It's also a lot easier to make contract work work when you live somewhere where your taxes pay for your routine (and not-so-routine) healthcare and your education.
In places that don't have that sort of system, it's rough as fuck to create the safety net required to catch you when you work dries up, and at least as rough to watch the net burn as it was to create it.
I assumed that because in certain countries in the EU, such as Germany, Belgium, Poland, Ireland, companies are quite used to working with independent contractors. I am not sure that’s the case in the US.