> It's denying reality to believe that EU devs are even with US devs financially. I have no horse in this race, I just care about the truth.

I think you are missing the bigger picture here with purely financial comparisons. I earn much less in Europe than I would in the US, but at the same time, I don't have to worry about healthcare nor my kids being shot up in the school. As long as I breathe (and even when I stopped not too long time ago), ambulance service will give me a ride to the nearest hospital for free and the hospital will treat me the best way the can without paying any attention how much money I have in my pocket. (I still have trouble believing that emergency ambulance costs money in the US.) Local school system is among the best in the world and I pay nothing for it. To me, this is tremendous non-direct value I get from working in Europe instead of the US. And these benefits aren't just for me; they're for everyone and the society is more cohesive as a result, which leads to things like not having to worry about desperate outcasts taking guns to shoot up a school. Active shooter drills are unheard of, people watch documentaries on American schools with astonishment and disbelief.

Unless you account for non-direct quality of life factors like how much time you and everyone around you can spend with their children while they're growing up, I don't think these comparisons make much sense. It's like comparing how many megabytes of disk space operating systems occupy, without paying attention to what capabilities they offer and how well they suit specific use cases.

> My analysis has been exactly the same this whole time. I've just been trying to phrase it differently because you don't seem to understand what I'm getting at, which is that even when you take COL into account an average US developer comes out even or ahead of an above average EU developer financially.

That is an impossible statement to make because you’re making such a broad generalisation that it could be true or false depending on how you derive your averages. And this article certainly can’t be used as evidence for that conclusion.

I think the problem here is you’re arguing that Americans are better off. I couldn’t give a toss who is (it’s not a competition ffs). I’m just saying this article is worthless and people shouldn’t draw any conclusions from it.