I kinda disagree on both accounts. Many many people give their all for less than that. More money will get you better (foreign) talent, but the correlation between pay and effort is much lower.
I work in the EU for an American company. The consensus here is Americans work more, but not harder. We deliver better work in less time.
The edge Americans have is a can do attitude and not being afraid of failure.
If you want to attract the best people in the EU it's the fact, and not even for a discussion, that you have to pay them the good $$$. Those people are found in places where the most complex infrastructure software is being built. And that is for worse or for the better is only found in FAANG or HFT or similar very large-scale software where even saving a few cents per line of code is bringing big profits to the company. How many such EU-based products are out there?
Your perspective of "delivering more work in less time" is cute. Put yourself in a pool of 95th percentile of engineers on the market and you will soon find that your experience is not representative.
I do not. Even with those skills you're still looking for a lot of hours to burn in. It only happens that those skills are more or less a prerequisite for more chance of success.
I work in the EU for an American company. The consensus here is Americans work more, but not harder. We deliver better work in less time.
The edge Americans have is a can do attitude and not being afraid of failure.