57k sounds nice until you realize that 1200 go to your health plan and you still need to copay hundreds every time something comes up.
American salaries are also always presented as gross income before taxes instead if net income after taxes like in Europe.
we also do gross before taxes in Germany. 57k before taxes is still a solid salary in many areas of Germany. Some MINT and Financelords might want to disagree with that, but it is in the top 15% of salaries. At that Level you pay about 5,1k taxes, 5,3k pension and 4,6k for health, 1,3k eldercare and 750 unemployment insurance. (all mandatory)
That seems quite a lot at first, but for instance unemployment pays 60% of your net income up to a year qfter loosing a job, health insurance also covers all children until they are 25 or earn more than 500€/month.
It only sounds like a lot of taxes to us Americans that don’t actually do the math… I’m making almost 60kUSD so it’s a very real comparison for me. Like your 4.6k healthcare tax is my 14.4k pay cut (mandatory healthcare coverage for full time employees paid for by the owner @1,200/month for me) Your 5k general tax is higher than my 3.6k income tax, but everything else offsets that by such a large margin that arguing against it is laughable.
Thing is we also pay a ton of of pocket when we go to the doctor too.
I wish we had a number to use like your 4.6k but for America so in our arguments for universal healthcare we could show just how much more we really pay…
Sorry for all the edits, I remember as I reread lol
