visiting Denver. You're gonna be driving if you want to have a social life.
You simply cannot compare it to a similar sized European city, or to any of the "big city" style US cities on the East coast.
For this exact reason I split my time between Minneapolis and Chicago and plan to move to Chicago as soon as possible full time. The lifestyles are not remotely comparable.
Minneapolis is exactly what I was thinking of when I said, "there are affordable suburbs that technically lie within the cities legal boundary lines" and are therefore called 'city' but are actually suburbs. Lyndale, Cocoran, Harrison, and many other examples, are actually suburban but they are technically within the legal/tax boundaries of Minneapolis and get called 'urban', when they are not.
Minneapolis is a cool place, this is not an slight to the city or it's residents in any way. But Minneapolis is almost entirely suburban, and the parts of Minneapolis / St Paul that are actually urban (where "urban" means more than 75% of the buildings are 4+ stories), those parts are not affordable to families.
I would have argued that you're making a "no true Scotsman" argument until I remembered something. I used to have a house in a great neighborhood in southwest Minneapolis. I had a girlfriend who came to my house frequently for almost a year before she realized I actually lived within the Minneapolis city limits, and not in a suburb.
Honestly, I think it's a shame to limit the definition of "city" so stringently. Why can't a quiet neighborhood with tree-lined streets and kids playing outside be considered a part of the city and not a "suburb within a city?"
But whatever, I still think of it as the best city I've ever lived in and although I still work here, I miss living in it sometimes.
I’m not an American and I’ve never lived there but aren’t the only cities you can bike safely as a method of transport rather than exercise in the Boston Washington corridor or San Francisco?
There are many places with relatively high salaries and cheap rents for software engineers, but ones where you can live in a nice area, be 15 minutes bike from work and not have a car?
The daycare and maternity leave are probably irrelevant. The OP could probably make enough more in the US that no maternity pay and high childcare costs don’t matter much but he’d still need a car.
Also, comparing Berlin to medium size or small cities will not make the latter look good. Cultural infrastructure is much better if you’re into that. I doubt a parent of a small child has that much time to enjoy it but even just English language cultural events, meet ups etc. will be way more active in Berlin than in say, Raleigh.
Your view sounds like it is based on stereo types and not reality. I mean bicycling.com has a list of the top 50 bicycling cities in the US. Raleigh has an Opera, several theaters, a symphony. It does not lack for cultural events.
I have been to the US, New York, New Jersey and Florida. Given the length and density of settlement in the first two there’s probably not a more bicycle hospitable part of the US. I would be terrified to cycle there. Bicycling magazine’s website supports your contention less than you might imagine. It’s for hobbyists, people who bike for exercise and who tour. Most Europeans who cycle do so as a mode of transport, not recreation. And just as you will not find articles on the best places to find good pasta in Italy, or croissants in France you’re not going to find a list of the most bike friendly cities in Germany. By American standards they’re all really, really bike friendly. And that’s totally unremarkable, just like cities built for the convenience of people in cars are normal in the US.
I’m not saying Raleigh is a cultural wasteland. I’m sure it has much to recommend it but to compare it to Berlin? Really? Berlin has almost eight times the population and has many very heavily subsidised national cultural institutions. I’m sure Raleigh has a better live music scene in English.
You should travel in Europe some. You would not compare anywhere in Western Europe to the US in terms of bike friendliness if you had.
That list is about recreational biking, not about biking as a means of transportation. Look at cities where people commute by bicycle[1] and it is basically just the cities listed plus a bunch of small towns with gigantic university campuses.
I guess that is my point. The OP says that having a family in the US would be a struggle but if you set aside the handful of cities with out of control costs in the US like SF, NY, and DC the rest really are quite affordable.
Exclude the east and west coast mega cities and you have a lot of land but a small chunk of the population. This tends to tie you much closer to a specific employer and has long term risks.
this is just not true, at least on the east coast.
i rent a 4br house just over the city line that's listed for ~$200k . 10 minute drive to downtown and a 30 minute commute to work. if i wanted to i could easily come up with the down payment for this house in a couple years on my entry level engineer's salary. in my office park alone, there are already several other software companies right there that i could conceivably work at.
once you rule out NYC, Boston, and the other megacities, there are still many mid-sized cities with good food, music, etc. they don't have nearly the same troubles with traffic, so it's often pretty easy to find a good job in the burbs if they dont do software in the city center.
A '30 minute commute to work' is a long time every day. It adds up to 250 hours a year, and over 10,000 hours over a lifetime.
Accepting a longer commute means more options, but the price is steap. Mine is currently 10 minutes and in a prior job I walked to work. However, that means I either need to move regularly or have a lot of options very close to me.
It's a direct time and money trade-off. People are spending time to obtain a standard of living that they do not have enough money to purchase with dollars.
You can light your money on fire by renting or you can be paying off a house at the same rate at the time cost of whatever your commute is.
If you want to eat healthy the options for fast meals get expensive. If you prepare everything from close to scratch you can eat just as health at the cost of time.
I have two neighbors, one from Germany and one from Austria. Both have extended their work contracts here in the US. They both told me they are staying for higher pay and lower taxes.
The German family gets a good amount of subsidies from the company to stay here in the US, so I think that has to be one of the primary factors in them deciding to stay.
High earners, in good health, and especially with no kids will definitely make more money - even after costs for healthcare - in the US.
The difference is in how protected they are from downside risk. You can even price it if you want: how much would it cost to buy a level of income and health protection in the US equivalent to the German safety net? Germany by the way isn't that generous by Western European standards. I'd be interested to see someone price it - my suspicion is that it would be ruinously expensive.
Of course, German nationals have the option of returning if they have to. They can earn in the US if their life circumstances make that possible while fleeing to safety if required. It's a pretty valuable option.
High earners in the US almost certainly have high quality health insurance available through their business which exceeds the quality of the default+private healthcare you get in Germany.
Basically, the US is a good place to stay and work and make a lot of money that you can save up, but it's a terrible place to have a family. So if you're a foreigner, it pays to just retain your foreign citizenship, stay in the US a while and save up a big nest egg, then eventually go back home to settle down and have a family and enjoy living off your nest egg.
This is just too much hyperbole. Describing the entire US as a "terrible place to have a family" is just ridiculous. Perhaps in some urban bubble that's the case, but there are wonderful places where raising a family is affordable and enjoyable.
It's not ridiculous at all. It is literally illegal to leave a child alone at home under the age of 12 years now in America (at least in my state, Virginia). That's not what I call "affordable"; child care expenses make it impossible for people to have children in this environment.
The US is so varied, it is like saying Europe. I can't imagine anyone not being able to find a part of the US they find appealing.
Like pretension? Portland calling here. Like Theatre? NYC calling. Like the cold? Alaska on the line. Like surfing? Hawaii here. Like the great outdoors? Pick one of a million places.
You just can't do that in any individual countries in Europe, as they are all smaller than most US states, with far less varied environments.
I feel like every statement of that form has an implied "with the lifestyle that I want".
If you remove that constraint then it's always possible for a software engineer because they make more than average and that average person does live somehow.
I think he/she was responding to the post that compared suburbs to ghettos. That's no more useful than me saying the same thing about living in a big city. Suburbs and city can both have perfectly good quality-of-life, regardless of preference, neither is a ghetto.
High rents in a bikeable city center can wipe out the savings you get from not owning a car.
My car-related expenses per month for two commuting drivers are $100 insurance, $150 in gas, and maybe $100 depreciation and maintenance. My cars are old and are not a fashion statement by any means. I would have to pay much more than $350 to get the same amount of house near city center. I would also sacrifice the ability to conveniently go long distances.
I guess that is my point. How backwards is it that living without a car in a small apartment is MORE expensive than living with multiple cars in a large house.
Not at all. Cars are technology; land is land. Our society is highly optimized to promote the availability of ever-cheaper, ever-better technology, and also to make sure that real estate assets continuously appreciate.
We should certainly expect a lifestyle based around consumer goods mass-produced under mature and technologically advanced industrial capitalism to be cheaper (and get cheaper over time) relative to a lifestyle based on around living on the most central, premium land.
> I feel like every statement of that form has an implied "with the lifestyle that I want".
The perspective confuses me - isn't "having kids" the lifestyle that they want? If that is the priority, then other aspects of life must be flexible to accommodate.
I am genuinely surprised that that combination is affordable in Berlin. Not like that is a small city or anything. How can you possibly find that much space at an affordable price?
I don't know about the differences between Berlin and the US beyond cursory knowledge.
But from having bought a place in a high demand area recently, the thing is always "who are you competing with". When the average person with 2 kids and a dog are looking at the same houses in the same places as the other family with 2 kids and a dog, there will be differences, but overall it won't be too bad. The problem start when that family wants the exact same house/condo/whatever as the 2 highly paid software engineer with no kids.
Then you're screwed: you're competing on a different level. And there's starting to be a lot of people with high dual income and no kid. The US is generally a nation of divide between the haves and the have nots, but the cultural divide is making things waaaaay worse.
Housing size. A 2 bedroom house in The New World is nothing like a 2 bedroom place in Europe. I bet the Berlin housing is a LOT smaller than a US place.
Even in SF, the housing is a lot larger than almost all of Europe. London is a disaster if you expect much if any space.
Agreed about London vs. the US, and the same would hold for Paris, but Berlin is the exception: apartments (and expectations) are huge compared to any other capital city.
I'm not sure why that is. Being physically cut off from the world helped keep prices down for sure, but it doesn't explain why apartments are large relative to the number of bedrooms.
There are plenty of cities in the US where this is possible but they may not be as desireable. Europe has a couple thousand years advantage on the US in offering cities vs suburbs.
There's no way a single software dev in the States could live that close to work, in a nice part of a major city, and also be able to afford space to house and take care of two kids. So his story seems pretty relevant.
Besides, if you're going to do software dev you typically need to be in a city to have options, so the squeeze factor is still there. I can attest to this as well; I'd much rather take the lower rent and live further out. I never even do anything in the city.
I live in a 3k sqft house in Salt Lake City with a wife (who doesn't work) and a kid. I commute about 25 minutes to work, but my house is a 0.7 mile walk down a nice, sidewalked suburban street from a software engineering company with about 100 employees, good salaries, and a good reputation.
In SLC it's easy for a software engineer to make 100K and support a family in a large home on a single income. We moved out here from California for this very reason.
Maybe you don't consider SLC to be a 'major city', but you will probably find similar lifestyles for engineers outside of California, Boston, and New York.
It's like the rest of the country doesn't really exist to certain people.
There are SO many cities with environments that this is possible, you just have to do a little cursory research. Businesses in these cities are hiring all the time because no one thinks about them. They don't have enough Starbucks or bike lanes. So we get articles talking about "can't" when it's really "won't."
Austin, Dallas, Kansas City, Des Moines, Detroit, Tampa, Miami...
The list goes on and on of medium sized cities starving for dev talent without enough coworking spaces or incubators.
My goal is to tear down the premise of the title, not to compete with a bunch of commenters moving the goalpoasts farther and farther.
The real issue here is that quality urban environments in America are becoming increasingly expensive to live in. If you can't afford it, but refuse to try and work to turn a medium-sized city into the city you desire, maybe you should tone down your "why our families can't afford X" rhetoric, because it's disingenuous.
> If you can't afford it, but refuse to try and work to turn a medium-sized city into the city you desire, maybe you should tone down your "why our families can't afford X" rhetoric, because it's disingenuous.
If a software developer likes Berlin and wants to live in a city that provides a similar lifestyle then how do you propose that they turn Des Moines into something that provides a similar lifestyle to Berlin?
If there is any disingenuity in this discussion it's in equating Berlin to Austin or Dallas or Kansas City or Des Moines or Detroit or Tampa or Miami.
Those are perfectly reasonable places to live, but they are not substitutes for Berlin if you want to live in that kind of place.
If those cities are perfectly reasonable places to live, but Berlin is where you want to live, then you should write an article with a premise that reflects how you feel that American cities cannot compete with Berlin.
I'm going to repeat myself one more time because you seem to be missing my point: I am saying the premise is flawed. I am not comparing Miami to Berlin, I am saying that the author is insisting on certain prerequisites and then saying that his family can't afford to live in AMERICA at all.
If you can't agree that this is disingenuous then we are going to have to agree to disagree.
Why would I move to any of those places when everyone that already lives there is getting exactly what they wanted when they chose not to build a dense, livable city? The residents of those cities chose to build a place that I don't find desirable. It's pretty unreasonable of you to expect me to move to one of those places and immediately start campaigning to change how those people want to live to suit my lifestyle.
In contrast, the place that I actually want to live, Seattle, has everything that I need in a layout I like except that I can only afford to live on the outskirts in a crappy neighborhood. If they would let people build 6-story buildings in better neighborhoods then it would be perfect.
Perhaps an average developer couldn't as the average is around $100k, but a realistically high earning one could. Consider someone who is a staff/senior staff/principal engineer at one of the usual places or someone who went through a nice exit. Forgive me if I read your comment too literally.
I think that's generally the conclusion that I come to: I'm very happy being realistically rich in America, but I'd much rather be in Europe if my financial situation were average for a software developer.
I am not arguing that this is or isn't a lot of money. For the record, I think that it is a lot of money. It's just not enough money to live OP's lifestyle in the US.
Name ANYWHERE like Berlin. Surely that's the question? You can't swap Berlin for anywhere, surely? It is majorly disingenuous to choose Berlin, or Rome, or London, Or Paris, or Tokyo and ask for a similar place. There is NOWHERE like these cities. There can't be. That is their unique charm.
Mid-size city, similar size and population, more affordable. Living in the city and owning your own home there with one job is completely doable, as is childcare.
Usually 'lifestyle' in the context of affordability is used to describe a set of activities that cost a certain amount. Like eating out, going to the movies, having multiple cars, etc.
It is also disingenuous to conveniently omit the fact that Berlin, as a major German city, enjoys economic benefits gained at the expense of other EU member countries. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Having lived in Berlin for ten years, I can say with certainty that wages there are less than half equivalents in our industry in the US, and income taxes are much higher. Cost of living in some places, like Berlin, is lower (for now), but that only matters if you intend to be a low income earner over your career. I would rather have 50% higher expenses and 100-300% higher income, myself.
There’s more to lifelong financial planning than “can I afford house payments?”.
I lived in the Bay Area for almost a decade until around 2005, the Presidio in San Francisco was my last address. I had a choice to stay - but I decided to go back to Germany. Wonderful city (for the most part), wonderful landscape, great climate, and I'll forever miss it - but different people have different priorities. I (still) don't really care where I live, but Europe (most of it) is hard to beat as an overall package deal. When you are young you don't care about much that you do care about in your forties or later.
About high incomes: What's the point of high income when you have to use it to buy things you otherwise get as part of the package anyway - or, more frequently, that no money can buy because the society as a whole has to provide it (includes the soft stuff like political climate and how much some arts of the population think they have to protect themselves from other parts)? I understand and accept when different people choose differently, but if there is only a single argument, a single data point "my income" then I see a lack of vision (almost literally).
> What's the point of high income when you have to use it to buy things you otherwise get as part of the package anyway
it doesn't just cancel out though. software devs in the states make much more money, to the point where you can easily afford the things that the government would provide you in europe. plus you obviously have to pay for those things through taxes anyway, and guess who pays the lions share of that. if you are in a high income bracket, you are always going to pay more in than you get back in direct services.
So what you're saying is... trains in SF... are a wreckage, and unusable. And you use a hyper-capitialized burning-someone-else's-money "disruptive" "startup" and would like to pretend it's comparable to having a functioning social service.
Well, okay.
I also regularly uber around in SF. Because there's no alternative. And yet: even ignoring dollar cost, I'd say it's comically, pathetically slow to get around the city compared to what a functioning mass transit system should be able to do. SF is tiny, geographically speaking; the time it takes to cover ground in SF using a car is a travesty, and more ubering will not make this better, unless we get a new ultra-high-cost variant which has rockets to blast the other traffic off the road like some terrible action movie come to life.
> There’s more to lifelong financial planning than “can I afford house payments?”.
I think a key difference here is pensions and social security too.
I live in Sweden don't have any lifelong financial planning. I expect to have a decent pension coming from payments made by my employer, not saved by me (I save a little to extend it just a little bit). I expect that if I get sick I'll get by on my public and private insurances.
That is: I expect to have a whole working life where I don't need to put aside anything. As long as I afford my house, car, holidays etc - I'm fine.
There are no future massive expenses such as my own pension, my kids' college or a sudden illness. And that's also at least partially why my salary is so low, compared to a place where the salary would be required to cover an expensive education, pensions, healthcare etc.
> I would rather have 50% higher expenses and 100-300% higher income
I think this is also a matter of culture. With 100-300% higher income you could argue that you can afford to take a month off every now and then, instead of having the 6w paid a german gets. But the cultural difference is that in the US, perhaps you don't. And with a huge income you can afford to take a year off after having a child. But the cultural difference might mean you can't (because management would object) and so on.
To paraphrase you: there is more to econominc planning than the purely economic too. I think americans often focus a lot (perhaps too much) on income and cost, when the real differences between countries are cultural and lies in how much holiday people take (not just are allowed to take), how long parental leaves are, and so on.
> That is: I expect to have a whole working life where I don't need to put aside anything. As long as I afford my house, car, holidays etc - I'm fine.
As an American, I think this may be the hardest thing to wrap my head around. Since I was a kid I (and anecdotally, many of my peers) have been told to never rely on a government or business-sponsored pension. What happens if the government swings in a different direction in the 3 decades before I retire? What if a couple bad administrations screw things up? What if the company who has my pension goes under or poorly invests it?
It seems that having nothing saved for yourself for your decades-away end of life care is putting A LOT of trust in a system that is less than 100 years old. I think this is where my desire to trade earnings for government services comes from... I can't guarantee that the services will be there for me, but if I manage my money conservatively I can more-or-less guarantee that it will be there.
Keep in mind that I'm also a software engineer, giving me the privilege to choose higher earnings over government services. If I were lower-income or in a line with less future earnings potential I might feel differently.
Yes we trust our government a lot. Too much probably. But we also don’t have much choice given how taxes work (high, progressive). The US is pretty special in that the working majority has been led to believe that low taxes and a small welfare state works in their advantage. Every poor person is just a temporarily embarrassed millionaire and so on.
If there was suddenly a broad political support in the US for a pension system guaranteeing anyone to retire at 65 with at least a minimum wage equivalent - then that would increase your taxes and make it harder for you to set aside part of your above-average income.
Same if voters suddenly realized that state funded maternity leave would be a good thing. Again a huge, expensive tax funded reform.
We have had all these reforms. Single payer healthcare, Free higher education, 1-2 years parental leave (state, not employer funded) etc.
All of this means I pay 30% income tax, a hefty payroll tax, and 10-25% vat on most goods - which in turn means I can’t set aside a ton of money for retirement. So in a weird sense we made ourselves dependent on the state, even those of us with high incomes are.
Especially with Sweden, I think jantelagen[0] is also an important thing to call out. Not so much in a negative tone, but more in terms of simply framing career success. There just isn't the same pressure to be a rockstar. You can be good at your job, even just ok at your job (maybe even bad at your job) for decades and that's fine.
That's not to say that ambitious and driven individuals are rare, but the amount of social judgement around career is significantly less in most circles than in the states.
I’m not just talking about retirement, although that is a big one. It’s like people in Europe are fine with having no cars/boats/planes and spending disproportionate amounts of their income on heavily taxed essentials like clothes and electronics. Cheap rent and food and healthcare don’t offset that enough.
There’s no way you can spin living in Europe as being a financially beneficial choice.
It’s fine if you want to live in a 40qm flat and never have any substantial assets your whole life, but don’t pretend that it’s a sound financial decision.
Oh I don’t mean financially. I mean simply as a quality of life trade off.
Choosing where to live is rarely purely a financial decision. If you migrate permanently it’s probably for other reasons. If you expect moving back to the US where you’d need your savings (e.g to retire) then you need to make it a partially financial decision of course.
Not sure what you mean by the 40sqm flat and no assets, that obviously depends on how much you make and what you decide to do with it. I live comfortably (new car, decent sized house etc) but that is at the expense of not putting aside much. In the US I could probably have more stuff and still set aside a lot of money because I’d be making 2x the money and have lower taxes (If I made 3 or 4 times the money it would probably be in places where I’d be living in a studio flat such as in SF).
But I think what’s being lost is that it’s hard to put a price on things like having long holidays, good working hours etc. None of that is exclusive to any country but it’s certainly differing on average.
In the end all of this is about what you value as quality of life. What kind of money you need to cover the kind of lifestyle you want.
I just moved away from Seattle after 6 years, where some argue the tech income-to-cost of living ratio might be the best in the world, due to the even higher cost of living in SF. (If I'm wrong, no matter, just substitute SF in your mind.)
Anyway upon moving away to a much lower cost of living area I've discovered one issue with the SF/Seattle-type areas is that you can't afford to be out of a job for very long, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, without the cost of living bleeding you dry.
If you don't want to live stressed out about losing your job due to bristling against some boss/company, or you might want to take a few months off from time to time to work on a personal project or just to relax, what I might do from now on is consider the pay-to-cost of living ratio of an area under the assumption that I work, say, 9 months out of every 12.
> one issue with the SF/Seattle-type areas is that you can't afford to be out of a job for very long
Absolutely true. Some years ago a contract gig I was working at in NYC was abruptly cancelled, and the following month or two were pretty stressful as I watched my emergency funds get so rapidly depleted due to the high COL there. Thankfully I was able to line something up but it was a valuable shift in perspective.
And as much as I'd love to do the 9-months-out-of-12, I'm not sure there's an easy way to pull that off in the US (or anywhere really).
I think it should be possible if you can live in some lower cost of living area if you can secure a remote role in a higher pay area.
Frankly, after the expensive 6 years in Seattle, I'm now spending some time in Budapest, Hungary, where the cost of living is particularly low and the city is particularly good.
The local salaries are remarkably low according to American expectations, but all I need to do is land an occasional part time project, or work perhaps 1/3 of the time to do quite well.
I've met some local folks who have pulled this off quite well, also, getting remote jobs in higher paying areas and living quite handsomely here. It has been a bit of an eye-opener for me.
Your children might not all be high income earners. You live somewhere like that and you're essentially condemning your (future) extended family apart and forcing yourself to stay on that same career track for a long time.
I'm jealous of one branch of my extended family that lives in one medium-cost city with a diverse set of career options and can keep their family bonds strong.
And if you don't live somewhere like that, you significantly limit your kids' opportunities to be high earners, and all the other valuable things that come with an in demand career.
I think the main difference is kids. Daycare, healthcare and education is much cheaper in most of Europe (due to high taxes).
You can earn more in the US as a top earner, but you can have a more relaxed and care-free life in Europe while still making a good living and retire early if you're one of those top earners.
People lament the falling fertility rate (esp. among a particular ethnic group), but they never want to do anything about the government policies and living costs and other social factors that are driving this reduced rate.
$60k USD minus taxes, rent, insurance, and other fixed costs is not going to buy you much healthcare. The cheaper places to live in the US might not even have decent healthcare options. Not to mention significant time off will result in termination.
If your health problems do not prevent you from working, it’s not a problem.. But keep in mind that even non-engineers and poor people have those benefits.
Until they experience a major medical event, survive and find shortly thereafter that they have been furloughed for "other reasons" because their insurance becomes too costly for the employer to afford.
And a new job to afford yet another payment? Where do I sign????
PS: not me... family, friends & acquaintances who had spent decade(s) with employers and after returning to work able bodied only to be subsequently let go for reasons other than their abilities to perform their duties.
And that is what Uni Health Care addresses, supposedly. The caveat is, while insurance providers must cover PECs, it says nothing about how much they will charge. The systemic problems with for-profit/quasi-social healthcare were not fixed nor addressed(outside more welfare options), it just mandated more participants paying into the coffers.
It's not just the welfare state that makes this possible, it's maybe more so the fact that (as far as I understand) Germany has a functioning housing market, and Berlin especially is very cheap for such a big city.
In many parts of Europe housing costs would have killed you.
Berlin is affordable, because, like Leipzig and Dresden, it's in former East Germany. Most of the country's economy is still concentrated in West Germany[1] (Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg), which is much less affordable.
A friend of mine who lives there told me rents cannot be increased by more than the current inflation rate for years. It’s only every x years that landlords are allowed to adjust to market rates or something.
Can someone from Berlin confirm that this is accurate?
In theory, there is some law that should prevent rent increases too much but you would not get anything like that anymore now. Now you get fixed term contracts and after that rent will increase by whatever amount is possible. The time you describe is over (and only valid for old but still existing contracts)
Because before, it was even more affordable (prices doubled in the last ten years already) and before that there was no Berlin (in the form we know it today ...)
Ironically for a long time (and to a lesser degree even now) European politicians constantly tried to emulate aspects of the American System. This is true on the macro political scale with a „United States of Europe“ being one ultimate goal for some politicians, but also when it comes to reform higher education (the Bologna reforms) and other policies.
Yet even the most affluent parts of the US (east coast around Boston, Martha’s Vineyard etc.) have in my view never compared favorably to many areas in Europe.
It is really unfortunate that Europeans don’t have a sense of Manifest Destiny and Potential for the whole of Europe but instead fall back to nationalism, whenever a challenge like the financial crisis or refugee crisis emerges.
It's not unfortunate, it's what makes Europe Europe. I'd say that if you changed the countries in Europe to be more like American states, you'd lose one of the factors that makes it the way it is today.
That is leaving aside the very loaded term "Manifest Destiny", which I originally thought was something people only used ironically. Perhaps I misread your text?
> It is really unfortunate that Europeans don’t have a sense of Manifest Destiny and Potential for the whole of Europe but instead fall back to nationalism, whenever a challenge like the financial crisis or refugee crisis emerges.
It's not that people fall back to nationalism - it's where we all started. It's just that for a perceived mutual good politicians say "let's go for it". The reality is that Europe can only really work long term with much closer political/fiscal integration. Every politician knows that, but most have made a career of not mentioning the things that people don't want to hear.
As for the European dream - that's hard. The shared cultural capital isn't there, and it cannot be imposed from above.
There is a lot of shared cultural capital, you just have to visit the various art museums, you are just as likely to find French, Dutch and Spanish painters in Vienna as you are in Paris. The old European elites all shared a common culture, references to Roman and Greek mythology, Christian faith, a common style of literature etc. For a long time they even had a common language, Latin, later on everyone learned at least French and sometimes German and English. It also has clearly identifiable cultural centres, for the most part the capitals of the historically dominant military and political powers Vienna, Paris, Berlin etc. Nationalism is only a very brief phase compared to the long rule in Europe of a few dynasties (Habsburg in most of Central Europe, Spain, Italy and Low Countries). Personally I don't think one necessarily needs deeper fiscal and political integration (although the Euro architecture is clearly broken, but might be fixed in other ways), just better messaging and a shared European identity.
Wasn't Manifest Destiny all about territorial expansion? Cause European countries did the expansion thing and it gave us WWI and WWII. So it is kinda good they stopped.
Manifest Destiny was the spirit of the times during western expansion. The West was considered "free and empty" (Let's ignore the natives), and it was America's destiny to control the continent from coast to coast.
So not as much about expanding, and more about growing in to what room "was available", I think.
That is likely just changing one kind of radical nationalism for another. Had European union decided that we are the thing in the Manifest Destiny meaning, nearby places would cease to count as really occupied too.
Yeah, Hitler explicitly referenced US imperialism I believe, when he talked about "Lebensraum" in the East. He had a similar racist rationale, why it would be ok to subjugate the slavs. This is not what I meant though. If Europeans as a whole came to realise the tremendous opportunity that a shared European continent means in terms of shared wealth and prosperity, I don't think anyone in their right mind would want to revert to nationalism, especially when they are from tiny countries like Belgium or the Netherlands. I also believe this is how most young Europeans think, judging by my encounters with Greek, Italian and Spanish students in Germany.
There is no need to conquer anyone, if it is mutually beneficial to cooperate and compete with external forces instead, such as the US and China.
>>> European politicians constantly tried to emulate aspects of the American System.
Not today's system. The system they wanted to emulate was that of the 50s/60s/70s, which was a socialist utopia compared to the America of today.
No European politician today would suggest denying healthcare to sick children, or a return to debtors prisons. Those things are happening. Nevada is about to elect a literal pimp, a man who proudly operates several brothels, as a state representative. Things are very different today. Europe is not trying to emulate the US anymore.
What's wrong with operating legal brothels? It sounds like you can't shake your puritanical American view of sec if you think legal sex workers are bad.
Nothing per se. But you just don't see many politicians promote such backgrounds as a plus. The guy's book is called "The Art of the Pimp", his really show "cathouse". His attitude to women and employees is horrible. This guy is is just plain sleazy. But he won the republican primary in a red state. He will win.
You are operating within a very simplistic -- and at this point outdated -- narrative of both Europe and the challenges facing the continent. Also, the comparison between Europe and the United States is a persistent but very wrong-headed one. The two are not comparable. States are not like countries made up of people with much that divides them, like culture, values, language, history, geopolitical interests, etc. The financial crisis was a reality check, history crashing the party, that put into stark contrast the forces, tensions, and interests that make up Europe but were simmering under a veneer of wishful thinking and cynical neocolonialism masquerading as fraternité.
Surely, European cooperation of some kind makes sense, if only to secure a basic peace and to avert war. But the dream of a federal Europe is dead, and frankly, was stillborn. It won't happen. Not only is there no path to that happening, not only has nothing like that ever happened, but it doesn't even make sense. Go ahead. Tell me what it means to be "European". You can't. There's no such thing. It can't compete with being French, German, Polish, Italian, etc. Worse, you can't even join it. The United States started as a British colonial possession (mostly) that formed the nucleus of the country. People moving to the US were joining a society that had already existed, even if loosely. There is no "European" nucleus and you couldn't impose it on Europe even if it wasn't a vacuous idea. Every attempt to unify Europe failed. It was always and can only be an imperialist endeavor. Right now, it's largely a German play. Look at Merkel. She has no position in the EU and yet is treated as if she had. That's not a coincidence. Nobody wants to be part of some crypto-German empire. Those who do move to Germany.
This is why we're seeing Central/European European coalescing into a web of alliances based on the historical and present need to form a cohesive bloc able to repel both German dominance and Russian aggression. It is a geopolitical necessity and an act of self-preservation. They don't want to vegetate in a state of permanent neocolonial mediocrity. They didn't throw off the yoke of Russian dominance just to become a second-class corral of cheap labor and an economic dumping ground for Germany and other Western countries. They don't want to be what Piketty calls "foreign-owned countries". A federal Europe wouldn't magically dissolve the power relations in Europe, it would formalize this dominance under the guise of unity, cooperation, and some "new European man" nonsense. Gee, where have we heard that farce before.
A better solution, grounded in the hard facts of reality and not insipid bromides, is to respect national sovereignty and to maintain a forum or forums for fostering, organically, European cooperation and the resolution of disputes. The US will play an important role in maintaining the geopolitical balance.
P.S. Manifest destiny make no sense in relation to Europe, and it is a dubious concept anyway.
I guess everything is relative. I also fell for a German woman, who I met because she came here to Denmark to write her PhD.
As much as she likes being home in Germany for vacations, we're both pretty much settled on staying in Copenhagen. She certainly wouldn't want to live in Berlin, but of course she may be biased, coming from rural southern Germany herself.
For reference, she comes from a small town just south of Stuttgart, and she's lived in Munich, Aachen and Mannheim in Germany, and Dublin in Ireland, before moving to Copenhagen. So I figure she's got a reasonable comparison to make :-)
Copenhagen is simply outrageously amazing for biking, public transport, cultural events and food selection. I honestly couldn't imagine living anywhere else, and I've lived at both ends of the rural/urban spectrum in Denmark, as well as visited a fair few places around the globe. I wouldn't want to live in the city centre (way too expensive and cramped), I'd like to have a garden and such. But no more than 30-45 minutes by public transport to the city centre.
We have extended family (cousins) on my wife’s side of the family that are Danish. Lovely people. My wife and I have toyed with the idea of moving near them; however, we are in careers that would make likely make that process very challenging (k12 teacher & mental health therapist are unlikely to be in such high demand to obtain occupational sponsorship).
Thinking about a change in country in a year or two and Germany comes up a lot. How is the cycling infrastructure? I understand it's not great compared to NL or DK but worlds better than where I am now (Ireland) and obviously incomparable to the disaster that is US bike infrastructure.
> Thinking about a change in country in a year or two and Germany comes up a lot. How is the cycling infrastructure? I understand it's not great compared to NL or DK
In my very culture-biased observation as a native German (who also goes to work mostly by bicycle (and if not, by tram)), I would say that the Germans who go by bike are more risk-tolerant. Where people of other cultures would refuse to go by bike, the group of Germans who love to go by bike will go by bike no matter what the cycling infrastructure is like (I know quite a lot such people). If your cycling annoys motorists, know the laws and simply tell them that you also advocate for better cycling infrastructure.
In this sense, my impression is that the central reason why the cycling infrastructure becomes improved in Germany is so that motorists become less annoyed by cyclists.
P.S. To answer your question: In NL and, I think, DK the cycling infrastructure is better (how much depends on the city; for example Münster is very bicycle-friendly). But this is not something that you care about when you bicycle in Germany (especially to/from work), since it is rather an attitude to life. Because you are convinced that going by bike is "the right thing", you will go by bike no matter how sketchy the cycling infrastructure is like.
I used to cycle anywhere, anyhow and it's amazing I'm alive in retrospect. Country roads on California's central coast in the middle of the night - from DTLA to Santa Monica down Wilshire (my wife was on bus 20 and I managed to beat her at 3 AM), etc.
But I'm tired of feeling like I stand a decent chance of dying any time I decide to go anywhere.
More importantly, though, I'd like to be happy watching my kid ride a bike to school, and not filled with abject terror.
Hah, I'm glad you found our little pseudo-anarchic protest group! Interesting to see the profile change between Dublin Cycling Campaign and IBD in terms of mindshare...
Incidentally, I made a tool for finding homes:
1) Near a decent bike route, or the few that exist (grand canal, Phoenix Park, Waterford Greenway, etc.)
But are you able to buy a decent detached house with a backyard and maybe some pool in Berlin with that income? The worst thing in Germany (and maybe in most of Europe) - most of the people (esp. millennials) live in rented flats.
Flats are good, because they increase density. The UK has a weird cultural aversion to flats, so we have vast sprawling suburbs full of tiny houses with tiny gardens; British cities have noticeably less green space than in most of the rest of Europe. Residents in flats might not have a private garden, but they usually have a balcony, good views from their windows and access to a communal garden. New-build developments in Britain tend to feel stiflingly claustrophobic, because the developers have crammed in as many houses as the planners will allow - you might live in a detached house, but you could lean out of your bedroom window and touch your neighbour's house.
Renting is fine if your rental market is well regulated. The UK has very laissez-faire rental laws, so most tenants are desperate to own a home; Germany has very strict tenure laws, so most people are perfectly happy to keep renting.
Is that sentiment due to the concept of living in a high density environment, or the execrable execution of practically all high density residential developments?
There are known ways to develop high density without it feeling like high density. But they all subtract from the profit margin of the developer, and there is currently no customer demand for it over the lower-cost, higher-margin and more miserable executions, thus you very rarely ever see high density actually executed well.
I haven't been able to find a forum that specifically discusses affordable, high density design. Because I'd like to pepper them with a lot of questions I've pondered, but as a layperson, can't find answers to. Like: assuming cost can be absorbed, lots of people see digging below grade space as more trouble than its worth, because water is always seeping in. I see the water and think, great, let it flow into a cistern even deeper down to pump up and water plants. Why aren't we using the capital concentration of high density housing to make more space below grade and reduce water consumption off city mains at the same time?
No, I just don't like living near other people. I live on a 10-acre farm. If my commute wouldn't totally suck, I'd move farther from the city to where I could afford even more land.
I like having my neighbors at arms' length.
As for the water thing: well, living on a farm I have to take care of my own water and its far cheaper to buy municipal water than to dig wells and process your own, so no developer is going to do that.
> No, I just don't like living near other people. I live on a 10-acre farm.
In the context of OP, we're talking about the bulk of the population, who in the US have a median household income of $57,230 to $59,039 in latest census statistics. By virtue of sitting around chatting on HN, there is a very high probability that you have a very privileged position where that median household income is close to or below your individual income. It certainly is below my income.
I get it. I like living in a large space, too (50-100 acres is my ideal). And I get that there may be individuals like yourself in that bulk of the population who feel the same way. But realistically, when discussing policy decisions over how to structure a nation's infrastructure so it is affordable for most of its citizens, at our population levels, with our energy infrastructure, IMHO you're only looking at high density. The energy consumption profile alone of living low-density, combined with prevailing low-efficiency stick builds in the US, makes low density a punishingly expensive proposition over time for middle income families.
Those of us who are wealthy and/or privileged enough to avoid high density, I'm not prescribing we should do anything but pursue what we enjoy and are able to afford. But for a disturbingly large and increasing segment of the population, I don't see low density as a viable option, absent some pretty radical changes in the socioeconomic and cultural order. I welcome discussion to the contrary, as we need a solution for the burgeoning middle classes in developing nations better than the US model, and I'd prefer a low density approach because it is simply currently an easier sell.
> ...far cheaper to buy municipal water than to dig wells and process your own...
My thinking was more along the lines of, if you're building mid-rise to high-rise for high density, then you're going to be digging into the ground anyways for the foundation. You might as well dig a bit further for the marginal cost of getting your own cistern, letting the water seepage that is normally fought against fill the cistern, and use the water like gray water for a food forest and orchards, and let the filtered runoff feed downstream aquaculture arrays.
> But are you able to buy a decent detached house with a backyard and ...
People live in differently in different places. Many Europeans find the flimsy plywood-tyvek and fake brick houses we have in America a non-starter. And what's up with those sliding windows? Everyone knows windows should be hinged and have working shutters! :-)
I do wish I had more fixed, casement, awning, & hopper windows in the US. But supposedly the popularity of sliding windows has a lot to do with the popularity of really, really big windows, especially with large contiguous panes of glass. Horizontal sliders can accommodate the huge weight of large panes. Good luck making a sturdy casement with 1.5m x 1.5m panes of glass, double glazed.
I wince every year when it's tornado season and I see those flimsy houses being flung out by the wind. Just dig the earth, make proper foundations and build walls. It's not like you don't know how to do it, there's some fine buildings in the US (I heard).
No standard home construction even with brick - can withstand powerful tornadoes. Even if the walls withstand weaker tornadoes the roof will most likely not and it will probably result in a complete loss anyway.
You would need very thick reinforced concrete to be sure of surviving most tornadoes. And you'd have to solve the roof problem.
You are severely underestimating the power of tornadoes.
Several have been hit by tornadoes. There is even an older design (thinner with less reinforcement than modern designs) that survived an EF4 or EF5 tossing cars at it.
Regardless of the sheltering advantages of dome homes, it's misleading to say they're just as affordable. They don't resell well at all, making it an extremely risky investment. Costs of the basics (as told by the marketing documentation you sent me) can be just as cheap, until you realize you lose significant floor space and you need more materials for a similar sized home and you realize nothing standard fits. No nice doors, no normal windows. Now you need custom ones - price goes up.
Compared to the homes rebuilt after disasters, most of those are significantly cheaper to build than a dome and that's where insurance goes. People aren't willing to pay more for a non-resell-able and frankly ugly structure that isn't as practical.
Normal houses aren't purely full of standard things. People have round chair-like things, oval bassinets, exercise equipment, oval dog beds, funny-shaped cat scratch posts, round potted plants, and so on. Put this stuff beside the curved walls.
Each room in a dome home will normally have at least 2 flat walls, frequently 3. That's enough for shoving things against walls, not that you should damage your paint that way.
Usually people use normal windows and doors. You can install them the ugly way or the pretty way, and oddly there are people who choose both. The ugly way has them on bulging protrusions. The pretty way has them recessed behind openings that are often rectangles or trapezoids with rounded corners, with the space between acting as a balcony or sheltered porch.
Here is a pretty one on sale now, having gone up in value by more than a factor of 8:
My mother, sister and I are applying for Italian citizenship so we can move and work in an EU country more easily. My brother is a university student in Germany with no plans to return to the USA.
For my partner and I the drive to move to the EU is the opportunity to have a good family life. A reasonable commute (30 mins or less, and the option to bike or take public transit), a modest home, reliable childcare, and predictable healthcare. Your current life is our goal!
My understanding is that dev salaries are dramatically lower in Germany, England, and Switzerland - the only European countries where you would even consider going to work in tech.
Now, on a single high 5 figure salary, I'm 15 minutes biking to work and live in one of the nicest parts of the city. We have two kids in free day care. My wife works part time, and she is finishing a year off of 60% paid maternity leave. She really doesn't earn much after taxes, but we save all her income - more than 15k per year.
Salaries are lower here and things are getting more expensive for sure. But for 400k+ EUR, we should be able to buy a place for a family of four and bet set for a long time.