patrick.net

Grok says it's false:

To provide the median and average annual gross salaries for the Netherlands and the United States in U.S. dollars (USD), I’ll convert the Netherlands’ figures from euros (€) to USD using the exchange rate of 1 EUR = 1.18 USD (as you specified for September 17, 2025). The figures are for full-time workers, pre-tax, sourced from Centraal Planbureau (CPB) for the Netherlands and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for the U.S.

Netherlands
Median: €46,500 × 1.18 = $54,870
Average: €46,500 × 1.18 = $54,870 (mean aligns with median per CPB data)

United States
Median: $62,088
Average: $66,622

Using 1 EUR = 1.18 USD, reflecting today’s rate (September 17, 2025).
Context: The higher exchange rate increases the Netherlands’ salaries in USD compared to the prior 1.11 rate, though U.S. salaries remain higher due to market differences.
Sources: CPB for Netherlands (2025 estimates); BLS for U.S. (2024 data, adjusted for 2025).

Not only are salaries lower over there, taxes are way higher.

Patrick says

Grok says it's false:

It's false because you can't compare median to average, which they are purposely doing disingenuously.

It's not so much the taxes you pay...it's what you get for the taxes.

Misc says

It's not so much the taxes you pay...it's what you get for the taxes.

Agreed, in some European countries you get net more because as a taxpayer you get to enjoy all of the services, no matter how rich you are.

People crow about how high taxes are over there but given roughly the same salary you would come out far ahead for example in Germany with a family of four. Close to free childcare, schools, Universities, groceries at least 40% cheaper etc. Also Germany has flat 25% cap gains, not that shit that taxes you at the income tax rate for short term gains, and Switzerland has no capital gains tax.

Of course in many industries (e.g. tech) the salaries are lower, but this bullshit about how the US has such low taxes simply doesn't hold true as soon as you factor in benefits and cost of living. Especially since the leftoids ratcheted up the progressive tax rates, federally and in the states, but cut everyone making over $150k off from almost any benefit is just crap and Trump hasn't done enough yet to revert it, although he is moving in the right direction.

I'd argue that on many levels the US tax system of progessively taxing you the richer you are while cutting off almost all benefits at a relatively low income threshold is more socialist/communist than in some European countries.

mell says

Close to free childcare, schools, Universities, groceries at least 40% cheaper etc

There's nothing 'free' on that list. And the more the consumer is divorced from paying a true price for something, the more warped supply will be.

MolotovCocktail says

mell says

Close to free childcare, schools, Universities, groceries at least 40% cheaper etc

There's nothing 'free' on that list. And the more the consumer is divorced from paying a true price for something, the more warped supply will be.

They aren't divorced from it, they are paying via taxes. You can always pay for a private institution as well. The supply is extremely ample and schools are much better on average, don't kid yourself. Europe has many problems such as mass immgration, but quality of education and childcare ain't one of them. Of course there are differnces by country, but Germany and Switzerland beat the US in that department by miles. The US is great for singles advancing their careers, working and playing hard and building their fortunes/nest eggs early on. For families, meh

mell says

They aren't divorced from it, they are paying via taxes. You can always pay for a private institution as well. The supply is extremely ample and schools are much better on average, don't kid yourself. Europe has many problems such as mass immgration, but quality of education and childcare ain't one of them. Of course there are differnces by country, but Germany and Switzerland beat the US in that department by miles. The US is great for singles advancing their careers, working and playing hard and building their fortunes/nest eggs early on. For families, meh

What happen with education quality in US? Europe won't be immune. Do you think all African emigrants' children attending nonpublic school? Teachers' demographics will change as well. Just few more years.

mell says

They aren't divorced from it, they are paying via taxes

You said 'close to free', not me.

mell says

but quality of education

https://www.iamexpat.de/education/education-news/german-schools-perform-worse-ever-pisa-assessment

REpro says

The US is great for singles advancing their careers, working and playing hard and building their fortunes/nest eggs early on. For families, meh

What families? Europeans have less brats than we do. So much for their system is better for families.

And why should I pay for someone else's brats?

Fuck schools! Fuck childcare!

You want those things, YOU pay for them.

What's next? Free or subsidized housing? Free phones? Oh wait!

Fuck socialism. Fuck Europe fluffers on ParNet pushing this bullshit, too.

REpro says

What happen with education quality in US? Europe won't be immune. Do you think all African emigrants' children attending nonpublic school? Teachers' demographics will change as well. Just few more years.

You are correct, the quality has been declining everywhere due to mass immigration and this needs to be reversed. However schools in the US are are worse than in Europe and that includes most private institutions as well due to the massive grift and woke shit that took place in the past decades. You are better off attending school in Europe these days imo and save the tuition.

MolotovCocktail says

Fuck socialism. Fuck Europe fluffers on ParNet pushing this bullshit, too.

The American tax system is more socialist than the tax system of many European countries because it does not allow those who pay the brunt of the taxes (the producing earners) to access most of its benefits.

mell says

You are better off attending school in Europe these days imo and save the tuition.

Take blacks out of the mix. Some hispanics as well. Our education system looks much better than you'd think. 50% of inner city blacks likely won't graduate high school. 25% of hispanics won't.

Also truancy for all kids is a problem. My son has told me there are kids that have already missed 2 weeks of school this year, mid September. Women.... Younger moms will just do a sob story with the school office and keep the kid home because Billy doesn't feel well and has a doctor that can write a note.

I get along great with my kids but if they're not puking or shitting their pants (they don't) you're going to school. Consistency is key. I'll give them medicine for a fever of 100-102ºF, but until it gets above that, you're going to school. Drink water and just tell the PE teacher you're a bit under the weather. Sit in your classes and get it done. We need to bank absences for vacation which usually is somewhat education with excursions and stuff anyway. So we avoid the "I don't feel good" absences.

mell says

The American tax system is more socialist than the tax system of many European countries because it does not allow those who pay the brunt of the taxes (the producing earners) to access most of its benefits.

No. That is not the definition of socialism.

The fall of Rome was caused by an INTERNAL demographic crisis.

What is happening to Western Europe with Africa is EXACTLY what once happened to the Roman Empire when it integrated barbarian populations to solve its labour shortages.

The late Roman Empire faced a demographic and military challenge that it could not solve internally. Falling birth rates among Roman citizens, coupled with endless wars and epidemics, created a chronic shortage of manpower. To compensate, Rome began to settle Germanic and other barbarian tribes inside its frontiers.

At first, these groups were supposed to provide soldiers and farmers under imperial control. In practice, however, they retained their own identities, their own leaders, and their own laws. Rome, desperate for labor and troops, compromised its own cohesion in order to survive.

The parallels with Western Europe today are striking. Europe faces demographic decline, with fertility rates well below replacement levels. To sustain economies, fill jobs, and maintain welfare systems, European governments have turned to large-scale immigration from Africa and the Middle East.

Like the barbarians in Rome, these newcomers are expected to integrate into the host societies, adopt the culture, and contribute to the state. But in many cases, they maintain distinct identities, religious practices, and loyalties. Instead of assimilation, Europe sees the growth of parallel societies.

History shows the risks of such policies. The settlement of the Visigoths inside the Roman Empire in 376 was initially justified as a pragmatic solution: cheap soldiers in exchange for land. Yet within two years, the Visigoths rebelled and annihilated a Roman army at Adrianople in 378, a disaster from which the Empire never fully recovered.

Later, the empire relied on federated barbarian kingdoms to police its borders, but these became independent powers, carving out realms in Spain, Gaul, and Italy itself. The empire had not been destroyed by external invasion, but by its inability to control the peoples it had admitted.

Western Europe risks repeating this mistake. By importing populations on a massive scale without the cultural infrastructure to assimilate them, it creates conditions where newcomers live by their own norms rather than those of the host nation. The result is cultural fragmentation, rising insecurity, and the erosion of shared identity.

Rome discovered too late that its attempt to integrate foreign peoples had fatally weakened its cohesion. Europe may be heading down the same path, driven by the same illusion: that demographics and labor shortages can be solved by mass importation, without consequence for the survival of the civilization itself.

Civilizations do not fall overnight. Rome took centuries to collapse, but its decline began with demographic exhaustion and reliance on outsiders. Europe, by turning to Africa as a solution to its own decline, is repeating the same trajectory — not through conquest from without, but through disintegration from within.

https://x.com/Arrogance_0024/status/1971205325903577480

MolotovCocktail says

mell says

The American tax system is more socialist than the tax system of many European countries because it does not allow those who pay the brunt of the taxes (the producing earners) to access most of its benefits.

No. That is not the definition of socialism.

In Norway you can access tax return of all your neighbors on the street. Police give a fine based on your income.
That closer to socialism.

It's not Trumpism when we do it

Awesome troll account!

Check out his pinned post: https://x.com/eurofounder/status/1993748588707664325

For years I have owned some international stock mutual funds.
I got out of all of them; I'm selling the one in a taxable account bit by bit.

MolotovCocktail says

Europe isn’t afraid it can’t catch up, Europe is afraid the mask has slipped. The world can finally see what the continent has become, a former power now reduced to a dependent market, a protectorate of America, and a future mortgaged on the altar of its own imperial delusions. The real panic in Europe is the horror of realizing no one even pretends Europe is a player anymore. And now that the bill for decades of outsourced power has arrived, Europe simply can’t pay it.

Europe performed the rituals of sovereignty while surrendering the substance of it. Nord Stream was sabotaged, Europe bowed. Its industries were gutted by U.S. LNG and green-tech protection rackets, Europe again submitted. DC imposed tariffs that would spark escalation elsewhere, Europe swallowed them. Meanwhile China floods its markets with cheap goods, Russia rewrites Eurasia’s destiny, and the U.S. writes a Ukraine peace proposal without even pretending to consult Brussels. Europe wasn’t sidelined. It was never in the room.

What truly terrifies European leaders is that Trump will download the humiliation of Ukraine’s defeat onto Europe. The U.S. will walk away claiming it tried its best. Europe will be left holding the corpse of a proxy war it could never win, defending a narrative it no longer believes, and answering to populations who will ask why their industries, incomes, security, and futures were sacrificed for someone else’s geopolitical adventure. There will be hell to pay.

Europe is thrashing because it senses the end. For years it convinced itself it was shaping events in Ukraine. Now it discovers it was the collateral. America will cut a deal with Moscow that secures American interests, Beijing will cut deals that secures Chinese markets, Moscow will secure her leadership position in the multipolar world. Europe will get what it always gets, the bill.

The WSJ article reads like a continent waking from a 30-year hallucination. The “battle lines of a new world order” aren’t being drawn, they were drawn long ago. The U.S. and China negotiate trade architecture without Europe. The U.S. and Russia security architecture terms without Europe. Even Xi–Trump summits reshape European fate more than any EU decision does. Europe is in the room only as ornamental furniture.

And yet the delusion persists that a “new Europe” can arise through more committees, more pooled funds, more bloated defense spending, more wooden speeches about strategic autonomy. But power is not manufactured by speeches, it is earned through confrontation, absorbing cost, and consequence. Europe chose cowardly submission over sovereignty, bureaucracy over strategy, and ideology over survival. It dismantled its own energy base, outsourced its security to Washington, and built its prosperity atop a German export engine powered by Russian gas and Chinese markets, both virtually gone.

The result? Europe is now the world’s first post-industrial museum piece: expensive, slow, unstable, overregulated, and terrified of admitting that its fate is no longer its own.

Trump’s dismissive line... “Europe is not telling me what to do” – wasn’t arrogance. It was diagnosis. The U.S. no longer sees Europe as a junior partner, it sees it as ballast. China sees it as a weakening market. Russia sees it as a problem.

This is why the panic feels existential.
This is why EU elites speak of “irrelevance” and “dangerous times.” This is why even Trump meeting Putin is portrayed as a catastrophe, because Europe knows the great powers are negotiating their futures without them.

This is Europe’s tragedy, it marched into a great-power era insisting it still mattered, and emerged as the only power willing to bleed, pay, and obey for a war that wasn’t its own. The U.S. walks away. Russia surges. China rises. And Europe, stripped of industry, energy, and agency, is left staring into the mirror of history asking:

How did we become the continent that destroyed ourselves so others could play the game?

https://x.com/IslanderWORLD/status/1994821348820918675

My friend is the highest paid developer in Amsterdam

Makes an eye-watering €57,000 a year

After taxes nearly €23,000

We were at the bar and the American guy sitting next to us spit out his beer when he heard this

“That’s a 50% tax rate!” he loudly screamed

“Actually 56% with social contributions,” my proud Dutch friend corrected him

“Plus 21% VAT on everything I buy”

“Bro you guys are really poor in Europe lol”

Me and my friend look at each other in disbelief

First of all, €57,000 is an extremely high salary for an engineer in Netherlands

Second, little does that barbaric yankee know, my friend just got promoted to the CTO

His new salary?

€61,000

How is that for "really poor"?

This is what sustainable tech wages look like

I hope my startup will continue to grow so I can pay my engineers such high salaries as well.

https://x.com/eurofounder/status/1995905048338202963

Just discovered my 19 year old daughter has an OnlyFans account

I was devastated

She clearly must not be registered as a sole proprietor with the the German Trade Office

I sat her down and asked how much she'd made

She said €4,200

I nearly collapsed

That's at least €1,890 in unreported VAT obligations

She started crying but I did the only thing a good father could do

We spent the entire weekend filling out forms together

She's now fully compliant with a business registration and tax ID

Makes €340/month after taxes and social contributions

I've never been more proud of her

Only 19 and already an online entrepreneur

She has a bright future ahead of her.

https://x.com/eurofounder/status/1996219118551273491?s=20

How Europeans See The European Union



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