If you think software engineering salaries are low in the USA, try working in Europe. A 'good' salary can be 30K or even lower after tax per year, and electricity costs twice as much as in the USA. In some places, even bottle scavengers earn more than software engineers in Europe.
Yes, but my sense is that in Europe, you can "survive" easier than in the US.
There are several key differences.
In the US, everything is spread out so you absolutely need to own a car in many low cost of living (COL) places; there's no option for transportation. In the US, healthcare can absolutely destroy you and you cannot get quality healthcare at a decent rate without a job that provides it as a benefit. Access to transportation networks is also poor compared to Europe and Asia where trains are abundant, fast, cheap, and accessible by wide networks of public transport. The way the US has been built out is not amenable to that in low COL areas.
So I acknowledge that there are lots of problems world wide in different countries and wages are lower and taxes are higher in general in the EU, but there are more social safety nets compared to the US. The baseline "cost of existing" in the US is simply higher.
