Yeah, unemployment benefits are here typically capped at 6 months, and you won’t be getting full salary (not even close if you are a professional). Higher education is indeed not free, and if you’re a professional, your kids will probably be paying a sticker price too (poorer Americans typically only pay much smaller fraction of the quoted price, especially at higher rated schools). Medical coverage here is rather extensive, and I doubt that Europeans are better off here, especially if you consider that medical insurance is paid on top of the quoted salaries, not deducted from them on percentage basis as in Europe.
In my understanding, when you consider total wages and benefits, it’s not only IT professionals that are better off than in Europe, it’s at least everyone above median income. The class of people who’d probably be better off in Europe are low skill, low wage working class people: US welfare system is much less generous towards them, especially compared to people who don’t actually work at all.
