As a Europoor it might actually increase our wages at least!
For those who haven't seen it before, it apparently mean "European, but from one of the poorer European nations, mainly from eastern Europe."
There was a salary survey in my company and even in Northern Europe - every single European engineer entry was less than half the salary of every single US engineer entry.
Tech wages are just one particularly egregious example of how European policy tends to suppress productivity.
I really don't think standard of living lags from the US. Well, it depends on how you are defining standard of living I guess, if it's coming from a consumerist point-of-view I agree, for any other definition of standards of living I believe the US is quite poor compared to developed European nations.