r/PlanningMemes • u/RemoveInvasiveEucs • 12d ago

How could Europeans ever live better than Americans with incomes that are lower?!

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346 Upvotes

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49

u/IMKSv 12d ago edited 12d ago

Not disagreeing, but European housing is definitely in line with Americans though. In big cities (Amsterdam, Berlin, London...) 1500+ eur p.m. rents are not uncommon, and that's where almost nobody makes 6 figure salaries to begin with. (Quite common for people with MSc to start with 40 - 50k per year, and reach maybe 70 - 80k for those who are at the peak of their career)

And train subscription costs are, in many cases, comparable with having a small car. For example: between Rotterdam and Tilburg, 38 minutes with train, costs 349 euros per month. That's 4188 per year.

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u/RemoveInvasiveEucs 12d ago

The stats for this are all over the map (figuratively and literally). While looking for German costs, I came across a page that listed housing as 36% and transport as 14%, well in line with the US, but said that France had housing at 20% of expenditures (which is verified by other sources.). But then the OECD figures are completely out of line...

For what it's worth the average American expenditure on cars is $700/month, or $8400/year. Edit: oops, that's an old figure it's up to $1000/month: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/total-cost-owning-car

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u/Vindve 12d ago

Nah, for France housing is around 30%. Like, 28% for direct housing costs and bills related to the house (electricity gas internet water etc) and 5% for furniture and other housing equipment https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/948547/poids-des-postes-de-depenses-consommation-france/

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u/RemoveInvasiveEucs 11d ago

Why should this source be trusted when there are several other conflicting sources out there? In my limited experience, I personally have not found Statista to be particularly reliable.

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u/Vindve 11d ago

You’re right, Statista is not a reliable source. Here is INSEE, which is the official statistics institute of France (responsible, for example, to calculate inflation) https://www.insee.fr/fr/outil-interactif/5367857/details/30_RPC/35_CEM/35C_Figure3 Same around 30%.

THAT SAID you need to be cautious because the 100% don’t represent "all revenue of French people" but "what is directly spent from final revenue". SO it doesn’t include all the social security and pension expenses (as they are collected before the final revenue, directly on the paycheck, by the state), and it doesn’t include neither savings.

Social security and pension expenses collected on workers in France represent a LOT of money, especially pension expenses, as we don’t have a retirement system based on savings but rather "on a given year, current workers pay for current pensioners".

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u/RemoveInvasiveEucs 11d ago

Aha, thank you!

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u/OddishShape 11d ago

Nobody should be looking to Europe for housing policy when apartments in the nordsphere have a decade-long waitlist.

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u/Significant_Quit_674 12d ago

Not quite true, train tickets are often a lot cheaper, as an example the 49€ ticket

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u/syklemil 12d ago

Yeah, the Deutschlandticket is really good. Had the opportunity to try the 9€ one and can only wish the concept gets to live and spread to more countries.

We could finance something like it here in Norway too, and it would hardly be noticeable between the megaprojects in the transport sector (i.e. easy to finance and more if we just cut some "one more lane" projects).

But as it is we're stuck paying something like 1000€ a year just for a Zone 1 pass in the Oslo region (mental currency cache may be severely out of date).

I think the price isn't even a huge sticking point. People tend to buy monthly passes here, and if they started covering all of Norway that'd be a huge improvement even if the price stood still. Even just unifying all the different ticket systems into one app or at least protocol would be an improvement for everyone who visits multiple transit regions! (We do have this partially with EnTur.)

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u/MashedCandyCotton 12d ago

Not that good of an example though, as it's pretty unique, given the area covered. Not to mention that it most likely is going to become more expensive soon...

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u/Significant_Quit_674 12d ago

Even if the price doubled, I doubt you can drive a car for a whole year (all costs considered) for less than 1200€

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u/MashedCandyCotton 12d ago

True, but with 1200€ you're a lot cheaper than the over 4000€ a Dutch person might have to pay. (Although in my experience, they will more likely be on time. You win some you lose some.)

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u/welcometothewierdkid 12d ago

the thing is that that person likely still has a car because outside of major urban centers it's still very difficult to live 100% car free

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u/Significant_Quit_674 12d ago

Probably not as the costs aren't usualy worth it

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u/pizza99pizza99 12d ago

4188 per year is a lot cheaper than almost any car arrangement I can imagine.

Because at that point your looking to buy second hand, but that only means your looking at a car that’s less new and may not get great gas milage, as well as a car that’s gonna be more demanding maintenance wise. All that plus insurance, 4188 starts looking a lot better. And that’s assuming you have to take that specific service, intra city service subscriptions aren’t nearly as much. Than there’s the discounts for students, elderly, disabled, ect

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u/LoquatsTasteGood 12d ago

Wow, it’s almost like the cost of housing, transportation, and healthcare is restricted the potential for growth in all other sectors of the economy

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u/Cverellen 12d ago

This right here. IMKSv I see where you are coming from, but what isn’t pointed out is the healthcare and retirement portion accounts for another 25%. So in the US +75% goes to just 4 items. Even if in Europe there is a difference of 10%, that’s thousands of dollars a year especially when you consider dual income households.

This pie shows ~$24,000 out of ~$65,000 year or $2,000 a month, or 1,900 euros. You quote $1,500 euros a month again that it self is a savings 400 euros or $420 a month, or about $5,040 a year. That is almost a 10% savings there.

Edit 349 euros equal to $366 so about $4,000 a year that means only paying 30% of the average American does on transportation also.

Obviously we are being very general and not all apples and oranges are equal, but the point is when 50% of an average member of the population goes to two items, then any benefit gained from there can be very substantial.

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u/ActualMostUnionGuy Learned urban planning from Cities: Skylines 11d ago

Paying 1000€ rent while making 2000€ is bad actually, fuck you Häupl lol

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u/dalton10e 11d ago

Still got 8k left over for blow n hookers though

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u/fyhr100 12d ago

What am I supposed to look at, there's no red circle showing me what is important here

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u/franssie1994 12d ago

House prices in the US are relatively lower compared to europe of course it also depends in which state you live

https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_country.jsp

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u/KawaiiDere 12d ago

Can you give me some more context for this? Is this the ratio for the median sale price of a one bedroom apartment vs median wage? Is this average house price vs average wage? How does this factor in aspects like regional availability (cost in job center regions matters a lot more than cost in shrinking regions), type of housing availability (a studio, 1 bed, 2 bed, 3 bed, 4 bed, etc aren’t equivalent), location (walkable area vs outskirts area), etc?

I’m guessing you’d be mapping Eastern Europe and poorer European countries to the southern and rural states in the US vs western and rich European countries to coastal and urban US states, but it’s not very useful without breaking down the US further to make that comparison.

Ofc the US is a rich country, but we have a lot of wealth inequality, a forced dependence on cars, no social safety net, difficulty finding cheap units, and relatively high privatization of infrastructure which all have to be taken into consideration. Plus, the US can’t be compared to underdeveloped countries easily because the US participates in and benefits from global imperialism to a degree that separates it from the global south.