In a similar situation, many US startups survive, after laying off of their half their at-will employees. That's my point.

I don't know what perception of the country you have but it's not the Soviet Union you know, having financial issue is a valid reason to fire employees. The US is the only developed place without reasonable workers laws so it's more an exception than anything else.

In the US, we call this argument "Red Baiting". Sure, let's accuse our opponent of starving 10s of millions of people to death!

When there's a financial problem, there are multiple differing opinions as to what's reasonable.

But if you want to call the US the "only developed place without reasonable worker laws", you might want to consider Denmark. Because they don't have the opinion you're propagating.

Yeah but in Denmark they compensate with very high unemployment benefits paying up to 90% of your previous salary for up to 2 years (that's much higher than in France), I don't recall any of that in the US.

Comparing to Denmark, which has way better employee laws than the US, is weird regardless because of the difference in unemployment benefits and general safety net there is in Denmark. Free hospitals, free education, etc.

"Free?"

The personal income tax rate averaged 60.45% in Denmark from 1995-2018.

Those are some of the most expensive "free" hospitals and universities I've ever heard of.

If you want that view, then I guess nothing is ever free then, and it's a pointless word, so why even bother?

Also, the tax is more complicated than simply throwing out 60.45%. It goes:

- From 0 - 50,000 you pay 0% tax - Everything above you first pay 8% work market tax, and then from the leftover you pay - the amount you earned above 50,000 - 498,900 is 37% - the amount you earn above 489,900 is taxed 52,2%

So you don't pay 60.45% of the full amount. Never. You pay progressively as you go up.

Monthly that'll go something like, deduct 5,000 form your paycheck, deduct 8% of the remaining amount, and then 38% of the remaining amount of that. Now, what you have left is the remaining amount + the 5,000 tax free. And of course a bit more of the amount if you go into the top tax bracket.