> For what it's worth I'm from Denmark, so maybe its totally different in the US.
To weigh in a bit on some of the differences between employment in Denmark and the US.
- In the US there are no mandated (paid or unpaid) vacation days/time off (with the exception of 3-4 of the 50 states).
- There are no mandated paid sick days.
- You are granted at most 12 weeks of unpaid sick leave per year by the FMLA however if you actually take advantage of this, most companies will simply let you go for another, unspecified reason (as you are not required to document or explain why you have let go or fire an employee).
- There is no mandated paternity leave, paid or unpaid. Maternity leave falls under unpaid sick leave.
- On average (but not required), employees get 10-20 days of paid time off (combined between vacation and sick time).
- The US obviously has atrocious health care costs that unless you are very lucky end up eating non-negligible portions of your paycheck. (just insurance before any actual received care is on average is ~450USD/month)
- US Universities cost a lot of money and if you aren't going into the trades, you will be dedicating a large, non-negligible portion of your paycheck towards paying loans (avg: ~40k USD loans, ~150-300USD/month).
- In almost any part of the US outside of a small selection of major cities, you cannot work or live without a car. (avg car insurance ~150USD/month, avg cost of fuel ~150-200USD/month, maintenance, etc can be assumed to be another 25-100USD/month).
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That works out to on average around ~900-1200USD/month or ~10.8k-14.4k USD/year in costs (if you aren't going to university you can subtract 450USD/month or 5400USD/year from this) that are essentially unavoidable for the overwhelming majority of Americans which likely are avoidable in a country like Denmark as long as you don't live in an overly rural area.
Realistically this means that for the average American (~31k/year), anywhere from 17-46% of their income goes to expenses that aren't necessarily applicable to people in a decent chunk of western Europe (particularly the urban/suburban parts). And on top of this, for many Americans, any life complication or sickness that prevents them from working causes that percentage to rise (both from increased costs and decreased income).
I don’t know why you’d spend so long typing out such a long piece of what is just patently misinformation. It border line reads like you just harbor animus towards the US and wanted to seize on an opportunity to malign it.
While there is no federal law for sick leave, many states have them, and even for states that don’t, local municipalities do which means a large portion of US workers do receive mandated sick time.
https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/paid-sick-le...
The car insurance part is also wrong. As is the part about being fired for taking sick time; it costs the average employer 7 figures to fight a wrongful termination suit. So even if they win, it’d have been cheaper to keep you on even if you did nothing. Employers in at will states can fire you for any reason but if you’ve had fine performance reviews leading up to your medical leave, only the stupidest employers would expose themselves to massive legal liability by firing you. I’m guessing you’re pretty naive to running a business because most employers and entrepreneurs I’ve talked to are quite aware of this and truthfully do have good will towards their employees anyway.
There’s more to pick apart here but tl;dr - no one in the US making 31k/yr is spending half their income on health insurance and car insurance. At the income level, your effective tax rate is 0% too cause of tax credits.
> Employers in at will states can fire you for any reason
Which is an employer in every state except Montana. And let's not pretend that employees who are wrongly fired are willing/able to fight a long legal battle to prove their termination was illegal, so no matter how much it costs an employer it's still on the terminated employee to start proceedings. Unless it's a "slam dunk" case that a lawyer will take pro-bono and take money from the settlement or win, that person will need to pay out of pocket, which is out of reach for almost everyone.
I also would like to see the "7 figures to fight a wrongful termination suit" citation.
> While there is no federal law for sick leave, many states have them, and even for states that don’t, local municipalities do which means a large portion of US workers do receive mandated sick time.
Sure, but not everyone lives in the states that have paid sick leave, and only 14 states plus DC, plus a handful of other cities, actually do offer it. The majority of them additionally have a cap of 40 hours, after which it's going to be unpaid, so if you're unfortunately sick for longer than a week, you're kind of out of luck.
On top of this, the parent most likely meant mandated as in federally mandated, which is true, there is no federally mandated sick leave.
While the US isn't as bad as some people like to make it seem to be, it's also not that good for a lot of people, so please don't pretend it is.
To weigh in a bit on some of the differences between employment in Denmark and the US.
- In the US there are no mandated (paid or unpaid) vacation days/time off (with the exception of 3-4 of the 50 states).
- There are no mandated paid sick days.
- You are granted at most 12 weeks of unpaid sick leave per year by the FMLA however if you actually take advantage of this, most companies will simply let you go for another, unspecified reason (as you are not required to document or explain why you have let go or fire an employee).
- There is no mandated paternity leave, paid or unpaid. Maternity leave falls under unpaid sick leave.
- On average (but not required), employees get 10-20 days of paid time off (combined between vacation and sick time).
- The US obviously has atrocious health care costs that unless you are very lucky end up eating non-negligible portions of your paycheck. (just insurance before any actual received care is on average is ~450USD/month)
- US Universities cost a lot of money and if you aren't going into the trades, you will be dedicating a large, non-negligible portion of your paycheck towards paying loans (avg: ~40k USD loans, ~150-300USD/month).
- In almost any part of the US outside of a small selection of major cities, you cannot work or live without a car. (avg car insurance ~150USD/month, avg cost of fuel ~150-200USD/month, maintenance, etc can be assumed to be another 25-100USD/month).
----
That works out to on average around ~900-1200USD/month or ~10.8k-14.4k USD/year in costs (if you aren't going to university you can subtract 450USD/month or 5400USD/year from this) that are essentially unavoidable for the overwhelming majority of Americans which likely are avoidable in a country like Denmark as long as you don't live in an overly rural area.
Realistically this means that for the average American (~31k/year), anywhere from 17-46% of their income goes to expenses that aren't necessarily applicable to people in a decent chunk of western Europe (particularly the urban/suburban parts). And on top of this, for many Americans, any life complication or sickness that prevents them from working causes that percentage to rise (both from increased costs and decreased income).