66% of Americans say they want extended European-style vacation policies at work

Did the survey ask if they wanted a pay cut to match European style wages?

Fair question. I think many Americans in higher income brackets would say yes; it’s just that they’d never had the option. Ditto on a 4 day work week.

I suspect the survey results will change drastically if each person was shown this table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...

and taxes...

That's perhaps true at tech wage levels. I think it's less true as you move down the ladder, where things like American health costs, college costs, etc, eat into things.

Taxes and levies don't seem to be that different, overall you always seem to pay about 50 % of gross income in developed countries.

Americans with higher incomes likely have very good vacation policies.

I get 25 days per year.

What's the point of having money if you don't have the time to spend it?

Reaching 50 years old, never got this American complaint about our salaries.

The whole package is what matters.

We work to live, not live to work.

I pay a month worth of salary per year in France and I pay the same in Louisiana. 1/12

But in France you get something out of your taxes

The US might have higher disposable income but there are less benefits to go with that.

I'll stick with the health care, education, paid vacation and sick leave, lower crime rates, lower incarceration rates, zero school shootings, etc.

For some might not be the case when talking about the health insurance...

What type of job?

I think Americans also are quite delusional about how low the European salaries are. Getting six figures in Europe isn't particularly hard anymore.

The UK's minimum wage is £10.42 per hour. That's about US$13.

What's the minimum wage in the USA?

And, yes, if you're a full-time minimum wage employee in the UK you get a minimum of 28 days paid holiday.

You know you can take unpaid vacations, right?

Anecdote time, but I moved from a decent (non-FAANG) tech salary in the US to a (locally) good salary in Norway, and feel better off as a result. In outright terms my salary took a huge hit, but there are so many little things in the US that eat up your money you don't realize over time.

And the difference gets even more stark if you have children.

What you call very good is almost the minimum (24) vacation days in germany plus you get public holidays ontop of which range from 10-12 (in a good year most of them are during the workweek).

Here people who have good jobs can get ~35 vacation days.

25 days a year is not a "very good" vacation policy in Europe, I'd say that would be at least 35 + public holidays.

If pay is the only concern, why not just take up contract work and refuse benefits to get the most pay? Ignoring the other variables at play, such as cost of living and benefits, and only focusing on pay is foolish.

The difference is much smaller if you look at the median disposable income instead.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per...

The big skewness (difference between the mean and the median) suggests that a lot of wealth is concentrated at the top and that many people are in fact worse off than Europeans.

Yes but what percentage of that ends up getting taxed?

Probably as hard as getting $200k in the States though... "Six figures" just aren't what they used to be.

Unless you're hired 'at will'. Then your manager can fire you for taking vacation.

Americans do love their taxes. They still take a cut even if you live and work overseas.

Europe is not one country. I live in Denmark and some of the things I have witnessed in (eastern) Germany almost felt 3rd worldish.

I am European: our wages are much, much lower than our American tech counterparts, without taxes double, with taxes we're on average making a third of them. And that's same cost of living.

Higher pay gives you options like being able to take unpaid time off and still coming out ahead. That's more appealing than nebulous benefits.

Contract work is a fundamentally different proposition and equating it to employment is foolish.

Most countries have it free from the state, even if it has several issues, way better than the US situation, where even the Red Cross had to set up camp on the poorer states.

Tech salaries in Europe are a joke. The median IT salary in Germany is less than what I'm paid in India. That's in absolute dollar terms. Factor in the difference in cost of living and the disparity becomes comical.

What's the VAT rate in Louisiana? /s

This is what I don't get about the US system. You can get paid a lot of money, but it is unthinkable for someone with a good job in America to not send their kids to college, which costs a heck of a lot of money. 2.5 kids is going to cost many years of earnings to put through college, and you don't even know what amount that is since the price is flying away.

In Norway you can have 10 kids and all they have to do is be diligent about doing their homework, and they will get into university.

Afaik: you have a contract where you promise to work X hours per year. Some companies include clauses for unpaid leave but if not, they are not obliged to grant it.

I get 25, plus 8 bank holidays, plus an office closure for 10 days (which is technically 7 because there's 3 bank holidays during that time period) during the holiday period, and we closed for a week during Summer this year too.

I switched to freelance earlier this year and now make 6x compared to before. Granted, I was underpaid for the market because I was CTO in a small startup.

Contract work is for when you can take the risks. You also need to have a good network and be able to sell yourself so you have a steady stream of work. Finding new work takes considerable time which you should factor in.

I personally love the freedom right now, but I’m using this as an in-between period until I discover what I really want to focus on.

> That's more appealing than nebulous benefits.

Benefits aren't nebulous, they're concrete things. My employer offers a pension(401k) contribution, health insurance (which is a queue skip really here), income protection for long term sickness or death in service, and a "perks card" which is 95% crap but gives me a 25% discount on the largest gym chain in my area. That's just monetary.

On the "non-monetary" side, I'm guaranteed 33 days _paid_ time off (and promised 40 this year), have an option to take a month _unpaid_ with notice, I have employment rights and can't just find myself without a job with no notice or dismissed for no reason. There's also the "overhead"/admin work of managing a business and handling the tax affairs. Sure it's straightforward, until HMRC decide it's audit time.

> Contract work is a fundamentally different proposition and equating it to employment is foolish.

That, I agree with.

You only pay 8.3% in tax in France? That sounds unrealistic.

I’m very happy with 25 days plus another 13 bank holidays. That’s a total of almost 2 months off per year.

And in trade for not getting another 10 days I get 2-3x the compensation as the EU.

That’s a trade I’m happy with.

Ah, that is why all TCS, Infosys and Wipro folks I work with, rather get a way to stay in Germany than go back home, what a set of fouls giving up on such salaries.

Right, because it's not like there are FAAG development centres or a home grown startup ecosystem in India. Oh, wait.

The fact that you work with WITCH companies says more about your situation than anything else, TBH.

Right, because it's not like there are FAAG development centres or a home grown startup ecosystem in Europe. Oh, wait.

The fact that you have expressed prejudice against people in WITCH companies says more about your situation than anything else, TBH.

What are WITCH companies?

Right but I (and I assume others) wouldn’t trade 100-200k usd per year for 5-10 more days.

Not to mention most in that environment have plenty of flexible work arrangements as well.

I also CAN take unpaid extra days and most years do, in essence doing that trade for a better price (~1k per day), but I recognize it’s not that common in the US.

We just saddle our children with private student loan debt.

Social mobility is also a lot higher in the Western EU. I moved with my wife to the Netherlands 3 years ago. I was working a FAANG job, I took a 30% pay cut (after factoring taxes, etc). But the flip side is that the relative salary of a global tech worker in the Netherlands is MUCH higher than the average. My wife and I now have 5 separate rental properties now and growing, something we could only dream of doing in the Bay Area unless one of us hit the startup lottery.

Of course I could have worked remotely for a similar pay cut and bought a bunch of rental properties in the Midwest or something, but instead we're living in a vibrant international city and have enough cash flow to pay our bills.

As an expat who used to work in California and now works in the Netherlands, tax wise it's about the same. With the 30% ruling + a lower overall income I've actually been able to offload a lot of stock and diversify into real estate without being over taxed. So ymmv

I've been able to leverage our FAANG bucks into a lot more real estate over here in 3 years. To get the same amount of property in the bay it would have taken me more than 10 years even making FAANG money.

> The Fall of US FAANG

I didn't realise they fell.

It's absolutely not the same cost of living.

I don't know where you're living but in Copenhagen, yes it is, 100% the same COL as LA or Seattle.

Copenhagen is probably one of the most expensive city in Europe and hardly representative of the continent as a whole. Even then, a quick Google search estimates that cost of live in Copenhagen is 15-25% lower than Seattle/LA, without even accounting for the absurd american healthcare costs.

Exact figures : https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F1419

It’s progressive, from 0% to 45%. A rule of thumb is “a month of salary”