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Comment by ralfn | Hacker News Reader

This perceived gap in unemployment needs some actual sources.

Unemployment in northern Europe is lower than in comparable places in the US with the same labour rights.

I can imagine unemployment in Southern Europe to be higher, but I am curious what you think you are comparing.

Here is something else to think about: it's safer to hire Americans because they will work 60 hours a week, never take a sick day, won't get pregnant and even if you give them vacation days they won't use them. So they are about 3/5 of the price of your typical European employee. A much better value proposition.

In return some of this will burn them out and put them on edge. This will likely have cultural, political and social consequences. If only we could give our American friends the sleep, reflection and family time they so much deserve.

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You talk about sources, and then you immediately dwelve into myths about how much US workers work. They do work more than the western Europe, on par with more hardworking EU: Poland, Romania, Greece etc. It's not 50% more https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm

You should also cosider wages and disposable income. The US worker will have a substantially higher wage, and because of lower taxes and living costs, a higher disposable income.

If you think its reasonable to use Poland, Romania or Greece as your benchmark for Europe, i think its reasonable to use Puerto Rico, Missisipi and Lousiana as the benchmark for the United States.

>You should also cosider wages and disposable income.

As one would consider purcasing power, healthcare costs, student debts, good public infrastructure, public spaces, physical safety, quality of water, quality of air, amount of people owining firearms, amount of conspiracy nuts, reliability of things like heat and electricity, the level of institutational racism, human rights, freedom of speech, etc. Lets not even dive in the fact that healthy high quality food is so much more expensive in the US.

In the end, the list of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_livable_cities does not contain many US cities at all.

This notion that you are rewarded better for the same work in the US is just not true. You have to work more, you have to put up with more abuse, you have to spend more time travelling to work, your roads are shit, your public transit is none existing. If you get into a small car crash, you have to worry for a bit if the other person will drive on (stucking you with a bill), or bring a gun (because they might just be angry and armed!). Your kids live in a cage in suburbia and after working all those hours, you will have to drive them around for them to go anywhere except their own house.

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