Megan McArdle
America is in fact significantly richer than Europe, but America is rich in a bunch of less visible stuff. Our houses are bigger, with more furniture, electronics, air conditioning, etc. Our universities do more research and are more comfortable with lots of ancillary amenities like gyms and dorms, and advising services European schools don’t bother with. Our healthcare system has all the latest equipment and subsidizes the R&D that European systems tap. None of that is visible to a tourist. But it improves life in many ways (including life in European countries that get to have smaller militaries and more advanced healthcare than they’d get if America disappeared) What we don’t have is a lot of beautiful buildings that were built 150 years ago.
Porkchop Express
This pathetic GDP comparison just wouldn’t die. “some of our poorest states...are nicer places to live than Germany, France, or the UK” - only a retard who’s never lived outside of the US can write something to idiotic. This doesn’t reflect the distribution of wealth, median and wealth inequality. Mississippi might have higher aggregate GDP per capita than France but this economic wealth is highly unequally distributed. Also when you count in the quality of public goods, services and general social welfare it’s quite a ridiculous comparison. You have to be totally ignorant to imply a middle class Mississippian has a more rich life than a normie middle class French.