God please let me move to Europe I don’t even care what language I have to learn I just wanna be able to live without worrying about affording a doctor appointment.
There’s no Americans bragging about that. Corporations and the government, sure. The rest of us are to busy living in pain
I love how in every topic about WFH there’s some dudebro going on about the economy suffering due to supposed lessened productivity and I’m like… Why should I care?
Don’t you even think about the billionaires, bro?
I love the abstract “productivity”.
Like yo, cancer is incredibly productive.
Demolishing subsistence farms and replacing them with cash crop slave plantations is mad profitable.
I could make thousands of dollars in a day if I just sold everything I own.
Our metrics of economic growth revolve around basically doing all of the above, to varying degrees of figurative vs. literal-ness.
This reminded me of an old joke:
Two economists are walking down the street with their friend when they come across a fresh, streaming pile of dog shit. The first economist jokingly tells the other “I’ll give you a million dollars if you eat that pile of dog shit”. To his surprise, the second economist grabs it off the ground and eats it without hesitation. A deal is a deal so the first economist hands over a million dollars.
A few minutes later they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist, wanting to give his peer a taste of his own medicine, says he’ll give the first economist a million dollars if he eats it. The first economist agrees and does so, winning him a million dollars.
Their friend, rather confused, asks what the point of all this was, the first economist gave the second economist a million dollars, and then the second economist gave it right back. All they’ve accomplished is to eat two piles of shit.
The two economists look rather taken aback. “Well sure,” they say, “but we’ve grown the economy by two million dollars!”
The story is interesting but not very lifelike. The first economist would be much richer than the first, if they were OK with spending that much money on humiliating someone else. The likelihood that the second economist would accept the same deal is impossible in my mind. That amount of money is just humiliation money to them, not really worth it.
I couldn’t justify a 80k-100k pay cut for an extra week of PTO.
What about three weeks of extra annual leave, public holidays, real healthcare with no bullshit co-pays (and unlimited sick days, they don’t count towards “pto”), a maximum 35 hour work week… Because that’s more like what it would look like for a higher value job like that. Depends on the country and the job, of course. But in my case in the UK right now, and in my last job in Germany, my total “pto” in US terms has been roughly two months. (Which is a lot even here, but it’s not by any means unheard of, and easy to get if it’s a priority to you). Doing a job with an average salary of about 100k in the US, and I get paid a little over 50k £ for it, which is about 1.5 times the median salary here, so even after the recent inflation it affords a pretty comfortable lifestyle, it’s enough money to pay the mortgage and take holidays to the continent in my ample time off.
Sorry, this turned into a bit of a rant, but tldr: it’s not just “an extra week”
Still not worth it. I broke my leg 3 years ago I paid $2.4k total with my insurance. Today it’d be more like $5k as my insurance isn’t as good, but it would still be worth it to stay in the US even if I broke a bone every 3 months! However, two months of PTO is certainly something. But to be honest, my mentality is in a place where I’d probably end up doing some work on the side if I honestly had 8 weeks of PTO. Even when I had unlimited PTO, I only took like 4-6 weeks a year.
I think broadly speaking, if you make under $120k/year in the US, your quality of life will be better in Western Europe just because of the social safety net and worker’s protections. And this is especially true if you’re planning on having children.
{edit, I have no idea why the Lemmy algorithm decided to put this on my front page today}
I think that big difference is for low paid workers, rather than higher flyers.
Comparing a store assistant position between Lidl USA and Lidl UK.
Lidl USA
- Starting pay $16.00 per hour
- Up to 20 days of Paid Time Off (PTO) to use for sickness or vacation, plus 6 paid holidays annually
Lidl UK
- Starting pay £12 (current exchange rate $15.21)
- 30 days holiday (increasing to 35 after 5 years service)
- 10 days sick.
