[jajko]

Well, depends what your goals are. Agile economy focused on health of companies, high revenue, and ability to quickly adapt to changing environment? US is great for that. It sucks to be the bottom 70% maybe, OK till maybe 95% and great above.

EU focuses more on quality of life of all individuals, free access to healthcare and education, one just doesn't have these potentially very risky or destroying aspects of life which can easily break them for good in US and send them into homeless spiral. And somebody has to pay for that. Also those protections data are mostly anti-business and pro-citizens hence its aligned as it is. Also we lack agility and are pretty ossified.

Everybody has their own preferences, which also change over time. When single I always took more risky work due to higher rewards (and other benefits). With small kids I am happy to have some safety nets and lower my net income, and I'd bet many US (not only) young parents would appreciate that rather than raw higher paycheck. Also I have 50 paid vacation days per year as a regular employed person (90% contract), something I believe unthinkable in US unless you have your own company.

[bruce511]

Trust me, if you own your own company anywhere, 50 days paid vacation is unlikely. Owners tend to work more, not less.

Or let me be more flippant- sure I get 50 paid days off a year. I call it Sunday.

[Hikikomori]

If we use Elon as an example regular CEOs probably have 300+ days off.

[bruce511]

I'm not sure Elon is a "regular CEO". He's more like an active investor where the companies are mostly run by other people without him there at all.

So yeah, not a typical "business owner" :)