In my opinion, part-time work is much more common in the EU.
Also, there is a cultural difference. If I can earn what I need to finance my lifestyle with 15 hours per week, why work more? The drive to become rich is a lot less strong in the EU because you can have health insurance and retirement money even when you're not extraordinarily wealthy.
Also, living costs are quite low. 2000€ net per month is enough to feed a family and live within waking distance of supermarkets, schools, doctors. You don't need a pricey car.
And lastly, most young people in the US have student loans to pay off. My university was free, so I started working with 0 debt.
I’d take this one step further: the whole system in Europe is designed to keep everyone at “average” wages across the board.
Due to the (extremely steep) progressive tax system, there’s a lot of friction in (serious) pay raises. Why give someone a raise of €1,000/month when at the end of the day they will end up with less than half that?
Or why would you keep working full-time if by working 4 days you only give up 10% of net pay? Your ‘hourly wage’ actually goes up.
And it doesn’t stop with progressive taxation: a huge number of expenses are income-linked. So with your net pay increase of €500/month, you also start paying a lot more for child care or loose other benefits.
Instead, you could start working 4 out of 5 days: 1 day less to pay for childcare, and the cost per day of the remaining 4 days also goes down because your pre-tax income went down by 20% (all while net income only reduced by 10%)).
So in the end I don’t think people are getting paid less in Europe simply because taxes are higher or because there are more general benefits, but rather because there are actual systemic incentives to getting paid less. And I think this really affects typical upper-average income, where realistic incremental pay raises just aren’t really worth it for a lot of people. There’s a hurdle to reach a much higher level of income (let’s say top 10% bracket) where the increase in expenses and loss of benefits becomes insignificant (or you’ve already reached maximum levels of income-linked expenses) compared to the massively higher income level.
I used to think like you when I was on my 20s. Now on my 30s, the salary I make is more than enough to life a decent life but only if I keep working until I’m 65. I don’t want to work (for others) until I’m 65. I don’t want to be rich either (too much effort), but I do want to own a house I don’t need to pay anymore when I’m 45. I want to stop working for others when I’m 45. Now this decent salary of mine is simply not enough to own a decent house in a decent place in Western Europe.
Just do the math; let’s take the 2K Euro you are talking about. That’s 24K in 1 year. 240K in 10. 480K in 20. Now, 480K euro is the price of decent house in Western Europe. Let’s say you are able to save 50% of such decent salary, that means you’ll need 40 years to pay the house (I’m keeping it simple for the sake of the example: no inflation, no taxes, etc.)
Also, there is a cultural difference. If I can earn what I need to finance my lifestyle with 15 hours per week, why work more? The drive to become rich is a lot less strong in the EU because you can have health insurance and retirement money even when you're not extraordinarily wealthy.
Also, living costs are quite low. 2000€ net per month is enough to feed a family and live within waking distance of supermarkets, schools, doctors. You don't need a pricey car.
And lastly, most young people in the US have student loans to pay off. My university was free, so I started working with 0 debt.