Germany’s per-capita GDP was 76% of the U.S. in 2015 and is 61% today.
But its one of the few countries these days where I believe emigration would send me significantly backwards.
GDP isnt an interesting metric for this conversation tbh. The US can be "Winning" the monetary accumulation race while still being a terrible place in most other aspects.
Why dont you use "Adult literacy rate" as a comparison.
The US is definitely not "a terrible place in most other aspects". The US is at the top (or near the top excluding small countries like Switzerland) in:
- Consumer spending;
- Disposable income;
- Size of housing afforded;
- Top university rankings;
- Research and development;
Europe suffers from many things that would be hard to imagine in the US. Only 20% of European homes have air conditioning vs 88% of American homes. This causes real problems. In 2024, there were 62,700 Europeans who died from extreme heat, compared to ~3,000 Americans.
Air conditioning is simply not necessary in many places in Europe. Either because of climate or building standards (ie proper insulation and/or traditional building styles with a lot of thermal mass).
The size of housing is more due to limitations on development permits designed to limit urban sprawl, as well as differing traditions and preferences.
Having top universities is nice, but won’t help you if the rest of your education system sucks, because 99% of people do not visit the top universities.
Same with wealth and quality of life: the strength of a society is probably measured best by asking where you’d rather be poor, than where you’d rather be rich.
67 thousand people are dying each year in Europe from extreme heat, compared to 3k in the US. I'm sure AC "is not necessary in some places in Europe", but this lack of AC is a real material difference and has real, obviously negative consequences.
E.g. see: https://www.euronews.com/green/2025/09/23/more-than-62000-di...
"Europe is the continent that is warming most quickly, at twice the global average,” says Tomáš Janoš, ISGlobal and Recetox researcher and first author of the study.
> - Disposable income;
While it is undeniable that the US leads in these areas, it should be pointed out that the distribution of who spends and who has disposable income does matter. As in: if you and your 100 closest neighbors live in poverty, it matters very little if you have a multi-billionaire on the block who brings up the average disposable income.
> - Size of housing afforded;
Europe is a lot more densely populated than the US. You really should be comparing urban areas in both, or rural areas in both.
> - Top university rankings;
> - Research and development;
I'll grant you these.
> Europe suffers from many things that would be hard to imagine in the US. Only 20% of European homes have air conditioning vs 88% of American homes. This causes real problems. In 2024, there were 62,700 Europeans who died from extreme heat, compared to ~3,000 Americans.
As others have pointed out: European homes tend to be much better insulated, and have much greater thermal mass, than American ones. Moreover, a far bigger percentage of the American population lives in warmer climates than in Europe.
That being said, the deaths from extreme heat do show that something needs to change here in order to meet the warming climate. And things are. The push for heat pumps in Europe also opens the door to running them as coolers when needed (when they're the air-to-air type).
Agreed. But the median American has one the highest consumer spending and disposable incomes in the world.
> Europe is a lot more densely populated than the US. You really should be comparing urban areas in both, or rural areas in both.
OK. But housing in American cities is generally larger than the equivalent in European cities. And housing in American suburbs is likewise larger than in European suburbs.
Absoutely. But the differences are no longer insane when considering medians: US at 43 kUSD, and the rest of top 5 at 42, 41, 39, 37. While for the means, the US is 50% ahead of number 5 (top 5 goes 62, 47, 47, 42, 41). That's yaw-dropping, while the lead in medians is not. Randomly sourced from https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/disposabl... , which I assume is at least in the ballpark.
> OK. But housing in American cities is generally larger than the equivalent in European cities. And housing in American suburbs is likewise larger than in European suburbs.
Sure. But it's still important to compare apples to apples. And when doing so, the difference, like for disposable income, is far less stark.
- Universal healthcare: I have never needed to pay for my medicine, and I can rest assured that my family won't go bankrupt if I ever get cancer or something.
- Extensive paid leave: I have 1.5 month of it every year.
- Retirement age: 62 years here (for now, at least).
- Public education: I have two masters from public schools, that I got essentially for free.
Americans suffers from many things that would be hard to imagine in the EU.
Also, screens on windows (to keep out mosquitoes and such) are almost ubiquitous in the US (even in government-funded housing for poor people, the disabled and the elderly) whereas many homes in Europe do not have them (even though Europe has mosquitoes that spread illnesses).
If it were a matter of cost/availability, then surely they'd be everywhere on wealthy homes in affected areas in Europe?
But they do make it harder to exchange inside and outside air, as they increase air resistance, especially in hot summer evenings when there is little temperature difference and no wind.
Do you refer to screens that are held in place with magnetic or adhesive strips? Those are tacky. I mean screens in metal frames that are held in place by metal that was installed by the builder when the home was built. (The builder probably bought pre-made windows, and the screens, frames and hardware to hold the frame in place were an integral part of the window when it was bought.)
Everyone who's anyone just invites the mosquitoes in and plays the good host to them!
Show me the gap between the top and the bottom in Europe and the EU.
In Western Russia poverty looks like people earning $100-$200 per month. They exist in third world conditions. That's part of Europe.
Germany is an elite outcome for Europe for example. Population 83 million. Show me what the top 83 million in the US look like by comparison (roughly the top 25% of the US). Hint: it's not even close.
And from what I read, NYC is exceptionally safe for a US city, and London is exceptionally unsafe for a UK city.
Overall crime and especially violent crime is falling in the UK but there are some well publicised hotspots - phone theft, shoplifting
It seems unlikely that this pattern of homicides would be explain by differences in general government policies between the U.S. and UK, such as healthcare policies.
(I'm particularly unsurprised that they'd get confused about _London_, because, well, what is a London anyway? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_London . Even _human_ writers sometimes get confused about stats for London.)
Social media tends to make people _feel_ like there’s a lot of violent crime.
It’s a strange double standard where the US gets evaluated as a mix of the worst headlines from every state, but when commenters talk about Europe being a utopia they actually refer to a cherry picked mix of the best parts of different countries.
Meanwhile, I can’t go anywhere in my American city without encountering people living in conditions worse than the average person in a third world country.
All this tells me that you have rose tinted glass and would rather ignore reality. Sure, there are plenty of things the EU does better than the US but I seriously doubt the bottom part of the population is living significantly better...
I don't know where you learned statistics but this is like comically bad.
I suggest you pick an even smaller country like Andorra ~82K people and compare that with the top 82K people in the US.
Seriously, it's well known the US is skewed towards the top and it's actually a problem... We all remember how Warren Buffet had to say it was weird how he played a lower marginal tax rate than his secretary, right?
Why don't you include Mexico in the USA? Or Venezuela?
The failure of your argument is front and center, you basically admit that Germany has done well for itself, and so you label it "Elite". But that Elite nature is recent and fleeting, its based on what the government has been able to deliver its citizens. The same things that the US government has failed to deliver its own citizens.
We aren't just comparing regions of land, but polities. Otherwise its moot. I think the US can do better, and it can do better by improving the performance of its polity. Germans however cant exactly vote to directly improve Russian literacy.
Because they aren’t part of the USA.
You didn’t address their point at all, which was to demonstrate that the USA is a rich country, and that both the top and bottom tiers are higher in wealth than top and bottom tiers in Europe. Even excepting Russia and other non-EU countries this holds true.
Yes, so the proper comparison is a Country.
Not a Region or a Continent.
You could stretch the EU to fit "Country" but the poster went even further and decided that Germany includes Russia.
Spain gets even poorer if you include Zimbabwe in its data for no reason at all. Crazy.
When I worked for a multinational company we had a lot of people from foreign offices visit the United States for the first time.
It was really interesting for me to see how many of them, especially those who built their worldview from headlines and internet comment sections, were so surprised to discover that the US wasn’t the dystopian hellhole like they had come to believe. It was almost a rite of passage for us to dispel a bunch of myths over lunches and explain how the things they saw in a headline somewhere were not representative of typical American experiences.
Don’t get me wrong, this country has a lot of things that need to improve. However, the internet comments version of the US has taken on a life of its own.
I’m now old enough to have a lot of friends who either worked in foreign countries for extended periods of time or even emigrated abroad, only to come to realize that the rest of the world isn’t as picture-perfect as they though it would be according to the Internet. There’s a dynamic where no positive comments about the US are allowed, but negative comments about other countries are considered out of bounds, denied, or downvoted away.
For example, the recent US reductions in COVID vaccine availability are something I vehemently oppose, but even the current US system makes it far easier to get a COVID vaccine than in the NHS. Every time I tell people this fact (which is easily verifiable by Googling it) I get shouted down or accused of making it up. Both online and in person.
Okay, I'll bite. During covid I got my three injections very easily. Currently you can get them for free if you are older/at-risk, or you can pay £100 to get them private, or your employer might pay for it as part of private insurance (as mine does)
What does the US do?
The average American really does not have a 40% better life than the average German.
We'll see how that goes.