I lived in Madrid, Spain, for a good while. I had three options:

Do a 1.5 hours commute in public transportation,

do a 30 mins commute by car but leaving home 30 mins earlier than by public transportation to avoid all the traffic (and then leave work around 1 hour later than my shift ended to do the same on the way back).

Or pay a rent that was higher than my paycheck lo live somewhere closer to my workplace.

It's not just the US.

I'd agree tho that only in the US people have this mentality about working being more important than anything else.

You clearly don't know what's going on in the world if you think this type of corporate bullshit is exclusive to the US.

My commute is 2-4h (back and forth) depending on whether I'm driving, taking train or cycling. Train is fastest, and cycling slowest. Of course I don't travel this distance every day, since I'm mostly working from home

If you're working in a large city but don't want to, or can't afford to actually live in the city, you're gonna have a long commute

Yeah, not just USA. I commute via walking+bus here in Spain, 35min each way to a company that is in tech. 90% of our meetings are online and the ones in person are just as pointless. We also call ourselves a global company.

Ooooohohoooh, try working in the Philippines. Not uncommon for the commute to be three hours each way. While the US is a capitalist nightmare, the Philippines is a capitalist hellscape.

UK here, 2 hours

While they didn't invent cars nor suburbs USA exported car-centric policies en mass to their colonies. Especially developing countries where more much infrastructure existed.
The oil must flow.