Careful when you compare European salaries to US.
Usually, European salaries include pension (although crapy), health insurance and unemployment insurance.
In general you can deduct around 40 to 55% from the gross pay to get the net pay. This applies especially to the northern states like Germany, Denmark, Sweden. Applied Tax alone can be up to 43%. UK is much less.
While net salaries in the US might appear huge in number, still medicare or 401K have to be deducted. Taxes are significantly lower tough. Unemployment insurance? What´s that?.