I imagine it's not uncommon to retire early as an engineer in the US, while it's not really a thing in EU (with some exceptions, like doing years of contracting

I imagine it's not uncommon to retire early as an engineer in the US, while it's not really a thing in EU (with some exceptions, like doing years of contracting in hot markets). The pay is just low and the taxes are high, sometimes ridiculously high (ex. in Belgium you pay 45% income tax for income above 20k euros...).