Europeans make around half of what similar roles make in US and pay up to 70% of their income in taxes (50% income + 20% vat). What are they spending all that money on?
Then why work hard if everything you need is paid by someone else? This may explain low salaries in EU and 30 day PTO. Then if people don't make a lot they have to tax them more to pay for all this free stuff which further disincentivizes working harder.
> Then why work hard if everything you need is paid by someone else?
Isn't the answer obvious? So that you can afford cool things that you want. There needs to be a baseline of minimum services everyone gets (health care, education, food). If you want anything beyond that, like a nice house, nice car, nice toys, travel, etc. then that's the motivation to work harder.
> why work hard if everything you need is paid by someone else?
So they can buy things they don't need but just want. So they can really splurge on their many luxurious vacations for example. People in Europe work harder than Americans. They work fewer hours, but are much more productive than workers in the US.
Nobody should feel "incentivized" to work harder by the threat that they'll become homeless the moment they get sick or need an ambulance. If you feel like you'd never work hard if you didn't have that threat constantly hanging over you maybe you're just unnaturally lazy.