I mean, this is just factually incorrect. I don't know how you can make this assertion. Look at gdp per capita, income per capita, etc... The United States is higher than essentially all european countries (excluding oil exporting Norway and 500k person Luxembourg)
For example:
List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
US: 47k
Canada: 39k
Germany: 36k
UK: 34k
France: 34k
So, like I said, there is definitely a tradeoff. I wish the people in the US had an easier time of trading some of their salary for more vacation time. And I wish that people in europe had an easier time of trading some of their vacation for extra salary (unless you can always just cash out all of your unused vacation time, then tahts pretty good)