The US is biased to favor the top half of society. Hence why there is a lot of vocal poorer people and a lot of low profile wealthier people (I'm not including the 1% or even the 5% in this).

When you are in the 75%ish of the US, it's very easy to make a case that life in the US is better. But we don't really talk about that because it's pretty taboo when poorer people are struggling much more than they would in Europe.

I'm biased as well, being American. I think I'd much rather be middle class in Europe than the USA as well. Middle class in the US is a constant feeling of the ladder dissolving just beneath you.

I don't think you realize the situation of the US middle class.

High education costs. High healthcare costs. One serious disease or accident can bankrupt you. Buying a house usually means a 30 years loans at 7% so after 10 years you still have 85% of capital left to pay off.

Salaries are higher but everything is more expensive, so in purchasing power parity it's basically the same.

Do you realize the variety of breakfast cereals you are giving up?

I'd much rather the people of every continent have the combined technology advancements of three major powers vs two.

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Europeans are crazy arrogant and racist but it is the soft kind lacking self awareness.

Every person I have ever spoken to who is not white has told me they experienced more prejudice and racism in Europe than America. (at least the ones who have actual been somewhere in Europe)

America still has areas of hard bigotry but most places are wildly diverse and accepting. The favored EU countries everyone holds up are so white and homogeneous it is comical.

This is not dunking on Europe or any specific country but comparing America to some Scandinavia country rich in oil is an apple to oj situation just like comparing America to China or Saudi would be.

I guess you didn't read the thread :)

> Yet Europeans are healthier, happier, and have a better quality of life than Americans.

I wonder if this is actually true. I see very few Americans taking every possible opportunity to make bombastic statements about how their lives are better than everyone else's (at least on HN). This conversation seems quite asymmetric from my perspective.

> Maybe you're just bitter?

This comes off as psychological projection.

This is Euro cope.

No one thinks this outside the 5 minutes someone in Europe reads an article about how France says they will send troops to Ukraine.

But the troops never will come.

Show me the HDI of the US vs each country in Europe, including all the poor ones.

Edit - never mind, I'll do it, HDI in order:

Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Finland, UK, US, Slovenia, Austria, Luxembourg, France, Spain, Czechia, Italy, Greece, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Portugal, Croatia, Latvia, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Russia, Belarus, Bosnia, Moldova, Ukraine

To put that into context, Moldova is on par with Ecuador, Tonga and Dominican Republic.

The US is a country of roughly 340 million people with an HDI above Austria.

Demographics.

Trends become the future. If European stagnation continues, those advantages will vanish by the time we're old.

I'm frustrated, not bitter. Americans are acutely aware of falling behind China, and rightly concerned about it. Europe is falling behind Alabama, Mexico, and Brazil, and arrogant about it.

Edit: y'all are supposed to be our moral allies in creating a utopian future with prosperity and world peace. Instead the most likely outcomes seem to be that you'll fade to irrelevancy and rather than compromising between America's vision and Europe's vision, we'll compromise between China's vision and America's vision. We liked your vision more than China's.

Well, the Scandinavian and Sicilian do share one currency and one immigration policy and one set of regulations - which are the things that we generally look at when we analyze economies.

There is tech, but oil as well.

It's both tech and shale oil that saved the US from the decline predicted at the end of last century.

A 'bubble bursting', if that happens, doesn't make the tech sector go to zero. Apple doesn't suddenly stop making iPhones. It would take a hell of a lot more than that for the US economy to fall to European levels.

Gemini says (20 years growth): - USA: 51% total, 27% without tech. - EU: 25% total, 21% without tech. - China: 345% total, 205% without tech.