Probably no surprise some (Western) European countries allow you going to the GP, telling you are exhausted/burned-out/anxious, whatever fits the extreme fatigue, and you get some time of commonly agreed off, prescribed, paid. Everyone is better off that way (except the manufacturers of stimulants. Coffee excluded here! :-) ). Also, overtime is not a trend. Preserved for exceptional circumstances, for a brief period that an otherwise balanced person can handle. Europe is economically uncompetitive, the rest of the world makes circles around it performance and money-wise, also many abuse the system, still, without people a society is nothing, economy alone is crap if it is not for the people, as much people as possible so the streets are not crawling with too much crazy. We need to have a life first. Most of my European friends would never think of living in the US or Asia prolonged, only for an energetic period to boost some aspects (financial, experience, knowledge), mostly when they are young (but not with children, no!). Those places are not liveable from a European perspective.

Depending on where you work, in Europe it can be just as bad. It doesn't matter whether Europe is economically uncompetitive (is it?), if the people themselves think they have to compete and become deprived of time and energy then they will burn out regardless. I see it happening left and right lately.

The only thing here is that there generally is a fairly robust social net ready to catch you if you do, as you mention. But my honest opinion is that this is not a solution, it's a bandaid for the real problem: why do people feel like they have to work themselves into the ground in order to be able to live?

You are right though, many here including myself cannot imagine living in those circumstances in other continents. I think that is another problem in itself, that people are becoming complacent here due to the low risk. That might even be part of the reason why people are so careless with their work-life balance, because they can't really lose it all like in other places, so maybe people stop paying attention to things that are actually important. Just guessing.

> Europe is economically uncompetitive

Meh. It's competetive enough.

> Those places are not liveable from a European perspective.

If the sacrifices these people make were at least for something that was obviously good - I could maybe understand that. But it's mostly making the world worse (either through financial schemes, addictive social media, marketing, AI, or other pointless bullshit).

Imagine wasting your life slaving away at making better ways to get people addicted to nicotine. That's IT now.