> This is a common misconception which comes from the fact that there are no federal required vacations.

You must never have been pressured not to take your vacation days or sick days. I think most people have been. I've seen people constructively fired for taking vacation, or even for taking their entire entitled maternity leave rather than cutting it short.

Is this more common in startup companies? Or corporate comp.?

I think the OP meant it metaphorically. "Basically" seems to signal this. Since metaphors are not the thing itself, there are necessarily aspects that do not fit. However, metaphors may be bad metaphors. So you may or may not have a point here. But this point should be made explicit to move the discussion forward.

Also, I suspect that the OP is not a native English speaker, because there seems to be a subtle difference between a narrow standard metaphorical use of "slave labo(u)r" in English along the lines of "work that is done by enslaved people or by people who are treated as though they are enslaved"[1] and a wider use for example in German were "Sklavenarbeit" means something like hard work under degrading conditions.[2]

[1] As Merrriam-Webster defines it at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slave%20labor

[2] Cf. for example the lemma "sklavenarbeit" in Grimms' dictionary: "sklavenarbeit, f. arbeit, die ein sklave thun musz, die einem sklaven ziemt, harte arbeit. Campe, schlavenarbeit, lavoro, fatica da schiavo. Kramer deutsch-it. dict. 2 (1702), 562a: schlavenarbeit thun müssen, dover faticare da schiavo. ebenda; was ists für mühe und sklavenarbeit der ackerbau. Herder bei Campe." https://woerterbuchnetz.de/?sigle=DWB&lemid=S30002

I don't think it's that simple, for at least two reasons I can immediately think of:

1) Several Americans live paycheck to paycheck with no significant savings outside of property either. One unexpected emergency is enough to empty the savings of most Americans [1](https://www.yahoo.com/news/one-emergency-away-study-shows-22...). The idea that Americans make more money and that makes up for the difference just doesn't play out in reality for all but the richest and luckiest.

2) Taking a 30 day vacation and coming back to the same job without any threat of repercussion is much more valuable than simply 30 days worth of saved wages. The average American worker can't just take 30 days off, even as leave without pay, and expect to come back to the same job. If they want a 30 day period with no work, the vast majority of American workers will have to quit their current job and then hope to be able to find a new one later - which certainly isn't a given if you're working unskilled jobs to begin with.

This vary between classes. Middle class people usually have enough money to live whole year without work. Also if you add social security into this equation, here in middle of EU, social security gives you certain portion of your previous paycheck as unemployment support, depends how high it is, you can also get rent support, which will pay you whole rent.

My experience of working for a couple of FAANGs does not mirror this - while I was never laid off during a vacation, I think every vacation over 3 weeks I ever took, I returned to discover that my team had either suffered a major reorg, or the entire project was cancelled, and I had to find another team to work on.

Yep, I've taken several three-week vacations and it's never been a problem. The main thing is just giving plenty of advance notice (and reminding people as it gets close) so my manager can schedule around it, and making sure projects are in a good state with arrangements made for anything that needs covering while I'm out.

Yeah this is why I always take more than a month off between jobs.

Besides parental leave and the very rare even for FAANG companies who offer month long sabbaticals once every five years, a month is a hard sell.

Another way of looking at it is that it is indeed quite true. Only, with "at-will employment", you get to live in that same fear whether or not you take any vacation.