Yes, it does have an element of bragging, but Northern Europe, and particularly the Nordics, do very well and there is no purpose in trying to hide that.

What is interesting to me is that much of what the Nordics do is widely known and freely available to copy for other countries. But they rarely seem to want to, even when they can afford it. Some of what the Nordics do, like free healthcare for all, is expensive and requires strong governments with little corruption. But much of it is - like education the Nordic way - is not necessarily more expensive than the way they do education in Southern and Eastern Europe.

For the vast majority of Americans, turning the US more into a Scandinavian style social democracy would mean an improvement of life. But they don't seem to want it.

For most Southern and Eastern Europeans, taking hints from Scandinavian education with less focus on root learning and grades, and more acceptance - even encouragement of making errors - would increase their kids' chances. But they still spend significant time having kids memorize old poems or historic facts, and they still punish errors and grade even little kids. And most parents seem to want it that way.

I base this on what I read in US media, and what I gathered from having lived in the US, in a Nordic country, in a Mediterranean country and in an Eastern European country.

US Government was on the same trajectory as North European governments from 1930's to 1970s. Then US took radically different path.

> For tax years 1944 through 1951, the highest marginal tax rate for individuals was 91%, increasing to 92% for 1952 and 1953, and reverting to 91% 1954 through 1963.[39] For the 1964 tax year, the top marginal tax rate for individuals was lowered to 77%, and then to 70% for tax years 1965 through 1981.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_Uni...

Historical Income Tax Rates and brackets https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Historic...

Courtesy of /r/alwaysthesamemap: https://i.redd.it/em14c1y2fdd71.jpg

I do wish we could all be less tribalistic and take things at face value.

We do many things well in Europe that means many countries here have a high quality of life. You are free to look at that and make those changes in the U.S.A. if you would like the same benefits.

If I come across things that I think the U.S.A. does better, I don't think "oh, those show-off Americans", I wonder why we don't do it as well here.

I thought I saw canada in the table somewhere ?

I mean this did not spring up from the ground.

We made our countries like this :)

You could also say we got lucky with our climate, no major disasters and fewer corrupt politicians.