[piva00]

Median wages while prices are higher doesn't mean much, Americans earn more but also pay quite a bit more in most products and services needed for living: housing, healthy food, transportation, healthcare, etc.

After experiencing the American work life I'd never trade my life in Sweden to earn 2-3x more in California, I'm sorry to say but it wasn't better to earn more in the USA, I could buy more trinkets but daily life was just not better.

There's a point where you should look past wages, what's the overall quality of life of living in a place where workaholism is rampant, stress from financial anxiety is constant, having to hedge for potential catastrophic events such as a health scare putting oneself into massive debt, losing your job in a downturn (or simply due to an industry going into herd mode and colluding on layoffs), so on and so forth.

Or you can keep using wages and money as your only guidance in life, I understand that's the only way most Americans can think about life. It's rather puerile though, as if simple metrics are the determining factor of a good life.

[Akranazon]

I'm not interested in debating the grab-bag of ways life is better in Sweden than in California.

I've said this before, but every "US vs Europe work" debate ends with the European patronizingly scolding the American for thinking money is the most important thing in life. I'm also not interested in that.

I am only interested in the labor market.

You can say the numbers don't matter, but then you've adopted essentially an unfalsifiable position.

Another factor to consider is the ease of quitting your job. In the US (at least, I have found), it is quite easy to quite your job and find a new one.

This matches the logic under which it's easy to fire in the US. Every cost of a regulation has a side-effect. If it's easy to fire, it's easy to hire. The article explains how American companies are more willing to hire for positions which wouldn't otherwise exist.

If you are not interested in that, then quit your job and don't work in a position which involves innovation. Which in America, is easy to do.

[piva00]

> You can say the numbers don't matter, but then you've adopted essentially an unfalsifiable position.

Numbers do matter, just not the cherry-picked narrow ones such as "median wage" with disregard for any context, and all other metrics that could somehow quantify quality of life vs purely financial terms.

> Another factor to consider is the ease of quitting your job. In the US (at least, I have found), it is quite easy to quite your job and find a new one.

Ease of quitting is also a non-problem, most jobs I had in Europe had a 1-3 months notice period which was easily negotiated if you really wanted to quit on the spot, no company wants to keep a disgruntled worker around so it's best to negotiate if said worker explicitly states they would like to shorten it.

> The article explains how American companies are more willing to hire for positions which wouldn't otherwise exist.

That's great for a selected set of jobs which workers would like to do that while being detrimental to society at large, making precarious conditions the default is not great for the less skilled people who prefer stability to keep their families afloat and secure.

> If you are not interested in that, then quit your job and don't work in a position which involves innovation. Which in America, is easy to do.

Not working in "innovation" still has the same precariousness, with no upside, making the divide in society between the haves and have-nots even more intense. It works up to a point, leave enough people behind and you get MAGA.

[Akranazon]

> and all other metrics that could somehow quantify quality of life vs purely financial terms

If you have measures in non-financial terms, I'm happy to consider those, as long as they have to do with labor market regulations.

> most jobs I had in Europe had a 1-3 months notice period which was easily negotiated if you really wanted to quit on the spot, no company wants to keep a disgruntled worker around

I could quibble that 1-3 months sounds like a shockingly long time from a US perspective, but the bigger problem is the "ease of finding a new job" part of the equation.

> making precarious conditions the default is not great for the less skilled people who prefer stability to keep their families afloat and secure.

The industries which don't experience as much instability are less likely to lay off people anyway. So workers who want stability can self-select into government jobs or something, which offer that stability.

> Not working in "innovation" still has the same precariousness, with no upside

Some industries are less precarious, I would say getting paid nearly twice as much is an upside.

> leave enough people behind and you get MAGA.

I don't think there's any strong evidence that income inequality caused maga. I couldn't find any evidence that poorer people are more likely to support Trump. But let me know if I'm wrong here.