safe.
I've been to Europe a few times, and hosted many visitors from Europe. The hotels, restaurants, clothing etc. are lot more expensive in Europe (on top of almost 20%! sales tax). Salary is much lower (My British counterpart is at least 30% in salary and my Portugal colleague makes less than half what I make, yet pay much higher tax rate).
I like traveling (do a lot associated w/ work) and take family vacation every yr., with the money saved from relatively low tax rates here.
Europeans have longer vacations, for sure. You choose what's the best for you, just not fair to brand US as a third-rate country, w/o any facts to support your claim (My feeling is that you actually know US well, having lived in New Jersey, but somehow, are very anti-America; bad experiences here?).
