In a healthy market economy, entrepreneurs are meant to support the consumer, and they do so partly by competing with one another for talent, which requires supporting the employee. We could argue ad nauseam about the health of the US's market economy, but ultimately is has resulted in unignorably higher wages than in Europe, even at the lower end of the economic ladder.

This probably also has a lot to do with it's much tighter market integration than the EU, although they seem to be finally addressing that issue with the 28th regime.

A popular theory of Europe's historic economic outperformance relative to the rest of the world, leading up to the industrial revolution, relies on competitive market theory: constant warfare spurring innovation, as well as relatively free movement of the best and brightest to seek greener pastures elsewhere on the continent. These days, the most ambitious Europeans tend to move to America to raise money and find talent, and it seems many EU countries are finally waking up to the fact that they need to do better to support entrepreneurship.

I would posit that many EU citizens are still living with the idea of their historic economic outperformance even though it has not been true for many years.