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

Salaries are so much lower than our American counterparts you'll be working right up until our government mandated retirement age, which is increasing. Our economic growth across the EU is stagnant. These are not things to be celebrated.

We not only have a better life expectancy (6years for men?), we also have a better 'good health' expectancy.

Economic growth is stagnant because energy production and energy import are stagnant. This has little to do with policy. It's 2011 all over again, when we heard all sort of 'southern Europeans are lazy/corrupt' and other shit. I even bought it like a good child. No. Southern Europeans economies used to depend a lot on north sea and Sahara oil and gas, and the reserves (and production) started declining in 2008 and 2010 respectively. Only oil producers, Russian clients and 'nuclear-based' economies managed to avoid crisis.

What is funny now that everybody speak about how Germany economy is in crisis. Well yeah. Same causes, same consequences.

I really don't see how it seems no one gets it. I understand politics wanting to grandstand and explain how growth is caused their policies, but I mean, the data is available. And we have panda. Look at oil import data from Italy then look at growth, from 2010 to 2012,its obvious one of the two is driving the other. Check the other 'PIGS', it's the same.

While all the sentences you wrote are technically correct, your point is wrong.

> you'll be working right up until our government mandated retirement age

As will an american, unless they're going to go without healthcare? Unless you're doing some _wild_ saving, paying for health insurance as you age is going to necessitate working. Health insurance for a couple (assuming you can get it and it covers anything that you might have wrong) is about the same cost as my mortage here in the UK.

It's also not a government mandated retirement age, it's the age that the government will provide financial support to you. It's feasible for someone on a median income in the UK (where I live) to retire before they hit 66, as long as they prepare. Someone making a median income in the US is unlikely to be able to.

> which is increasing

Again, technically true but also misleading. It's not just steadily increasing, there's only so far it can go. The equivalent age in the US is already 70, fwiw.

> Our economic growth across the EU is stagnant

The horror. Personally, I'll take stagnant economic growth over statistics that get pumped by tech firms that are richer than entire countries in europe - Microsoft and Apple are individually worth more than Italy.

> These are not things to be celebrated.

US cost of living is skyrocketing (they're behind us at the moment, but their COL was already higher so the comparison is tough). Inequality levels in the US are still wildly higher than anywhere in europe (even the UK), the US has massive social problems that don't exist on the same scale here, etc.

These are not things to be celebrated either.

>Salaries are so much lower than our American counterparts

But then again, you don't blow half your salary in health care, don't risk having to claim for bankruptcy every time you get in an ambulance, you have access to the highest quality of education for basically free, and many others. You are also in an incredibly privileged job. In the real world, the US has a higher poverty rate than Germany does.

>you'll be working right up until our government mandated retirement age

So will most americans. And many of them will keep working past that age, because their pensions does not afford them basic living conditions. Just because you work in an extremely privileged sector where some of us can retire at 40 and do cocaine all day long doesn't mean the rest of the world can. Have some empathy.

>Our economic growth across the EU is stagnant.

growth growth growth must growth growth good growth necessary. This is the behaviour of cancer, not of an organised society.

>These are not things to be celebrated.

If you are unable to see anywhere past 5 meters in front of you and half an hour in time, indeed. For anyone with an inkling of reason an empathy, Germany is, objectively, a better place to live in in average than the US. And this is coming from a neighbour that can find plenty of reasons to shit on Germany.

Even in my poor East German home village I know plenty of people with entirely normal jobs who retired early (mid-50's to 60). But TBH what's the point of early retirement if you are still physically and mentally fit, like your job and enjoy working with people you have known for decades?

> As will an american, unless they're going to go without healthcare? Unless you're doing some _wild_ saving, paying for health insurance as you age is going to necessitate working.

In the US, most highly-skilled senior engineers will be multi-millionaires in their 40s which means that they can immediately retire and pay out of pocket for private health insurance covering the entire family without even making a dent on their principal. Even if that wasn't an option, one can get health insurance via one's spouse or work a few hours part-time for an employer that provides it.

I retired in my 40s and spent the last 10 years living in both the US and multiple European countries (with a lot of time spent in Germany as I have family there). While I've so far enjoyed living in Europe, the worsening downward slope in quality of life is more obvious here than in the US. Unrestrained immigration is a big problem that's going to get a lot worse in the next decades and is already rapidly eroding the much praised European social safety nets.

Ultimately, US offers optionality which means that one isn't chained like a slave to a grossly inefficient disintegrating socialist state for the rest of one's life.

> Most capable senior engineers...

What about the less capable though? Do we just forget they exist?

> One has optionality and isn't chained like a slave to a grossly inefficient socialist state for the rest of one's life.

I don't think this conversation is worth continuing if you consider the US a bastion of freedom and the entirety of europe being entrapped to socialism.

> In the US, most highly-skilled senior engineers will be multi-millionaires in their 40s

I don't think workers' rights movements and government policies that promote said rights are really centered around uplifting highly-skilled senior engineers. Certainly if you have in-demand talent, migrate to whatever country pays the most for it. You have that luxury

You don't need to do _wild_ savings to retire at an age where you can enjoy your health in the US, as a tech worker.

Cost of living is skyrocketing where in the US and to what degree higher than its EU equivalent? The EU has borne the brunt of inflation so I'm having a hard time seeing where EU citizens are paying less to live than Americans.

> The horror. Personally, I'll take stagnant economic growth over statistics that get pumped by tech firms that are richer than entire countries in europe - Microsoft and Apple are individually worth more than Italy.

Ok. Economic growth is not a vanity metric for pumped up tech firms to move the needle on. Economic growth has direct effects on comparative quality of life. Trying to make some other, vaguely conspiratorial, equivalence is ignorant at the least.

Or the capable engineers who can't/don't want to up and move to thousands of miles away from their lives.

Dunno, I've met several senior engineers whom I would consider highly skilled and while they were well off, it didn't look like they are multi-millionaires. Also, given the trend of firing senior engineers and hiring only juniors lately, I wouldn't count on that trend continuing.

>engineers

Alright, very small proportion of the population

>senior engineers

even smaller

>highly-skilled senior engineers

I cannot even begin to tell you how small of a proportion it is. By the way, you forgot a factor:

>highly-skilled senior engineers that happen to live in the right area (read: SF or NYC) and that are in the right domain

cool cool cool, so a few thousand people per generation can retire comfortably at 40. I'm sure the other 300 million of americans are happy to hear about that. Anything as long as you got yours, right ?

I've noticed the opposite trend. Right now, it's hard to find a position as a junior, whereas seniors are still in demand.

> Economic growth is stagnant because energy production and energy import are stagnant. This has little to do with policy.

I can't think of an area of the economy anywhere that is more policy based than energy.

Ah, yes; because the only people we should consider in these discussions are Silicon Valley tech workers, who consider making $150k a year to be "on the low side".

Do you ever give a thought to the vast majority of Americans who make less than you? Or even to the vast majority of tech workers who make less than you?

There's a couple things to address in your comment but I will only address the most egregious as it will take a couple paragraphs:

Comparing economic growth to cancer is extremely incorrect. Cancer grows unchecked causing pain and then death due to a failure of the body's regulatory system. Economic growth happens broadly because your population is growing and you are keeping up production per unit of labor and/or because you develop technology/business improvement that increases production per unit of labor. The latter causes abundance and better life for everyone (even when an outsized portion of the benefit is captured by the creator of the benefit) and the former keeps the standard of living possible for everyone and are very good things. If you want to talk cancer in economic terms that would be market power abuse, not growth. Market power abuse comes in the form of monopoly/oligopoly and the pricing power that situation allows and almost always slows growth (as the monopolist/oligopolist raises prices and decrease production to maximize profits).

In the context of a functioning regulatory system growth is extremely good. Right now governments fail at regulating by regulating both too much (try getting a new drug through the FDA for example) or too little (why hasn't microsoft, google, amazon, facebook, etc. all been broken up by antitrust regulation???). It is correct to lay blame on the regulator and incorrect to lay blame on growth.

Just for some additional context here, look at average housing prices for a single-family home, not even something nice, I mean like 1000sqft 2/2 in a neighborhood without a drive-by shooting once per week. Calculate the mortgage payment on that with the current 7-8% rate. Calculate how much you bring home net on $150k after taxes. Now you’re on your way to seeing why that’s basically “low income” (technically $104k/yr for a single person living alone): https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/low-income-media...

Wait until you find out about Prop 13 and how that new 80 year old $1.5m house you bought costs 10x in taxes what everyone else on the block pays because they got there in the 70s and 80s.

Is there any surprise in an American having such a narrow view where they only consider their own circumstances?

I'm European.

Electricity is 50% of the energy France use. That is policy-based, maybe. hydro is maxed out, we can't install more renewable because producers in Asia are at capacity. The only part we really control is nuclear power. So 30% of French energy depends on policy.

Area more depending on policy: construction, food production, Healthcare, education, military.

Even software engineers are not guaranteed a cushy retirement. Everyone assumes the stock market averages a return of 7-9% per year, but there have been periods of a decade or more where the return was 0 or negative, not just in other countries stock markets, but the US as well. If the stock market, for whatever reason, stays flat for the next even 10 years, which has happened before, it will severely limit even SWE retirement savings by the time they reach 55 1/2 years old. Part of the issue is there are so many limitations to retirement savings. How much you can contribute. Whether you can contribute (if you are not provided a 401k from your employer, you can’t put away anywhere near $20k/year for retirement). Then there’s social security. “Everyone” says that won’t exist in 30 years, so why am I paying into it? Why am I forced to pay into it? I should be able to opt out if I’m maxing out my 401k every year. It’s a broken system to be sure.