There's truth to this, but there's a lot of other factors at play, as well. I would like to point out that the EU has better outcomes for its citizens, has a more robust manufacturing sector, higher manufacturing wages, an industrial trade surplus, and still manages to provide healthcare, child care, maternity leave, and all the other stuff you mentioned. So how do they do it? How does the EU get to have their cake and eat it to? Corporate profiteering, a mix of over and under regulation, corruption, immigration, and hordes of useless idiots on both sides which are too busy arguing against their own interests to realize they're fucked either way.
I don't think it's a coincidence that, when you ask most conservative Americans what the most prosperous time was, they will say the post war boom, the 50s and 60s. I would also like to point out this was at the peak of union membership and tripartite agreements (labor-management-government). The US absolutely dominated manufacturing, provided pensions to its workers, had affordable housing, healthcare, and childcare, and had high wages and better citizen outcomes. What changed? Why are all of these things impossible now? Why are labor unions virtually non-existent? Why do companies provide no pensions or bullshit pittance 401(k) plans? Why is healthcare impossible for large sections of the working class? Why have US wages grown 0.7% in the last half century versus executive compensation which has grown by an order of magnitude? Why, despite decades of record breaking corporate profits, companies in the US continue to shear the sheep closer and closer to the skin? Why does half the US believe that, again, despite year after year after year of record breaking profits, companies will suddenly implode if they are required to provide the same standard of living which the rest of the developed world offers?
Anyway, I don't have all the answers, and I won't pretend I do, but I think there's something there. I want to be clear that I'm not a socialist, but I do believe in ethical capitalism. I find it interesting that small and medium sized businesses tend to provide better benefits and wages than large corporations, despite slimmer profit margins. I think patriotism or the lack thereof has a lot to do with it. If I was an executive, I would want to provide high wages and excellent benefits to my workers just because I want to see them succeed. I want Americans to be productive, happy, healthy, and confident. There's probably a reason I'm not in the C-suite at a major corporation, I suppose.
I'll leave you with this: you know which group of Americans is most opposed to minimum wage increases? Those who stand to gain. The people who make just above minimum wage right now and would see their wages go up of the minimum wage was increased are most opposed, because they are more concerned with being labeled a "minimum wage worker" than seeing a wage increase.
