This is how Europeans defend their system - better worker protections. But I get far better pay, conditions, and work-life balance at a North American company than I could possibly expect working for a local company. I'm not sure this defence really works anymore.
You might be better off with better conditions working for a top American company but you are not most people, you are part of a privileged few who had the capacity (opportunity, financial, intellectual) to be part of a a select who can enjoy this position. You're also dependent on your company to provide these benefits.
Having competition from company on benefits is great for everyone but there must be a minimum for anyone in a society to be protected against predatory companies and to not have to work multiple jobs to feed their family.
Having a minimum of protection, knowing you will get support if you lose your job, get cared for if you get sick and when you get old, have an education that is not financially elitist, make enough to live -modestly- and feed your family on a single job,... these are worth a lot to a society.
Everyone is free to argue the cost of that of course, but it's a way to reduce disparity and the risk of poverty.
No system is ideal, and if you are lucky enough to have your skills in great demand then you have a chance to make a very decent life for yourself. For most people that's not really the case though and it's shouldn't be left solely to the randomness and kindness of the company you work for.
Of the American's on Hacker News almost all of them are in the "doing well" category so the perspective is all off.
I think it makese sense to consider, what is your disaster scenario? What would it take to go from doing well, to not do well? For example, a crippling accident that handicaps you so you can no longer make a living doing the thing you are specialized in today. How would you fare then? This counts to me as more important than whether I can afford this or that car, and so on.
If you have the ability to achieve then you will flourish in America - it’s why smart people flock to it from all over. And it’s true what you say - health care is better, food is better, life is better if you’re doing well.
But Europe is better if you’re an idiot.
But North American companies also outperform on this.
My health insurance is better than a local company. My sick coverage is better than a local company. My educational opportunities are better than with a local company. My ability to support my family are better than a local company. Even my time off is better than a local company!
The advantage is really in working for a rich company.
Of which America has more. For structural reasons. Per the article.
Which you don’t get in Europe… which was the point.
I think it's expected that both family partners work, at least in Sweden.
Otherwise it's very tight economically, unless one has some rich inheritance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...
That is a general pattern in the USA anyhow, a few concentrations here and there but everyone else seems to be screwed in various ways (be it basics like healthcare, education, safety).
But out of the top 10 richest in the US, only the Waltons are heirs. I would say it's a bit of a distortion, since the all of them combined I think is still larger than any other US individual.
Looking at Sweden, it looks like a lot of it is inherited, certainly most of the top 10. And like 1/4 are H&M, Tetra Pak, and Ikea alone. The new 'household names' are spotify and minecraft.
Norway is obviously smaller, but surprisingly, quite a lot of them got the three commas from their own businesses. The last-ditch cop out there is the typical Norway is in general an outlier due to being a highly developed nation with oil money. However, most of the billionaires are not there due to energy.
Also, it's a pretty unconvincing comparison to pick a small population country to benchmark the US against.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/open-for-business...
In goverment policy there is very rarely a closed form proof of any policy - we are almost always stuck with collecting large and small data points and needing to form a policy based on incomplete information and theory. But mostly it seems it’s matched up with motivations and biases - which are worth examining.
Programmer compensation can scale with the total capital of the enterprise because the software can run everywhere (eg. AWS backend developer). So bigger employers can pay programmers more, almost linearly with capital.
But most workers can not productively use infinite capital. So they do not reap the benefits of scale, while definitely suffering the reduced autonomy of larger firms (e.g. Amazon delivery jobbers).
Social-democratic societies make different choices.