Many people in my country, and NW Europe in general, opt for pay in another currency: time.

Dutch people work _on average_ 350 hours less per year than their US counterparts; or about 7 weeks worth when working 40 hours a week.

It's not unheard of in my company to have between 30 and 50 paid days off per year on top of the national holidays. These days are negotiated during salary discussions and a trade off between pay and time.

https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm

Germany, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden etc... We all basically opt for more time off than more pay.

And this is possible in part due to the high taxes; we have no medical bills, no education bills, pension is taken care of, etc..

I for one, would gladly opt for a 4 day work week with 60k pay a year in stead of a 5 day workweek with 90k pay.

The only justification for this policy is something called "cost of labor" — in other words: "We've agreed with other tech companies that nobody's going to raise salaries locally."