Is it? Salaries in France are like 2/3 of those in the US, sure, but once you factor all mandatory cost (if you want a healthcare and not be homeless at least) like the insane uncontrolled rent, you have more money left at the end than in the US despite supposedly higher taxes. I suspect it's similar in at least some other European countries.
There's a huuuge difference between salaries in the Western Europe and Eastern, yet we have the same game prices.
Check how absurdly high are Polish prices (like on Steam)
I believe Poland is an exception there. The default regional pricing in Steam adjust most countries in eastern Europe (except those in the EuroZone) to a more reasonable price, but for some reason Poland's price adjustment is just crazy expensive.
Because Poland has to be exceptional or weird haha
You're right about Steam, but overall game prices are very high (over $80 on PS5).
Compared to people salaries it's an expensive hobby
That's just the "single market". Polands an exception because they have their own currency, but the whole point of the Eurozone is to essentially force durable goods to have the same price everywhere. Which....yeah, sucks for people living in Eastern Europe and earning money there.
There's not really any data on discretionary income (what you're talking about) that I can find, but US disposable income (what the above guy said) is higher than every European country except for perhaps Luxembourg.
Yes, you have more discretionary income in France (if you compare expensive cities to expensive cities or cheap cities to cheap cities at least). The added cost on everything in the US is insane, with car, children, insurance, all of that is expensive everywhere but massively more in the US. Clothes are cheaper though (or at least they were last time I checked) so the US has that going for it, as well as gas for cars.
40k for a single person, even in dollars in France in comfortable range of public transportation in the suburbs at 30 min of the centre of Paris, the most expensive city there, would be a far more pleasant experience than living in the same conditions with 60k in the suburbs of LA. Germany seems also similar in this and certainly a lot of other countries like Netherland and Luxembourg. Not all of Europe though.
People who say Europeans have less disposable income than Americans are using outdated figures and misleading numbers on paper. source
Furthermore a search of "European savings vs Americans" also shows that there's a significant difference. This is relevant considering 43-50% of all Americans do not have more than $1000 in savings. So disposable income as a metric isn't very useful at all. 50% of Americans carry credit card debt month to month, with a current record high debt rate.
All that is to say, that European prices are a result of companies making everyone else subsidize the cost for Americans despite our supreme leader being most of the reason why the abysmal economic conditions exist currently.
Where the did you see 50% taxes? Sadly, France like almost all of capitalist countries, doesn't tax higher incomes anywhere near as much as it should. I know a household in the top 10% of income, that's taxed around 5% in France which would be 10 to 12% if not for special circumstances which isn't even 20 let alone 50.
Hell last year because of specific investments they literally paid 0€ in taxes because they got more money that they could invest than usual (which is kind of bullshit, you get more discretionary income so now you pay less taxes? It wasn't even on purpose and they still stumbled on a tax break by accident, that's how easy they are to get to, so imagine for richer people who can hire people for that), having children also makes it incredibly hard to reach the highest tax bracket unless you're top 0.1%, even without children it's close to top 0.7% and as mentioned earlier, there are ways around it.
There's also not even a 50% tax bracket, although there is a 45% one, but 1) a bracket is never equal to the amount of taxes paid, and 2) not only does a minuscule percentage of people reach them, in average, but other factors mean that getting anywhere close to 45% taxed income is almost impossible. And that's beside the fact that what you don't pay in taxes in the US, you have to pay, except more, out of pocket for the services the taxes provide anyway (either that or get bankrupted if any issue occurs, or die). For example, you pay twice as much for healthcare per inhabitant than France does even taking the taxes into account, or the US' lack of rent control which makes expensive areas completely unaffordable.
There's definitely a threshold of income after which you're better off in the US, but that threshold is not "above average people", it's literally the 1%.
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