And if you really want earn money, you start your own company while still working... No sleep but you'll have I Porsche quite fast (and 100% legit here, but not in France for example).
If a student, it's key to know what the market needs and doing thesis that's actually something saleable...
Haha. If you have something "saleable" and you move to US - you will have 10 of those Porsches twice as fast! As successful entrepreneur in EU you are "greedy capitalist" - in US you are God. If you are very successful they will make a special door on Capitol Hill just for you so that you can get in and vent you frustration about lack of cheap engineering labor whenever it makes you sad. When you will walk in they will throw themselves to the floor and push a golden plate with pile of worker visas towards you so that you do not throw your godly rage on those unfortunate politicians. They will warship you even if you have portraits of Stalin and Mao tattooed on your forehead. Do you think this is my metaphysical exaggeration? - it is true.
I disagree. We like our successful entrepreneurs in Europe. Even the most left wing of the left (Spanish CNT; anarcosindicalists who fought both communists AND Franco yet REFUSE to follow any political party...) you will not find a single word against entrepreneurs. You will find stuff against other syndicates taking state and company money, work sharing, corruption etc. I disagree with a lot of what they say, but I respect them. Furthermore, when I lived in Spain, I found that they tended to work pretty hard and well. And they are rather mad about the state of the job market there that was a result of crony capitalism and financial criminality (all the way to the Kings daughter...) - not some uber left wing Marxist plot.
So your perception that Europe in large is a Communist Hell Hole and the US a collection of Marvellous Unicorn Ranches TM is slightly off the mark.
What frustrates most Europeans (if you sit down and talk for 5 minutes) is that the rules if you are working or start your company are "A". Yet the big boys are operating with a set of rules "B".
Capitalism is great, I'm a big fan of it, but it needs rules and those rules need to be the same for all. The playing field must be level. And it's not. That goes against all sane economic theory.
This is not communism or socialism, I think its Adam Smith (if I'm not mistaken).
I also think that the loadsamoney driven political pandering you praise is also wrong.
Politician should make rules for all in a country and make the same deal for everybody, otherwise it's a bloody banana republic at best.
But I agree that one could earn more for the same amount of work in the US, but a lot of us, having visited a few times, might not want to live or start a company there even if we like going stateside on vacation (but I reserve the same opinion for France right now, so this is not anti Americanism).
One can live a good life here with all the perks (house, car, trips etc) as an engineer (or in engineering) but not sufficient kids know that.
And that's the real problem.