That's a very US centric view IMO. Here the companies stick around longer. We don't do that survival of the fittest mindset here.

And with the ridiculous house prices and crap wages even in tech it's not really possible to save anymore. I'd take social security over anything.

My accrued benefits are something I am entitled to and I worked hard for and I wouldn't drop them without a fight.

> We don't do that survival of the fittest mindset here.

Which is why the gap between US and Europe is widening - 20 years ago EU GDP was on par with US, now it is 2/3rds of it.

I don't really care though. I don't always want more more more. I have enough.

The only thing that's really crazy expensive is housing but that follows GDP anyway, the real issue is shortage.

I even took a pay cut to move to a lower-wage country with higher quality of life.

But what I want from my job is stability and security.

Europe has the same survival of the fittest mindset as the USA. When revenue drops, employees are laid off and businesses go bankrupt or get sold for a pittance.

Olivetti, Bull, and Nokia used to be a computing industry leaders. How many people work there now?

No one is entitled to anything beyond human rights. Your social security can be cut with the stroke of a pen. In fact, if you live long enough then that will probably happen due to the collapsing demographics in most European countries.

When I speak of this mindset I mean the idea of "every man for himself" when it comes to the employees. The idea that everyone must be a winner or loser, they cannot just be a decent contributor and just "be". In Europe we believe much more strongly in this (except for the hardline neoliberal parties)

I didn't really mean it in terms of the corporations which compete in a much harsher macrocapitalist realm. I don't want that harshness to come down to people level. I'm very happy paying taxes for job stability and a social safety net. And other things like free healthcare even though I have enough right now to pay for privatized care.

But I should have explained better what I meant by that, yes.

Changing demographics will make it harder, but I don't think it makes social welfare impossible. There's pressure from governments but if you see the people in France for example, they are happy to pay taxes and retire early. They've just been cheated out of it by their president.

Providing social welfare and early retirement will be impossible in France as the ratio of workers to retirees falls to 1.5. Retirement ages will increase and benefits will be cut. That is inevitable now regardless of who is elected president.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/french-pension-strikes-retireme...

Part of this is his refusal to increase taxes though. Which a majority of citizens don't have any issue with.

Working longer is not a major issue for me personally either especially because life expectancy is higher as the article mentions. But the French specifically do find this a problem and don't mind paying for it.

Also, this ratio drop is a temporary thing. It's a result of baby boomers retiring. Eventually they will die and the amount of retirees will be back in balance. You see this effect almost all over Europe as the cause (WWII) was affecting pretty much the whole continent.

> You have to assume that on any given day your employer might get destroyed by an upstart competitor and lay everyone off.

But this is exactly why we have social welfare and severance pay laws. So we don't need to :)