Depends. A heart attack in the US can cost over $1 million to survive, and can very easily bankrupt small business owners and those in the middle to upper middle classes.<p>Cost of living has been increasing at rates that engineer compensation has not kept up with at all, especially in cities.<p>In many EU countries, you get 35 days of paid vacation mandated by law, along with 6 months to over a year of maternity and paternity leave. In the US, you get no such guarantee, and undercurrents of the Protestant work ethic are very well and alive in our culture. Sometimes new hires are expected to not take <i>any</i> paid vacations for the first first year of their employment. There's also a strain of private authoritarianism when it comes to employment in the US, by default, some employers treat their employees like property, and can seemingly dictate the terms of employees' off-time. Stemming from this are expectations of being on-call, but without the benefits of things like accruing overtime, being paid time and a half or with handsome bonuses that workers elsewhere tend to demand. All in all, workers' rights in the US are dismal compared to many first-world countries.<p>Truthfully, if I were younger and didn't have ties to the US, I would look into emigrating to the EU if they'd take me.