In my personal experience, I have the most lucrative opportunities back home. However, I walked away from a $400k/year position to a $120k/year position for a very good reason. In that position, I had a decent quality of life - however, I grew up in a family living under the poverty line and spent 20 years experiencing life in the USA in the lower class. In my opinion, the only way you get a shot at a decent quality of life is to be extremely lucky with circumstances you're born into, or to work insanely hard to get to that point (I literally studied/worked 80+ hours a week for 15 years to get to the point I did).

These experiences undoubtedly biased me severely, but bias grounded in empirical observation and first-hand experience. In countries like Taiwan, for example, you can be exceptionally poor (like I was growing up) and you still get the same health insurance as someone incredibly rich. As I become older, I realize how important health is, and ultimately this is what capital is good for - securing your health. In America, it's necessary to slave away in hopes of being able to go to the hospital for pneumonia without having to file for bankruptcy; in other developed nations, it's not even a thought to consider - you get that security as a basic human right, presumably as anyone should in a developed nation -- especially in 'the most developed' nation like the USA. However, this is far from the case, which is why I take jabs at the USA and don't really consider it too developed.

Also, in my 10+ years of higher education from bachelor's through post-doc, I worked in many different research groups across myriad fields (aerospace, comp science, neurobiology, applied mathematics) and participated in countless collaborations. It was always the international students that were the overachievers and go-getters that actually produced high-quality work. The domestic students were almost always the lazy, procrastinating, low-quality workers and thinkers. Not always, but >90% of the time this was the case. If that's the outcome of the American system, then that's pretty dismal. Not only that, I always found Americans to be rude assholes (kind of like I can be...) more so than people from other places. They are so focused on the individual and care less about the group..and I think this is reflected in the severe issues with health care, for example.

You can have a high quality of life, sure. But at the same time, I strongly believe that in the US if you have a high quality of life, it's coming at a massive cost to many others in that system. In Taiwan, for example, I have an extremely high quality of life and I feel like I'm not detracting from others' quality of life, and I find myself actually caring about other people here. This is my experience and perspective.