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

If anyone is interested in an anecdote from a US American mid level dev living in Germany:

I get 30 paid vacation days, 10 ish public holidays and my employer has to pay up to 6 weeks of sick leave a year (after that the public health insurance pays).

I make around 75k€ with a 38 hour work week and my take home is roughly 3600€ net. My living expenses are less than 1k (mid sized city, no car, split rent, no kids) so I am able to invest 2-2.5x my living expenses every a month.

Most likely the average dev in the US with your level of skill still makes 2-4x more than you without 2-4x the expenses.

Germany may be good to live and get by but not great to actually grow, financially. The whole system is still designed so that you depend on your 800€ gov check in your senior years.

Unless your parents already built some wealth it is barely possible to do so in your own lifetime in Germany.

According to levels.fyi (if we assume its unbiased) a median dev income is around $82k in Germany vs $168k in the United States. Let's assume the mean is near that as I can't find any stats on median CoL. Also Let's compare two MCOL(?) hip cities: Portland OR and Leipzig.

$82k is $4.1k take home (with healthcare) as a single in Germany.

$168k is $8.8k take home as a single in Portland.

Let's say monthly expenses are $1.5k as a single in Leipzig. According to numbeo I would need $2.5k for the same standard in Portland.

So in Portland I can save $6.3k or 2.5x my expenses and in Leipzig I can save $2.6k or 1.6x my expenses.

Healthcare is included in the net pay for Leipzig, but not Portland. Employer 401k contributions and other benefits are also not considered.

Other things to consider are safety, unemployment, workers rights, tenant rights, quality of healthcare, cost of elderly care, government retirement plans, PTO, sick leave, maternity and paternity leave, cost of childcare, etc.

Really comes down to what's important to you IMO.

So an extra ~4k take home.

Invest that on the side and you'll have built a fortune within a decade and a half, while your German friend has nothing significant in savings and is still living hand to mouth.

And we haven't even mentioned the differences in career steepness: After a few years it's not 80k vs 160k anymore, but more like 90-100k vs 200k+.

Also if you compare the best places in each country than you are looking at something like 100k vs 300-400k.

Again, I have been trying really hard to see if all the benefits you mention really offset this monetary discrepancy, but it's just too huge.