Curious to see the source showing European democracies are more successful, controlling for socioeconomic status.
If you want billionaires then the US model is much more successful.
If you want a wide middle class then the Swedish model is more successful.
If you want happiness then the Danish model is more successful.
If you want to eliminate poverty then the Finnish model is more successful.
Seeing that the US is nearly a quarter of the global economy, nearly 30% of world's billionaires does not sound unreasonable.
We’re talking about countries and the claim that the USA is too big for decent social systems is just about the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard.
Either you have enough GDP for each state that it could be it’s own country, or you don’t. But it feels picky and choosy to say “we are extremely wealthy” and then later say “ah. But we’re too big for social programmes. It would cost too much”.
It’s a weird kind of double-speak that might have an iota of truth in either direction, but those positions cannot be simultaneously held.
Incomes are nominally higher in Massachusetts and costs for certain staples (energy, food, automobile) are nominally lower, compared to Western Europe. Yet I can’t say the outcome is better (note I have lived in France, Germany and Massachusetts).
The fact is life is more precarious in MA: it appears that you have more disposable income but crucial things like health care (perhaps best in USA), school (crucial for keeping your head above water) and such means you spend more of your time and money looking after your life and less actually living it.
You can see this in the numbers, too: not just life expectancy but in things like money available (and spent) on vacations and other leisure, reported levels of stress and debt.
I’m not trying to claim that any country is some sort of utopia. My root comment was simply that the analysis of the post we are discussing was simplistic and ignored confounding examples of countries with the claimed “bad” things doing better by their citizens.
Yes, you may have to exclude some very anomalous countries that have models that couldn't scale - Luxembourg for instance - but a country like Sweden is a mix of cities, suburbs, and rural areas with a mix of primary resource production, manufacturing, and services. It's big "enough" that you would expect normal country scaling laws to apply.
Their success is defined by their peoples' socioeconomic status.
Even Massachusetts would be superior than every European country per capita.
However, even if the US shows better outcomes when controlling for socioeconomic status, the distribution of people within socioeconomic status is relevant.
If the US has 1000 impoverished people and 10 middle class people, and Germany has 10 impoverished people and 1000 middle class people, the relevant comparison is the German middle class to the US impoverished class.
In other words, you'd want to compare outcomes based on percentiles regardless of socioeconomic status.