I think, from my time spent in Europe and from my European friends here in the States, that many Europeans feel the US is a bigger version of Europe that has betrayed them. After WWII they felt the US was their sort of big brother they could count on and now - that's gone away.
This view betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the US. We are Americans, not Europeans. Yes, many of us are of European extraction but this country was founded in direct opposition to many of the bases of European thought - monarchy and theocracy amongst them. The founders detested so much about Europe and maybe that is now rising again in the US. I know I feel American even though my DNA is 99.7% European. I enjoy my visits to Europe but miss the US and feel our life here is in many ways far more satisfying than are those of many Europeans. I also deeply dislike, as Noah experienced, the lecturing and hectoring you hear from a certain class of Europeans and I don't think Americans, like our current VP, should be engaging in the reverse either.
It's definitely healthy that Europe is learning to stand on its own two feet. I don't think the US needed to bear the burden of Europe's defense for so many decades when Europeans were capable of bearing that cost themselves. And I also believe our security interests are for the most part deeply intertwined. But Europeans need to rid themselves of the smug, smarmy attitude Noah talks about in this piece. As he pointed out - it does no one any good, it's vastly out-of-date and it just makes them look like assholes.
> It's definitely healthy that Europe is learning to stand on its own two feet. I don't think the US needed to bear the burden of Europe's defense for so many decades when Europeans were capable of bearing that cost themselves.
I see two competing narratives around the US-Europe security arrangement: a parasitic relationship (sometimes presented, a bit more nicely to Europe, as a parent-child relationship) vs a symbiotic relationship.
Based on the terms you use, you seem to subscribe to the parent-child narrative. Am I correct? This narrative is not baseless, but isn't it a bit strategically myopic? It presents the undeniable spending asymmetry (the "burden" Americans are paying indeed IS real) as something Americans were doing perhaps out of the goodness of their heart, not because it was beneficial to them.
But the US was getting a lot out of this arrangement - US military bases in Europe, Europeans buying US weapons and doing America's bidding in the UN, supporting US military adventures (however misguided) in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. Wasn't this one of the pillars of American hegemony, with all the benefits that come from this (like the US dollar being a reserve currency)?
If someone's security depends on you, you get a lot of control over them. And control over someone pretty rich and influential on the world stage can be worth what you are paying for it.
What seems more likely - that Trump carefully calculated the worth and decided it is no longer beneficial to the US? Or that driven by his obsession with being "ripped off" and perceiving everything as a zero-sum game, he simply does not get the benefits the US was getting out of the security arrangement that the US maintained and cultivated for 80 years?
This is a great comment, much of which I strongly agree with.
Yes, the US gained some benefits from decades of carrying the lion's share of defense spending on Europe's behalf. There's no doubt about that. I don't know that the benefit was worth the spend but it certainly wasn't a completely one-sided relationship with all the benefits flowing towards Europe.
My belief is that Trump's worldview is pretty simple - it's con or be conned. If you're not pulling a con on someone else, then they're pulling a con on you. There's no room in his analysis for anything but that. So clearly, the way Trump looks at the world, Europe pulled a con on the US for decades and now he wants to end the con.
On the contrary, I feel great admiration for Americans, sometimes mixed with sorrow and concern about issues Americans themselves also worry about. I want America to thrive!
What I do feel in recent years is a massive increase in the “europoor” discourse in the US - and not just on the right, also on the left and among intellectual circles - that to me feels very disparaging and short on details about actual life in Europe. That I find sad.
Likewise, I do not thinking living on either side of the Atlantic is more satisfying or better / worse in any way. I strongly believe that people and societies should have the freedom to choose how they want to live and organize their their societies accordingly. And luckily, both Europe and America are free to do so - that's why they're so varied and offer so much freedom to all.
That's a good thing and long may it continue and keep improving.
Yes there are many reasonable Europeans like you - I usually spend 2-3 weeks a year in Europe and meet many people like you and I am always appreciative of these discussions we have together.
I want a strong Europe to face what's coming, which is the rise of autocracy and illiberalism, the US cannot face that alone and we need a powerful Europe next to us for the coming conflict. That is what I want for Europe - for it to be strong, democratic and confident and for it to be allied with the US.
RE: "Europoor discourse." I think that's a somewhat justified response to European shit-talking and also a bit of a brag on the part of Americans. I wouldn't take it too seriously, it's usually not meant to be hurtful.
Well, I do not approve of Europeans shit-talking America and I do not partake in it. Likewise, I think the europoor discourse and how it's waged is pretty pointless and yes, often hurtful (but mostly simply wrong and thus not bringing anything new).
Yet I agree with you - I want Europe to be strong, democratic, and confident. And I want the US to be the same and both as strong allies.
That's precisely why this constant low-grade infighting is getting at me. I think a lot of it is more destructive than constructive. We can learn from each other without pulling one another down.
Very strong comments. I experience this a lot from my fellow Europeans, the absolute disbelief that any American could prefer to live in the US instead of a (Western) European country. Most of the time their view of the US is pretty much the stuff that John Steward makes fun of in the Daily Show. And that's the end of it.
What they miss is the kindness, generosity, diversity and can-do attitude that many Americans possess. There's a lot to admire about the US, both in the similarities and differences from us Europeans.
I think your comments come from a good place, but perhaps would be good to bear in mind that republicanism, secularism, and anti-clericalism have been promulgated for centuries in many parts of the old continent. Monarchy and theocracy are not "European ideas" generally, and in most European monarchies (think Norway, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Spain) this historical relic is inconsequential in terms of the way the political system of these countries work.
Those things were in no way inconsequential at the time of the American Revolution in 1775. At that time, when the Founders propagated democracy in North America, Europe was ruled by absolute monarchies, many of which were aligned with theocracy - the Ottomans were an absolute monarchy aligned with Islamic theocracy, Russia was an absolute monarchy aligned with Orthodoxy, the Holy Roman Empire aligned with Roman Catholicism. The Founders loathed these systems and created the US in direct opposition to them. Not a single democracy existed anywhere in Europe at the time of the American Revolution or really, any place in the world. Which is why what happened in 1775 on these shores was so revolutionary in the very true sense of the word.
A large part of the US was a racial dictatorship until the VRA in the 1950s. Our revolution created admirable words and many admirable acts, but along with these came a large dose of hypocrisy.
I admire the American revolution, but even with all the monarchies etc. in Europe, the American revolution was based upon enlightenment ideas developed in Europe.
And Europe did already have examples that influenced them: the UK was not an absolute monarchy anymore since the glorious revolution in 1690 and the Dutch Republic of the 17th and 18th century showed you did not need a monarch to thrive.
And it only partially existed in the United States in 1775 as well! The lines you draw are completely arbitrary! Dunno how you got this chip on your shoulder but it’s given you homer glasses for your reading of history.
The fact remains that the creation of America in 1775 was a revolutionary act which led to an imperfect republic based on democracy, an idea which had died thousands of year previously and which was resurrected on a land far from Europe by men who were not fans of Europe and who created this country to in many ways be the OPPOSITE of Europe. And that continues to influence our politics and national character today. The boring midnight dorm room discussion built around, "The US has never been a democracy and everyone doesn't have equal rights in the US" is one I'm not getting into because it's entirely inconsequential to the discussion at hand. The only person with a "chip on their shoulder" here appears to be you.
Picking 1775 as a starting point is far less relevant to understanding the nature of the U.S. relationship to Europe than picking 1945.
You do so seemingly because you over estimate the degree of political difference between the U.S. and European democracies and possibly because you want to sidestep the U.S. abandoning the world IT BUILT in the postwar era as something that “Euros want and think the U.S. wants but actually the U.S. doesn’t want because in 1775 our leaders didn’t want to look like Europe”. And, I’m sorry, but that’s very shallow.
The things you list that the founders 'detested' about Europe aren't really things that should bother Americans today, right? Monarchy? Europe has Kings who bike to work and regular democracy for electing the real rulers. Theocracy? I'm struggling here, since Europeans are less observant than Americans.
I think your first paragraph was more on target. Under Trump, we've betrayed European assumptions that we'd handle defense for them. They could make fun of us for spending so much on our military, while basking under our nuclear and conventional NATO umbrellas. Now they have to face up to the fact that they have to greatly increase their own defense spending, and they've probably noticed, as have we, that the weapons of the future require Chinese inputs. Ruhhh Rrrro!
I think Noah has been clear eyed about the very serious problems facing the UK. I haven't seen his criticism as condescending as much as lightly joking. Joking which belies the fact the UK is headed down a very dark road.
If you want to see what Noah is talking about, go to the r/AskanAmerican subreddit. You will see Europeans, Britons, Canadians, and Australians using it as a soapbox to air (under the guise of asking a question) the goofiest, most condescending nonsense about the United States. Like that every American lives in a tyrannical HOA that can seize their house at a moment's notice, that we only have Kraft cheese, or that Americans pay $30,000 every time we get treatment for a sprained ankle. It's not helped by the fact that, due to the overexposure of American popular culture, Europeans, Britons, Canadians, and Australians tend to have a false sense of expertise about the United States and an ardent belief that we're too stupid to understand that if we just pass a law that MyCountry has, we'll solve this problem that makes our country a their obvious moral inferior.
Using a subreddit to gauge how Europeans think of the US is a bit like asking the NY Times readership what it thinks about Trump - you’re not getting an especially representative sample. If you want to see what Noah is talking about, don’t use Reddit, find some Europeans and engage them in a conversation.
Fwiw, I lived in Europe for over a year, and I was shocked at the misinformation about what life was like in the U.S. I met several people who claimed that the U.S. was a developing country and refused to acknowledge basic facts like that Americans have higher median incomes and do just as well as Western Europeans on educational assessments.
Did Europeans ever tell you that they were "shocked", in that condescending way about a "fact" they thought they knew about the United States that was patently false, or also true in their country?
Most Americans I know don’t really care much about Europe except as a vacation destination. They don’t care enough to pretend any expertise, and there is very little that happens in Europe that affects them,
Many Europeans have firm ideas about American politics, policies, etc.
This is nothing new. I remember traveling abroad during the Reagan era and being lectured by Europeans and Canadians about American policies and many of them seemed more informed, animated (and, of course, critical) than the average American.
Almost as if they had no life and were living vicariously through America (and not liking it). Sad.
Not buying it Noah, this sounds kike way bigger cope on your part. You went to a comedy festival in a European nation and got roasted bc that's what comedians do. You're the one who can't stop thinking in terms of who is up and who is down and who is running an imaginary race.
Also, that percentage spent on healthcare chart is kind of ridiculous when ours costs so much more, for the same outcomes.
And the idea we don't have tons of poor people for such a rich country was pretty well put to bed after finding out last week that *50 Million* people on are SNAP. 50M people so poor they can't even afford food?? Sorry but that's just straight up embarrassing, and if you can't deal with being embarrassed, you're the one trying to cope.
They don't actually take Americans. If you're not marrying someone there or paying $1M to be let in or just their temporarily working, their doors are not open.
Which is strange because they definitely need qualified immigrants, they certainly don't seem to have a problem taking in poor and unqualified third-world immigrants by the boatful.
The main reason for this is the fear that people will emigrate solely to take advantage of their healthcare systems. The same is true of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many others.
Actually only about 2/3rds of eligibles actually access according to 2020 census analysis and AARP says there are 15 million elderly that qualify but don’t access. Also the benefits can be of varying amounts - for many it can be a couple of hundred per month. Not sure what that means about how easy it is to qualify. What irks me is how food manufacturers and retailers have expanded what the benefit can be used for. I remember the old days of waiting in line for cheese and milk.
It seems Noah is assuming that if Europeans speak ill of the US that must mean they are satisfied with their own system, but nothing I’ve seen or heard from fellow Europeans suggests this. The European professionals I know who work in many of the sectors Noah mentions - including health care, autos and finance - are deeply aware of the continent’s structural issues and the greater dynamism of the US.
Yes, there will always be Europeans who think they are superior (incorrectly, as Noah’s data shows), but I would say they are at the long end of the tail - Reddit threads have a strong self-selection factor. Europeans do have concerns about the US political environment, as one commentator pointed out, but that doesn’t mean they are sanguine about their own serious issues. If Noah wants to know how Europeans really feels about the US I would suggest listening less to its comedians and more to its politicians and business people.
"The reason America still has higher inequality than Europe is mostly due to “predistribution” — basically, pretax wage inequality"
I think that goes a long way toward explaining our superior economic performance - America will pay top dollar for talent and other counties simply won't.
Here's an example of that - a medical oncologist in the UK, based in London, with 15 years of experience can expect to make around £250k a year. In the US the same, based in LA, can expect to be paid around $600-700k a year. It's a wonder the US doesn't open its doors and brain drain the UK because if we wanted to we could do it in a year.
I think you’re barking up the wrong tree here: I’ve never heard any European raging about how low the salaries are in the US - I think everyone acknowledges that you go to the US to get rich.
No, the ranting is usually about things like guns, parental leave, public transportation, and vacation days. And if you notice, none of these are mentioned in Noah’s post.
Which just goes to show that on some level Americans and Europeans probably value different things.
Europe sure has problems but an American writing about all of the problems that Europe has seems a little bit tone deaf right now. Americope? Noah if you were say Australian it would hit a bit harder.
Basically all of them are broadbrush and short on detail. Just to answer the problems he lists:
- “stagnating living standards:” not really if you look at GDP per hour worked which keeps rising, and thus living standards (Europeans just have a preference for more free time over mor income); in CEE, incomes & free time keep rising.
- “the Russian military threat:” absolutely, but next to no one is ignoring it now. Europe is massively reaming and supporting Ukraine.
- “expensive energy:” sure, kinda, but German electricity prices for example are down to 2019 levels, even lower when adjusted for inflation; gas prices are contained too; the picture is simply shifting rapidly (even more so on Spain, Greece, CEE).
- “overregulation:” yeah-ish - always a problem in rich developed countries, but factories & infrastructure and lots of urban construction actually goes up way faster in Europe than in the US; scale and capital markets are way bigger issues for companies than regulation.
- “structural fiscal deficits:” That one's actually funny. Europe has now among the lowest deficit & public debt of any major and developed economy - far below the US, Japan, and even China if you count provincial debt. Smarter spending is always wise, but Europe in aggregate really does not have a fiscal problem.
Now you can call that all eurocope - but it's simply facts. Those make a debate good and meaningful. Repeating stale stereotypes that were kinda true one day but are now outdated or not relevant is what got is into this debating mess on the first place.
Not sure what your sources are, but I am not so optimistic as a European:
GDP per hour worked (PPP): If you look at OECD numbers, most EU countries are slowly losing ground compared to the US in the past 10 years (with the exception of some small countries)
The Russia-Ukraine war: yes, Europe is helping Ukraine, but not nearly enough to bring Ukraine in a winning position, some large countries in the EU contribute hardly financially. If the war drags on, Ukraine needs hundreds of billions of dollars the coming years only to survive, I don't see Europe paying up such amounts.
Expensive energy: Gas is still approx double compared to before Russia stopped supplying, This source has electricity for Germany at 33 euro/Mwh in 2019 and 107 today
Overregulation for building: don't know about the US, but it is a major issue in my country because of for example environmental rules.
Public debt: I agree this is a problem for all aging developed economies, but at least I think the US has the capacity to outgrow their debt, I don't see this happening in the high debt countries in the EU.
And there are more issues Europe is struggling with:
Migration: Europe gets the wrong migrants from outside the EU, often low skilled which means they will be a burden on the social welfare state, even with a job .
Big companies: Europe used to have its fair share of large multinationals, if you look today at market cap, there are only still 8 in the top 50 worldwide (and none in the top 25).
Tech: Europe has only a few large tech companies, and we have become vassal states of the large US tech companies for most of their services
The only upside I see is that Trump made Europe wake up to our problems, but I don't think we have any idea yet how to turn things around. Maybe Noah could write a post on this like he did on Japan.
- The OECD data show exactly the same btw, in relative terms. The US position vis-à-vis most European countries was not wildly different than today in 2015, 2005, or 1995. Check it.
- Europe does already and will definitely support Ukraine with the hundreds of billions needed. Belatedly, yes, and I also wish it was faster and more decisive. But they'll keep backing Ukraine as long as needed.
- Overregulation: As you say, it depends on the individual country and also on the area (construction, company scaling, capital markets etc.). But generally, it's one issue, but not much more so than elsewhere. Lacking cooperation on big issues (energy, tech, capital markets) is a way bigger challenge.
- Public debt: Well theoretically you might think so, yes. But practically, debt in the US has been growing far (!) faster than in Europe over the last two decades - and that even though nominal GDP has grown faster in the US (bc population growth has been faster) and Europe has been aging more quickly. So the factual trend shows the opposite development.
And sure there are more issues. As I've mentioned, I'd actually be happy to discuss the actual issues Europe has as opposed to mostly cliché ones repeated since the 1990s.
Migration is one, though not on the top of my list.
Big companies, absolutely. Europe has missed the first and second tech wave. The problem there is a lacking single digital market, austerity in the 2010s, and no European capital and IPO market. Even more impressive that GDP per hour worked (PPP) has kept pace with the US anyway.
And Europe is doing plenty of stuff to turn things around and - and could do many, many more.
But I'd much rather discuss those than some tropes that are not really so relevant anymore.
Thanks for the reply and the nice productivity graph. First thing that strikes me is the dismal performance of the UK. Europe in general seems a bit of a mixed bag, some smaller countries and Eastern European (though they are still catching up) are doing ok, but the larger ones? I am not an economist but I do have mixed feelings about a PPP comparison. Simply put, if two countries do fine in a PPP comparison, but in absolute dollars one became twice as rich as the other, I find it difficult to believe that this does not matter.
So let's look in local currencies. It is known that US productivity growth has been doing nicely in the past years, digging a bit deeper into European numbers of the larger countries (no prosperous Europe without the big countries in my opinion) and what I see is worrisome:
In the past couple of years no or even negative productivity growth in Germany, France and Italy. UK I already mentioned. Spain is an interesting case: they got a lot of immigration from South America, but often low skilled labor in for example the tourist industry. I don't believe a developed economy can build more wealth long term based upon low skilled labor. Anyway, enough reasons to be concerned about Europe in my opinion, in particular because I do not see an easy way out for an aging continent.
Productivity is never easy to measure. But in terms of living standards, productivity per hour worked in PPP *is* the most relevant way to look at it. If a meal costs three times more in San Francisco that doesn't make it three times better - even if the corresponding salary makes you much wealthier abroad. The main effect from higher nominal GDP per capita is cheaper imports and cheaper travel. But both are only a very small part of most people's live spendings (plus, for Europeans traveling within Europe or almost anywhere else except the US the exchange rate is still very favorable).
Productivity growth in general absolutely is a massive challenge! And it's been a mixed bag in different European countries.
But we started the debate about living standards. And there's simply very little evidence that Europe fell notably behind the US in that, some places even caught up more, kept pace, or pulled slightly ahead, while others fell a bit behind. But no major divergence.
On tech you write: ''The problem there is a lacking single digital market, austerity in the 2010s, and no European capital and IPO market.''
if fragmentation and lack of scale is the issue, I do not believe this is solvable as I do not believe in a more federal Europe. Cultural differences are simply too large for Europe becoming more like a federal state, there is not enough popular support for it.
Scaling tech companies is indeed a hard nut to crack. I don't have easy answers either.
I don't share the opinion that full federalization is needed. We have a single market in goods without that. Why not a digital one too? And one for capital markets? That's just market design.
But of course, you gotta do it. And Europe has been lackluster in all things digital in the last two decades.
Again, recently you also have lots of other signs (Spotify, Revolut, Lovable, EU Inc.) but it remains to be seen where that may lead us.
Agreed. I wouldn't put any of these top of the list for problems Europe has, at least relative to the US, except maybe Russia. The first one, stagnating living standards, is a problem, but it is a symptom, not a cause.
Instead, I think the biggest issues are, like you, shallow capital markets, and a lack of meaningful market and above all political integration. These are of course interconnected, although it is possible to deepen your capital markets at a national and not European level (e.g., the Netherlands vs almost everyone else in the EU).
Would love to see Noah do a take on Australia. Having lived in all I can assure you in genuinely shits all over both Europe and the US. Even if wild rabbits are treated as vermin.
Actually hardly anyone works in mining, it is heavily automated. Dependence on resource exports is a weakness, that’s true, but for now seems sustainable due to significant low cost advantages of proximity to Asia and very large and effective investments in automation
Oh, I see. GDP per capita looks to closely track resource export earnings actually on the two charts here: https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2025/03/australia-has-blown-its-extraordinary-resource-wealth/ (Ignore the anti-establishment tirade which I don't necessarily agree with as Australia and Norway can't really be compared like that.) Resource nationalism is expected to give the sector another lift right when it looked like China’s property downturn had sucked the air out of commodity demand.
I find it funny that Australian commentators and Australians are all so negative about their economy when if you compare across countries, it does so well... albeit I can't quite figure out why. Is 27 million people really enough for a sizeable self-contained domestic economy?
Yes, with only 27m people Australia struggles to compete in high value industries like tech, pharma etc so doing best it can in resources, education, food etc plus a surprising amount of professional services exports like engineering, architecture, consulting. Aussie’s have same issue of high property costs like most of the developed world hence the negativity but much better placed on health, crime etc
With endless sun and land, is well positioned for renewables with potential energy advantages to get in the game of actually refining ores, rare earths etc
Eurocope is pretty pointless. So is the europoor discourse. And therein lies the problem.
Most public debates on Europe are extremely short on details and regurgitate lots of common tropes that are not actually very accurate or insightful.
That's what makes the debate so tiring. There's a huge amount of things to discuss and improve in Europe - and both strength to draw on and weaknesses to address.
And very promising new initiatives, like EU Inc, the recent tech and startup wave (Lovable! Revolut!), a massive ramp-up in defense production and renewable energy production, and much more.
But only rarely is any of that seriously mentioned. It's usually just the same old tropes form the 1990s. And that's not very helpful.
For me, the biggest problem, at least for Europeans, with Eurocope is that it cements the idea that, socially or politically, 'Europe' already practically exists. I work a lot with European policymakers, and the vast majority of them are very much aware of the problems you list. For a solid three years or more, I have gone to a litany of conferences here in continental Europe where we seemingly talk about little else but Russia, high energy prices, overregulation, or a combination of the three. Anyone vaguely serious recognises our productivity gap with the US as something to address, and not something to be explained away.
But behind this, there is a more serious issue. We have European problems, but we don't have European solutions. Although we do talk about Europe vs the US when we criticise Americans, in reality Europe still is, and acts, like a couple of dozen different countries, each mostly going their own way. Unlike in the US, we lack a political figure who is there specifically to act in the overarching European interest, rather than a European Commission president who is totally beholden to national governments.
Whenever this is, and the need for more political integration, is brought this up, there's always some bullshit response about cultural differences in Europe, or how undemocratic it would be. Neither Russia nor the global financial markets care about whether someone speaks Finnish, Polish, German, or Italian. Most European countries already use a single currency, and backing away from that now would be really, really difficult too.
As for democracy, what I think is undemocratic is when people elect representatives who can't actually do anything because they have no power to change the prevailing geopolitical weather. As European countries, we are mostly too small on our own to affect the major global forces of change that really do impact peoples' lives. Restoring democratic control means holding power accountable at the level on which it actually operates.
** Also I think one valid Eurocope/Euroseethe is urban planning. American cities, compared to most European ones, are generally awful. Europeans still drive and use cars regularly. But unlike your average American city, it is possible for most of us to get somewhere without having to drive. Maybe an extra bonus valid one: Europeans are on the whole healthier than Americans. Like the US/Europe productivity gap, this is pretty undeniable if you look at the data**
The EU is just at the stage that the US was at when it was under the Articles of Confederation from 1781-1789.
The American Colonies were "lucky" enough to face an existential threat of insurrection very early on that made it clear how unworkable that more decentralized structure was.
But the EU was born during peacetime *after* an existential conflict was over. And it hasn't really been tested the same way since.
There are a lot of things you give up in a more centralized system like the US Constitution brought about. Not the least the sovereignty of the states, something that caused such major tensioin that Americans fought a Civil War only two generations in. "States Rights" have been a flashpoint ever since, including more recently as "Blue States" express angst over a Trump-dominated federal system.
But, in terms of dealing forcefully with foreign policy challenges, resolving region-wide structural issues, and fostering a very competitive single-market, it's really the only way.
''some bullshit response about cultural differences in Europe''
I am afraid this is simply the reality. There is no European demos, I don't see this changing with our different cultures anytime soon, any plans for a federal state are just fantasies in my opinion. Simple example: in all my national media its everyday about what's going on with national politics in parliament, hardly anytime I see or hear anything about the European parliament. Most people don't have a clue what they are doing at the EU level. You cant have a federal democracy if people don't feel involved like they do now on a national level.
while urban planning simply doesn't exist in the US it's state if still gravely tragic in Europe
there are no cities (and host countries) with any kind of urban vision. there's always some talk about urban renewal this or that, but that's absolutely common sense "too little too late" infuriatingly small-scale slideware bullshit. (oh, let's convert the old rail yard to a new government district. woah. amazing. did you come up with that all alone? no it took the full country? good, good, we're very proud of you. oh wait, city hall rejected the plan? amazing, at least we can film Trainspotting 3 and 4 and a dozen more there.)
we see cities flailing around with rent control and sustainable this or that, but all we end up with in practice is that there's regular inefficient, slow, expensive development, and a trickle of effort to reduce car dependency.
the green spaces in these schemes are small, boring, almost sterile, disrespectfully minuscule compared to what people need (and why they go out of the city for recreation), the associated public transport development is even smaller, even more deferred (which naturally triggers NIMBY voices due to completely correctly predicted increase in road traffic), and of course the actual buildings look like janitor closets in Dubai.
... of course we can argue whether this is mostly a symptom of typical developed-nation rich city-dweller conservatism (and the relative sanctity of private property) or it's the cause.
(and I'm not suggesting that cities need to start bulldozing themselves immediately, but at least having living aspiration for something significantly more than endless low/high-density sprawl with untouchable sacred cows from the previous millennia would help - a motivating vision manifested as a 25-50-100 year plan to guide and encourage decision-makers, to give something to future and present citizens to wait and be around for - or leave, if they can't identify with that vision, and let others move in instead)
I agree with the general argument that Europeans often use Anti-Americanism as "cope" to avoid addressing their own (considerable) societal challenges going forward. But as an American who has lived in Europe for a decade, I really take issue to your statement below as not just being factually incorrect, but also *feeling* extremely off-base on the ground:
"But more fundamentally, there’s just not that much difference between the European and American systems. Both are basically capitalist economies, with fairly high levels of taxation, robust social safety nets, and fairly efficient public services."
Facts almost aren't even material to this discussion when people (like you have here) can say that Norway and the United States are "basically capitalist economies," when one has about half of its economic activity falling under the auspices of the public sector, including 68 State Owned Entities which are among Norway's biggest enterprise firms! So, sure, if you want, basically every country (including "Communist" China) fits under this description, but nobody would say that the Chinese and the American economic systems are equivalent, would they? There are, at the very least, meaningfully distinct forms of capitalism (not just in different countries, but also in different historical eras). But, for rhetorical purposes, you can make that subjective argument that every country on the planet (maybe exempting North Korea and Eritrea) has some form of capitalism today.
And you *could* gloss a Denmark and a United States as both having "fairly high levels of taxation," when median Danish workers pay 36% of their income in tax and their VAT is at least more than double American sales taxes. And, look, I'm all for counteracting the right-wing propaganda that "everyone in Scandinavia pays 50%+ of their income in tax," which also isn't true and is sometimes based on ignorance of how progressive taxation actually works. But I do, myself, pay noticeably higher taxes in Sweden than I did in the United States, especially as a higher earner. Half of Americans don't even pay federal income tax at all; but basically every Swedish worker pays some income tax! That's a fact. Conversely, American taxation is only "fairly high" when you compare it with low-tax/low-capacity developing countries, not when you use other developing countries as a reference.
Lastly, how much work is the vague phrase "fairly efficient public services" going to do in this essay? Are we talking about State Department Passports and U.S. Citizens Services? I'm a fan! Or the USPS? It's absolutely world-class! Social Security and Medicare are truly great (though the latter is pretty inefficient, due more to the overall nature of the American healthcare system than anything it can control). But everything else...? isn't the low performance of state services and lack of American state capacity often cited (including by you) as a key reason why the right-wing anti-government messaging works? State services in Europe aren't perfect, but they are noticeably better both in absolute terms and especially in efficiency terms than in the US. Even with something as flawed as the UK NHS, could you even imagine if US Medicare/Medicaid were able to provide universal healthcare provision at that cost? Everyone knows that Europeans have public healthcare, but my Swedish taxes also pay for things like public Early Childhood Education/childcare and eldercare which cost my American peers five-figures a year!
(Yes, I'm comparing the US with Scandinavia, which isn't like-for-like. You wrote this from Ireland, which is an interesting middle-case because you get American levels of state services at European levels of taxation. I felt it was a pretty shit deal when I lived there, frankly! Ireland does have a public healthcare system, but it's worse than the NHS and definitely below the level that Mainland Europeans enjoy. It has no subsidized childcare, and the private costs are worse even than in the US. Ireland also literally doesn't have a (secular) public school system in most of the country. Its public transit is a joke. Housing is ruinously expensive and to a low standard. But it's a *great* place to find work if you're in tech, banking, biotech, etc.)
But, anyway, such comparative stats discussions go on forever. And, as I said, these debates aren't even about statistics on paper but mostly about perception and lived experience:
You often write about how Japan *feels* a lot more rich than it seems on paper or in the "Lost Decade" Declinism Narrative about it in the Western media. Well, Europe *feels* much wealthier on the ground in the same way, nominal wealth and GDP growth figures aside. I can tell Americans that I pay more taxes and get X and Y services for them which are worth $Z cost-savings. I could even point to "objective" measures of HDI, lifespan, etc. But the real measure is just the vibe. And the United States *feels* so much poorer than it actually is, something that strikes me every time I go home to visit a few times a year.
Even our president is wont to comment on the sorry state of American airports and other infrastructure: Flying into Newark, as I usually do, I am a little scandalized by how absolutely terrible it is. Fine, it's an airport--and an old one. But then I get onto the NJ Turnpike or I-95 and I think to myself, "Jesus, in the land of the car, THIS is the best we can do even with the highways!?" And then as I drive through some of the wealthiest communities in the country, I look around me at the streets, sidewalks, houses, strip malls, drive-ins, etc. and am overwhelmed by how much squalor Americans live with, despite all the money! And it's not just the built environment that is ugly, slipshod, and tumble-down. The people you see aren't exactly screaming wealth, health, and prosperity, either. And, again, this is in the "Acela Corridor," which is like the more-industrialized, affluent "Blue Banana" of Europe.
Part of it is this disorienting "Private Affluence and Public Squalor" contrast that's very uniquely American: the last time I was in Colorado, I drove by literal shacks in the wasteland with expensive, spotlessly-clean cars and trucks parked all around them. Sometimes with these fancy "fifth wheel" RV-type trailers that were bigger and shinier than the homes (or anything else)! And the roads are all cracked up and there's absolutely nothing around. But that's just the extreme version of how you see a (distinctly Developing World) tendency for even wealthier Americans to cloister themselves away from a pretty bleak, neglected public sphere behind walls and in large, expensive houses, vehicles, and other private spaces/property. But any Mexican or Brazilian or Nigerian elite can tell you that there's a limit to how much you can actually recreate your own functional society behind privatized walls. And even the poorer or more rural parts of Europe have decent infrastructure and pleasant communal space in the way that American communities don't. A European living at the American poverty line in terms of income lives a life that is just nicer than even Americans in the lower-middle-class. Maybe the richest Europeans don't live in (private) affluence at levels that the richest Americans do. And maybe it's debatable whether a big-ass truck is nicer than functional transit or whether a McMansion can make up for never taking a vacation. That is a values discussion.
And then you have one of those discussions with your (again, pretty well-heeled) friends or family where you are reminded about shocking things that are very normal in American society that you'd totally forgotten about: Medical debt or bankruptcy. Insurance claims denied. The impossible dilemmas of eldercare for "sandwich generation" Millennials who have aging parents and young children and everything just costs so damn much! And, like, these are the anxieties that face the upper-middle-class, professional, well-educated group that I know. I can only read voyeristicaly about the horrifying reality facing the simple majority of other Americans who aren't lucky enough to to fit in the top 20% of household incomes. Their lives are pretty bleak on paper, but their experience is strangely invisible as the United States is also very segregated by class and what remains of the American news media and pop culture focuses almost entirely upon people who have more means.
I'm restricting myself to the dystopian stuff that is directly related to state capacity, but you have other qualitative things like omnipresent drug abuse, homelessness, violent crime, random shootings (and especially the ambient fear thereof) that Western Europeans just don't even think about. Arguably a stronger, better-funded state could address a lot of these concerns--and that's exactly what happens in the better-governed states of the United States. But even the best-run American states have HDI-like welfare metrics that lag behind the Western European average. And that's plainly obvious to see on the ground!
I can agree with the sentiment how difficult it is to compare countries. On taxes, I recently read that some US states apparently have real estate taxes that can be in the ten thousands per year, that is unheard of in my European country and not something you see in for example income tax comparisons.
I also agree with the vibe: as much as I admire the US for many things, when I visit one of the US big cities I wonder why they cannot take better care of their public spaces, that would make life more enjoyable. I guess what matters is that the US is more a continent than a country which makes it more difficult to compare. Thinking about the US, the phrase 'creative destruction' comes to my mind, they are good with the creative part, but their neglect can border destruction.
That the US is more a continent than a country is crucial to these discussions, but Europe is, too!
My point holds up even if you restrict yourself to only the richer parts of US vs. EU or, conversely the poorer: When Americans talk about "Europe," they really mean Western Europe and specifically the places that Americans tend to frequent as tourists or otherwise are more aware of. My examples from Scandinavia would be salient, since Americans both frequent and admire the likes of Denmark and Norway. Then, of course, you have the UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, and a few other places forming the mental map of "Europe" in the American mind. And Europeans tend to return the favor by forming their impressions of the United States via New York, California, and Florida. We're not comparing Albania to Arkansas here, generally.
Also, when people talk about "New York," they really mean "New York City," and not Binghamton, NY, where my mother's family is from. It's quite different. And when Americans talk about Denmark, they really mean Copenhagen and not rural Jutland.
But what if we *were* comparing Albania to Arkansas? You'd find, thanks to the EU's various financial transfers, that impoverished, post-Communist, post-authoritarian Albania is now pretty... OK. It's even an emerging tourism hub, familiar enough even to more intrepid American travelers looking for the "next Greece." But how many Europeans are going to want to go to Arkansas? And what would they think if they did? Even I, as an American, can find myself pretty shaken by the kinds of commonplace sights I'd see driving through Arkansas. And that's the point: the median community in the United States is just seemingly more threadbare than a random city in Poland you've never heard of. And the poorest parts of the US are so bleak you'd really have to dig into the more forsaken parts of Romania to find an European equivalent.
You don't even have to look to find place in the US that make you feel like you're in a Third World Country. They're in every American community, but apart. People who live in those places and can afford to avoid them do. Many Americans have never even seen them, themselves, though they're mere blocks away from where they stand. The segregation that allows such degradation to hide in plain sight is a tradition that goes back centuries and is enabled in the contemporary era by the dominance of the car, the ubiquity of the suburb or exurb, and the new possibilities for isolation from strangers unlocked by the Internet and smartphones.
This is the French, L'esprit de l'escalier, "the wisdom of the stairs" for those snappy comebacks that you only think of after you leave the room.
It's also a lie for the healthcare part and a pretty egregious one.
The measure he uses to show that the US is comparable to Europe is an odd one. "'Share of total health spending that is out of pocket."
This has no real dollar amounts attached to it and it allows Noah to pretend that the US is comparable. Noah is leaving out that the us is spending a slightly smaller percentage of a much more expensive pie.
It's statistical sleight of hand that Noah as an econ writer should be ashamed of.
Here is the total per capita spending for these countries in 2023 from the Kaiser family foundation, link to source at bottom). This is inclusive of out of pocket spending and spending by all other actors.
The US, 13,432$
Germany 8,441$
Sweden 7,522 $
France 7,136$
UK 6,023$
Now let's apply those percentages that Noah used in the piece to get the out of pocket spending in real 2023 dollars.
Based on that chart in the piece,
The US, 11% is out of pocket
Germany 11% is out of pocket
Sweden 13% is out of pocket
France 9% is out of pocket
UK 14% is out of pocket.
Multiplying that out, we get the following per capita out of pocket spending.
The US, 13,432$ x 11% = 1,472$
Germany 8,441$ x 11% = 928$
Sweden 7,522 $ x 13% = 978$
France 7,136$ x 9% = 642$
UK 6,023$ x 14% = 843$
Man, it's almost as if the US spends a ton more person than anyone else. Why didn't Noah say this? You can look up per capita out of pocket spending from several reputable sources and all of them will show the same.
I wonder why this post doesn't talk about it... Maybe because the Europeans are justified?
There are problems in European health systems, to be sure. But they do not have people living in mortal terror of an ambulance ride due to healthcare costs like we do in the US.
We do ration care. But the ration decision making is given over to private companies and we have an awkward kludge of laws that force them to do what they really don't want to do from a business standpoint, namely writing checks to help sick people.
Also, our doctors operate as a cartel via the AMA. We could flip a switch in our immigration and licensing laws and get two million excellent qualified English speaking doctors from the rest of the world almost instantly. It would be great for patients and increase capacity while lowering prices, but we don't so as to protect that 260k salary.
The way European systems work is that EVERYONE buys in, rich and poor, so that the costs are distributed.
Health insurance gains money from young, wealthy, and healthy people. It loses money covering the old, the poor, and the sick.
In a European system, like the Netherlands, that's not a problem because everyone buys into the same sort of insurance (one of many heavy regulated companies in the Dutch case) and the public purse subsidizes the very poor, if the basic cross subsidization of a "big pot of patients" doesn't lower prices enough for those particular patients.
For the American case, the public purse gets to pay for the old, through Medicare, and the poor, through Medicaid.
Meanwhile, the profits that come from insuring the young, healthy, and wealthy are reserved for god fearing private insurers.
No one else does it this way. Not Japan. Not Taiwan. Not Israel. Not Switzerland.
Yes Noah, Europeans take the Mickey out of the US, and deservedly so. No need to get upset about that, nor do I think that Europe is trying to build a moral high ground vs the US of A. Nor do I think that Europe will benefit from talking the US down.
But you have to bear in mind the fact that the US always (after the WW2) wanted to be big brother and the ¨salvation armÿ, building a strong industry partially from federal defense expenditure, we could go on…. But there was trust and gratitude in Europe.
But at this moment in time where a presidency under the Heritage Foundation and complete lunatics is causing havoc on the world, Americans show cowardice and lack of spine to stand up against the would-be dictator, what to expect?
The US will continue to be ridiculed and increasingly isolated, not because others will want to hide their own shortcomings, but because the US has so utterly ridiculed themselves in the eyes of the world.
Weird to say that American obesity and drug problems are to do with purchasing power when these problems are rife among the poorest Americans. They do account for the difference in life expectancy, but it’s due to factors other than income (and actually the opioid problem is probably more directly related to the pharmaceutical/ healthcare system).
Noah is entirely correct. Europe has much to learn from USA, as has been acknowledged in the Draghi and Letta reports. There are very important moves towards deregulation and market opening under way, albeit in our slow torturous European way.
Unfortunately, the spectacle of Trump has magnified a bias against America inherent in some of us. It should not stop us from reforming our economy and extending our single market, including learning lessons from USA success.
I hope Noah’s experience at Kilkenomics, which I witnessed, will not put him off attending next year. It’s great crack!
Ireland suffers from most of the same issues as the rest of Europe, over regulation and the lack of a single market for services in Europe. Our biggest issue, housing supply, is among the worst examples of over regulation preventing building.
To paint with as broad a brush as I’ve heard many Europeans paint Americans with, “they” also killed “all” their native animals so they probably do need to save that bat
I think, from my time spent in Europe and from my European friends here in the States, that many Europeans feel the US is a bigger version of Europe that has betrayed them. After WWII they felt the US was their sort of big brother they could count on and now - that's gone away.
This view betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the US. We are Americans, not Europeans. Yes, many of us are of European extraction but this country was founded in direct opposition to many of the bases of European thought - monarchy and theocracy amongst them. The founders detested so much about Europe and maybe that is now rising again in the US. I know I feel American even though my DNA is 99.7% European. I enjoy my visits to Europe but miss the US and feel our life here is in many ways far more satisfying than are those of many Europeans. I also deeply dislike, as Noah experienced, the lecturing and hectoring you hear from a certain class of Europeans and I don't think Americans, like our current VP, should be engaging in the reverse either.
It's definitely healthy that Europe is learning to stand on its own two feet. I don't think the US needed to bear the burden of Europe's defense for so many decades when Europeans were capable of bearing that cost themselves. And I also believe our security interests are for the most part deeply intertwined. But Europeans need to rid themselves of the smug, smarmy attitude Noah talks about in this piece. As he pointed out - it does no one any good, it's vastly out-of-date and it just makes them look like assholes.
> It's definitely healthy that Europe is learning to stand on its own two feet. I don't think the US needed to bear the burden of Europe's defense for so many decades when Europeans were capable of bearing that cost themselves.
I see two competing narratives around the US-Europe security arrangement: a parasitic relationship (sometimes presented, a bit more nicely to Europe, as a parent-child relationship) vs a symbiotic relationship.
Based on the terms you use, you seem to subscribe to the parent-child narrative. Am I correct? This narrative is not baseless, but isn't it a bit strategically myopic? It presents the undeniable spending asymmetry (the "burden" Americans are paying indeed IS real) as something Americans were doing perhaps out of the goodness of their heart, not because it was beneficial to them.
But the US was getting a lot out of this arrangement - US military bases in Europe, Europeans buying US weapons and doing America's bidding in the UN, supporting US military adventures (however misguided) in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. Wasn't this one of the pillars of American hegemony, with all the benefits that come from this (like the US dollar being a reserve currency)?
If someone's security depends on you, you get a lot of control over them. And control over someone pretty rich and influential on the world stage can be worth what you are paying for it.
What seems more likely - that Trump carefully calculated the worth and decided it is no longer beneficial to the US? Or that driven by his obsession with being "ripped off" and perceiving everything as a zero-sum game, he simply does not get the benefits the US was getting out of the security arrangement that the US maintained and cultivated for 80 years?
This is a great comment, much of which I strongly agree with.
Yes, the US gained some benefits from decades of carrying the lion's share of defense spending on Europe's behalf. There's no doubt about that. I don't know that the benefit was worth the spend but it certainly wasn't a completely one-sided relationship with all the benefits flowing towards Europe.
My belief is that Trump's worldview is pretty simple - it's con or be conned. If you're not pulling a con on someone else, then they're pulling a con on you. There's no room in his analysis for anything but that. So clearly, the way Trump looks at the world, Europe pulled a con on the US for decades and now he wants to end the con.
I'm certainly not smug towards America.
On the contrary, I feel great admiration for Americans, sometimes mixed with sorrow and concern about issues Americans themselves also worry about. I want America to thrive!
What I do feel in recent years is a massive increase in the “europoor” discourse in the US - and not just on the right, also on the left and among intellectual circles - that to me feels very disparaging and short on details about actual life in Europe. That I find sad.
Likewise, I do not thinking living on either side of the Atlantic is more satisfying or better / worse in any way. I strongly believe that people and societies should have the freedom to choose how they want to live and organize their their societies accordingly. And luckily, both Europe and America are free to do so - that's why they're so varied and offer so much freedom to all.
That's a good thing and long may it continue and keep improving.
Yes there are many reasonable Europeans like you - I usually spend 2-3 weeks a year in Europe and meet many people like you and I am always appreciative of these discussions we have together.
I want a strong Europe to face what's coming, which is the rise of autocracy and illiberalism, the US cannot face that alone and we need a powerful Europe next to us for the coming conflict. That is what I want for Europe - for it to be strong, democratic and confident and for it to be allied with the US.
RE: "Europoor discourse." I think that's a somewhat justified response to European shit-talking and also a bit of a brag on the part of Americans. I wouldn't take it too seriously, it's usually not meant to be hurtful.
Well, I do not approve of Europeans shit-talking America and I do not partake in it. Likewise, I think the europoor discourse and how it's waged is pretty pointless and yes, often hurtful (but mostly simply wrong and thus not bringing anything new).
Yet I agree with you - I want Europe to be strong, democratic, and confident. And I want the US to be the same and both as strong allies.
That's precisely why this constant low-grade infighting is getting at me. I think a lot of it is more destructive than constructive. We can learn from each other without pulling one another down.
Very strong comments. I experience this a lot from my fellow Europeans, the absolute disbelief that any American could prefer to live in the US instead of a (Western) European country. Most of the time their view of the US is pretty much the stuff that John Steward makes fun of in the Daily Show. And that's the end of it.
What they miss is the kindness, generosity, diversity and can-do attitude that many Americans possess. There's a lot to admire about the US, both in the similarities and differences from us Europeans.
I think your comments come from a good place, but perhaps would be good to bear in mind that republicanism, secularism, and anti-clericalism have been promulgated for centuries in many parts of the old continent. Monarchy and theocracy are not "European ideas" generally, and in most European monarchies (think Norway, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Spain) this historical relic is inconsequential in terms of the way the political system of these countries work.
Those things were in no way inconsequential at the time of the American Revolution in 1775. At that time, when the Founders propagated democracy in North America, Europe was ruled by absolute monarchies, many of which were aligned with theocracy - the Ottomans were an absolute monarchy aligned with Islamic theocracy, Russia was an absolute monarchy aligned with Orthodoxy, the Holy Roman Empire aligned with Roman Catholicism. The Founders loathed these systems and created the US in direct opposition to them. Not a single democracy existed anywhere in Europe at the time of the American Revolution or really, any place in the world. Which is why what happened in 1775 on these shores was so revolutionary in the very true sense of the word.
A large part of the US was a racial dictatorship until the VRA in the 1950s. Our revolution created admirable words and many admirable acts, but along with these came a large dose of hypocrisy.
I admire the American revolution, but even with all the monarchies etc. in Europe, the American revolution was based upon enlightenment ideas developed in Europe.
And Europe did already have examples that influenced them: the UK was not an absolute monarchy anymore since the glorious revolution in 1690 and the Dutch Republic of the 17th and 18th century showed you did not need a monarch to thrive.
And it only partially existed in the United States in 1775 as well! The lines you draw are completely arbitrary! Dunno how you got this chip on your shoulder but it’s given you homer glasses for your reading of history.
The fact remains that the creation of America in 1775 was a revolutionary act which led to an imperfect republic based on democracy, an idea which had died thousands of year previously and which was resurrected on a land far from Europe by men who were not fans of Europe and who created this country to in many ways be the OPPOSITE of Europe. And that continues to influence our politics and national character today. The boring midnight dorm room discussion built around, "The US has never been a democracy and everyone doesn't have equal rights in the US" is one I'm not getting into because it's entirely inconsequential to the discussion at hand. The only person with a "chip on their shoulder" here appears to be you.
Picking 1775 as a starting point is far less relevant to understanding the nature of the U.S. relationship to Europe than picking 1945.
You do so seemingly because you over estimate the degree of political difference between the U.S. and European democracies and possibly because you want to sidestep the U.S. abandoning the world IT BUILT in the postwar era as something that “Euros want and think the U.S. wants but actually the U.S. doesn’t want because in 1775 our leaders didn’t want to look like Europe”. And, I’m sorry, but that’s very shallow.
You don't think Noah's complaints sound a bit smug as well?
No
Your history is too 18th century and insufficiently 20th century- especially postwar.
It misunderstands the world the U.S. *created* and how the Europeans view their place in it.
The things you list that the founders 'detested' about Europe aren't really things that should bother Americans today, right? Monarchy? Europe has Kings who bike to work and regular democracy for electing the real rulers. Theocracy? I'm struggling here, since Europeans are less observant than Americans.
I think your first paragraph was more on target. Under Trump, we've betrayed European assumptions that we'd handle defense for them. They could make fun of us for spending so much on our military, while basking under our nuclear and conventional NATO umbrellas. Now they have to face up to the fact that they have to greatly increase their own defense spending, and they've probably noticed, as have we, that the weapons of the future require Chinese inputs. Ruhhh Rrrro!
Noah raises good points, but neither will bring condescending towards Britain (a pastime of Noah's) help fix America's problems.
I think Noah has been clear eyed about the very serious problems facing the UK. I haven't seen his criticism as condescending as much as lightly joking. Joking which belies the fact the UK is headed down a very dark road.
Not on his blog but on his Twitter feed he can be condescending.
Oh yeah everyone is the worst version of themselves on Twitter
Twitter, Bluesky - both should wither and die.
When truth is seen as condescension it will be hard to solve the problems.
If you want to see what Noah is talking about, go to the r/AskanAmerican subreddit. You will see Europeans, Britons, Canadians, and Australians using it as a soapbox to air (under the guise of asking a question) the goofiest, most condescending nonsense about the United States. Like that every American lives in a tyrannical HOA that can seize their house at a moment's notice, that we only have Kraft cheese, or that Americans pay $30,000 every time we get treatment for a sprained ankle. It's not helped by the fact that, due to the overexposure of American popular culture, Europeans, Britons, Canadians, and Australians tend to have a false sense of expertise about the United States and an ardent belief that we're too stupid to understand that if we just pass a law that MyCountry has, we'll solve this problem that makes our country a their obvious moral inferior.
Using a subreddit to gauge how Europeans think of the US is a bit like asking the NY Times readership what it thinks about Trump - you’re not getting an especially representative sample. If you want to see what Noah is talking about, don’t use Reddit, find some Europeans and engage them in a conversation.
Fwiw, I lived in Europe for over a year, and I was shocked at the misinformation about what life was like in the U.S. I met several people who claimed that the U.S. was a developing country and refused to acknowledge basic facts like that Americans have higher median incomes and do just as well as Western Europeans on educational assessments.
Sorry to hear that, I don’t doubt it. Hopefully you also met some Europeans that were better informed.
Did Europeans ever tell you that they were "shocked", in that condescending way about a "fact" they thought they knew about the United States that was patently false, or also true in their country?
I've done that too. I would say that the European false sense of expertise about the United States still holds.
Fair enough, and I’ve certainly encountered it too, from both sides. But better that we have the conversations in person than via social media.
Most Americans I know don’t really care much about Europe except as a vacation destination. They don’t care enough to pretend any expertise, and there is very little that happens in Europe that affects them,
Many Europeans have firm ideas about American politics, policies, etc.
This is nothing new. I remember traveling abroad during the Reagan era and being lectured by Europeans and Canadians about American policies and many of them seemed more informed, animated (and, of course, critical) than the average American.
Almost as if they had no life and were living vicariously through America (and not liking it). Sad.
Well, stereotyping is a universal hobby, with 30+ countries in Europe, you can imagine how popular that is over here.
I spend a fair amount of time on Reddit, and I have been actually surprised by the amount of Americans that are negative about their own country.
Not buying it Noah, this sounds kike way bigger cope on your part. You went to a comedy festival in a European nation and got roasted bc that's what comedians do. You're the one who can't stop thinking in terms of who is up and who is down and who is running an imaginary race.
Also, that percentage spent on healthcare chart is kind of ridiculous when ours costs so much more, for the same outcomes.
And the idea we don't have tons of poor people for such a rich country was pretty well put to bed after finding out last week that *50 Million* people on are SNAP. 50M people so poor they can't even afford food?? Sorry but that's just straight up embarrassing, and if you can't deal with being embarrassed, you're the one trying to cope.
Emigration sounds like a good opportunity for you - explore it!
Also, around 12.7% of Americans access SNAP benefits, which sounds to me like it's a program which is far too easy to qualify for.
They don't actually take Americans. If you're not marrying someone there or paying $1M to be let in or just their temporarily working, their doors are not open.
Which is strange because they definitely need qualified immigrants, they certainly don't seem to have a problem taking in poor and unqualified third-world immigrants by the boatful.
The main reason for this is the fear that people will emigrate solely to take advantage of their healthcare systems. The same is true of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many others.
Actually only about 2/3rds of eligibles actually access according to 2020 census analysis and AARP says there are 15 million elderly that qualify but don’t access. Also the benefits can be of varying amounts - for many it can be a couple of hundred per month. Not sure what that means about how easy it is to qualify. What irks me is how food manufacturers and retailers have expanded what the benefit can be used for. I remember the old days of waiting in line for cheese and milk.
It seems Noah is assuming that if Europeans speak ill of the US that must mean they are satisfied with their own system, but nothing I’ve seen or heard from fellow Europeans suggests this. The European professionals I know who work in many of the sectors Noah mentions - including health care, autos and finance - are deeply aware of the continent’s structural issues and the greater dynamism of the US.
Yes, there will always be Europeans who think they are superior (incorrectly, as Noah’s data shows), but I would say they are at the long end of the tail - Reddit threads have a strong self-selection factor. Europeans do have concerns about the US political environment, as one commentator pointed out, but that doesn’t mean they are sanguine about their own serious issues. If Noah wants to know how Europeans really feels about the US I would suggest listening less to its comedians and more to its politicians and business people.
I wonder how much the higher cost of healthcare in the U.S. distorts the redistribution graph. Something feels “off” about it.
"The reason America still has higher inequality than Europe is mostly due to “predistribution” — basically, pretax wage inequality"
I think that goes a long way toward explaining our superior economic performance - America will pay top dollar for talent and other counties simply won't.
Here's an example of that - a medical oncologist in the UK, based in London, with 15 years of experience can expect to make around £250k a year. In the US the same, based in LA, can expect to be paid around $600-700k a year. It's a wonder the US doesn't open its doors and brain drain the UK because if we wanted to we could do it in a year.
US per capita GDP is also nearly 2x the UK so the salaries are comparable, right? £500,000 is $657,500 so almost extract equal.
I think you’re barking up the wrong tree here: I’ve never heard any European raging about how low the salaries are in the US - I think everyone acknowledges that you go to the US to get rich.
No, the ranting is usually about things like guns, parental leave, public transportation, and vacation days. And if you notice, none of these are mentioned in Noah’s post.
Which just goes to show that on some level Americans and Europeans probably value different things.
Noah did mention several of those things in his post but yes, I do think the point about valuing different things is correct.
Nope not how salaries in metro areas work.
Europe sure has problems but an American writing about all of the problems that Europe has seems a little bit tone deaf right now. Americope? Noah if you were say Australian it would hit a bit harder.
His point is that the criticisms are false or incomplete. Which of his criticisms of Europe did you find false or incomplete?
Basically all of them are broadbrush and short on detail. Just to answer the problems he lists:
- “stagnating living standards:” not really if you look at GDP per hour worked which keeps rising, and thus living standards (Europeans just have a preference for more free time over mor income); in CEE, incomes & free time keep rising.
- “the Russian military threat:” absolutely, but next to no one is ignoring it now. Europe is massively reaming and supporting Ukraine.
- “expensive energy:” sure, kinda, but German electricity prices for example are down to 2019 levels, even lower when adjusted for inflation; gas prices are contained too; the picture is simply shifting rapidly (even more so on Spain, Greece, CEE).
- “overregulation:” yeah-ish - always a problem in rich developed countries, but factories & infrastructure and lots of urban construction actually goes up way faster in Europe than in the US; scale and capital markets are way bigger issues for companies than regulation.
- “structural fiscal deficits:” That one's actually funny. Europe has now among the lowest deficit & public debt of any major and developed economy - far below the US, Japan, and even China if you count provincial debt. Smarter spending is always wise, but Europe in aggregate really does not have a fiscal problem.
Now you can call that all eurocope - but it's simply facts. Those make a debate good and meaningful. Repeating stale stereotypes that were kinda true one day but are now outdated or not relevant is what got is into this debating mess on the first place.
Not sure what your sources are, but I am not so optimistic as a European:
GDP per hour worked (PPP): If you look at OECD numbers, most EU countries are slowly losing ground compared to the US in the past 10 years (with the exception of some small countries)
https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/gdp-per-hour-worked.html
The Russia-Ukraine war: yes, Europe is helping Ukraine, but not nearly enough to bring Ukraine in a winning position, some large countries in the EU contribute hardly financially. If the war drags on, Ukraine needs hundreds of billions of dollars the coming years only to survive, I don't see Europe paying up such amounts.
Expensive energy: Gas is still approx double compared to before Russia stopped supplying, This source has electricity for Germany at 33 euro/Mwh in 2019 and 107 today
https://euenergy.live/?date=2019-01-14
Overregulation for building: don't know about the US, but it is a major issue in my country because of for example environmental rules.
Public debt: I agree this is a problem for all aging developed economies, but at least I think the US has the capacity to outgrow their debt, I don't see this happening in the high debt countries in the EU.
And there are more issues Europe is struggling with:
Migration: Europe gets the wrong migrants from outside the EU, often low skilled which means they will be a burden on the social welfare state, even with a job .
Big companies: Europe used to have its fair share of large multinationals, if you look today at market cap, there are only still 8 in the top 50 worldwide (and none in the top 25).
https://companiesmarketcap.com/
Tech: Europe has only a few large tech companies, and we have become vassal states of the large US tech companies for most of their services
The only upside I see is that Trump made Europe wake up to our problems, but I don't think we have any idea yet how to turn things around. Maybe Noah could write a post on this like he did on Japan.
Alright, thanks for the reply. Here are my sources:
- If you look at GDP per hour worked in World in Data, you can see that most EU countries are keeping pace with the US and some even growing faster: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-productivity-per-hour-pennworldtable?tab=line&stackMode=relative&time=2000..latest&country=USA~DEU~GBR~AUT~DNK~NLD~BEL~FRA~SWE~ESP~ITA~SVN~CZE~POL
- The OECD data show exactly the same btw, in relative terms. The US position vis-à-vis most European countries was not wildly different than today in 2015, 2005, or 1995. Check it.
- Europe does already and will definitely support Ukraine with the hundreds of billions needed. Belatedly, yes, and I also wish it was faster and more decisive. But they'll keep backing Ukraine as long as needed.
- For energy, statistics and prices are particularly tricky. The current price per kWh is €0.24, for gas it's €0.09. Both is about 30% lower than at the beginning of 2022, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-strompreis-gaspreis-erneuerbare-energien-ausbau
- Overregulation: As you say, it depends on the individual country and also on the area (construction, company scaling, capital markets etc.). But generally, it's one issue, but not much more so than elsewhere. Lacking cooperation on big issues (energy, tech, capital markets) is a way bigger challenge.
- Public debt: Well theoretically you might think so, yes. But practically, debt in the US has been growing far (!) faster than in Europe over the last two decades - and that even though nominal GDP has grown faster in the US (bc population growth has been faster) and Europe has been aging more quickly. So the factual trend shows the opposite development.
And sure there are more issues. As I've mentioned, I'd actually be happy to discuss the actual issues Europe has as opposed to mostly cliché ones repeated since the 1990s.
Migration is one, though not on the top of my list.
Big companies, absolutely. Europe has missed the first and second tech wave. The problem there is a lacking single digital market, austerity in the 2010s, and no European capital and IPO market. Even more impressive that GDP per hour worked (PPP) has kept pace with the US anyway.
And Europe is doing plenty of stuff to turn things around and - and could do many, many more.
But I'd much rather discuss those than some tropes that are not really so relevant anymore.
Thanks for the reply and the nice productivity graph. First thing that strikes me is the dismal performance of the UK. Europe in general seems a bit of a mixed bag, some smaller countries and Eastern European (though they are still catching up) are doing ok, but the larger ones? I am not an economist but I do have mixed feelings about a PPP comparison. Simply put, if two countries do fine in a PPP comparison, but in absolute dollars one became twice as rich as the other, I find it difficult to believe that this does not matter.
So let's look in local currencies. It is known that US productivity growth has been doing nicely in the past years, digging a bit deeper into European numbers of the larger countries (no prosperous Europe without the big countries in my opinion) and what I see is worrisome:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/7/78/Tab_2_Real_labour_productivity_per_hour_worked_by_countries_%28annual_average_growth_rate_and_%25_change_on_previous_year%2C_1999-2024%29.png
In the past couple of years no or even negative productivity growth in Germany, France and Italy. UK I already mentioned. Spain is an interesting case: they got a lot of immigration from South America, but often low skilled labor in for example the tourist industry. I don't believe a developed economy can build more wealth long term based upon low skilled labor. Anyway, enough reasons to be concerned about Europe in my opinion, in particular because I do not see an easy way out for an aging continent.
Productivity is never easy to measure. But in terms of living standards, productivity per hour worked in PPP *is* the most relevant way to look at it. If a meal costs three times more in San Francisco that doesn't make it three times better - even if the corresponding salary makes you much wealthier abroad. The main effect from higher nominal GDP per capita is cheaper imports and cheaper travel. But both are only a very small part of most people's live spendings (plus, for Europeans traveling within Europe or almost anywhere else except the US the exchange rate is still very favorable).
Productivity growth in general absolutely is a massive challenge! And it's been a mixed bag in different European countries.
But we started the debate about living standards. And there's simply very little evidence that Europe fell notably behind the US in that, some places even caught up more, kept pace, or pulled slightly ahead, while others fell a bit behind. But no major divergence.
On tech you write: ''The problem there is a lacking single digital market, austerity in the 2010s, and no European capital and IPO market.''
if fragmentation and lack of scale is the issue, I do not believe this is solvable as I do not believe in a more federal Europe. Cultural differences are simply too large for Europe becoming more like a federal state, there is not enough popular support for it.
Scaling tech companies is indeed a hard nut to crack. I don't have easy answers either.
I don't share the opinion that full federalization is needed. We have a single market in goods without that. Why not a digital one too? And one for capital markets? That's just market design.
But of course, you gotta do it. And Europe has been lackluster in all things digital in the last two decades.
Again, recently you also have lots of other signs (Spotify, Revolut, Lovable, EU Inc.) but it remains to be seen where that may lead us.
Agreed. I wouldn't put any of these top of the list for problems Europe has, at least relative to the US, except maybe Russia. The first one, stagnating living standards, is a problem, but it is a symptom, not a cause.
Instead, I think the biggest issues are, like you, shallow capital markets, and a lack of meaningful market and above all political integration. These are of course interconnected, although it is possible to deepen your capital markets at a national and not European level (e.g., the Netherlands vs almost everyone else in the EU).
Noah has a habit of being condescending towards the UK on his Twitter feed, just as Europeans can be towards Americans.
It's Twitter tho
Textbook ad hominem argument. It's certainly easier to dismiss arguments because of their origins rather than trying to address their substance.
Would love to see Noah do a take on Australia. Having lived in all I can assure you in genuinely shits all over both Europe and the US. Even if wild rabbits are treated as vermin.
Why, I wonder. High tax and an economy mostly dependent on FIFO workers (basically, resources via mining) shouldn’t have such steady growth.
Actually hardly anyone works in mining, it is heavily automated. Dependence on resource exports is a weakness, that’s true, but for now seems sustainable due to significant low cost advantages of proximity to Asia and very large and effective investments in automation
Oh, I see. GDP per capita looks to closely track resource export earnings actually on the two charts here: https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2025/03/australia-has-blown-its-extraordinary-resource-wealth/ (Ignore the anti-establishment tirade which I don't necessarily agree with as Australia and Norway can't really be compared like that.) Resource nationalism is expected to give the sector another lift right when it looked like China’s property downturn had sucked the air out of commodity demand.
I find it funny that Australian commentators and Australians are all so negative about their economy when if you compare across countries, it does so well... albeit I can't quite figure out why. Is 27 million people really enough for a sizeable self-contained domestic economy?
Yes, with only 27m people Australia struggles to compete in high value industries like tech, pharma etc so doing best it can in resources, education, food etc plus a surprising amount of professional services exports like engineering, architecture, consulting. Aussie’s have same issue of high property costs like most of the developed world hence the negativity but much better placed on health, crime etc
With endless sun and land, is well positioned for renewables with potential energy advantages to get in the game of actually refining ores, rare earths etc
Thank you for your response. Much appreciated.
Also, Australia is a low to middle tax country in terms of OECD, nowhere near as high as most of Europe
Why? Especially given he raises good points about Europe's problems. He could spend his time doing other things.
Eurocope is pretty pointless. So is the europoor discourse. And therein lies the problem.
Most public debates on Europe are extremely short on details and regurgitate lots of common tropes that are not actually very accurate or insightful.
That's what makes the debate so tiring. There's a huge amount of things to discuss and improve in Europe - and both strength to draw on and weaknesses to address.
And very promising new initiatives, like EU Inc, the recent tech and startup wave (Lovable! Revolut!), a massive ramp-up in defense production and renewable energy production, and much more.
But only rarely is any of that seriously mentioned. It's usually just the same old tropes form the 1990s. And that's not very helpful.
For me, the biggest problem, at least for Europeans, with Eurocope is that it cements the idea that, socially or politically, 'Europe' already practically exists. I work a lot with European policymakers, and the vast majority of them are very much aware of the problems you list. For a solid three years or more, I have gone to a litany of conferences here in continental Europe where we seemingly talk about little else but Russia, high energy prices, overregulation, or a combination of the three. Anyone vaguely serious recognises our productivity gap with the US as something to address, and not something to be explained away.
But behind this, there is a more serious issue. We have European problems, but we don't have European solutions. Although we do talk about Europe vs the US when we criticise Americans, in reality Europe still is, and acts, like a couple of dozen different countries, each mostly going their own way. Unlike in the US, we lack a political figure who is there specifically to act in the overarching European interest, rather than a European Commission president who is totally beholden to national governments.
Whenever this is, and the need for more political integration, is brought this up, there's always some bullshit response about cultural differences in Europe, or how undemocratic it would be. Neither Russia nor the global financial markets care about whether someone speaks Finnish, Polish, German, or Italian. Most European countries already use a single currency, and backing away from that now would be really, really difficult too.
As for democracy, what I think is undemocratic is when people elect representatives who can't actually do anything because they have no power to change the prevailing geopolitical weather. As European countries, we are mostly too small on our own to affect the major global forces of change that really do impact peoples' lives. Restoring democratic control means holding power accountable at the level on which it actually operates.
** Also I think one valid Eurocope/Euroseethe is urban planning. American cities, compared to most European ones, are generally awful. Europeans still drive and use cars regularly. But unlike your average American city, it is possible for most of us to get somewhere without having to drive. Maybe an extra bonus valid one: Europeans are on the whole healthier than Americans. Like the US/Europe productivity gap, this is pretty undeniable if you look at the data**
The EU is just at the stage that the US was at when it was under the Articles of Confederation from 1781-1789.
The American Colonies were "lucky" enough to face an existential threat of insurrection very early on that made it clear how unworkable that more decentralized structure was.
But the EU was born during peacetime *after* an existential conflict was over. And it hasn't really been tested the same way since.
There are a lot of things you give up in a more centralized system like the US Constitution brought about. Not the least the sovereignty of the states, something that caused such major tensioin that Americans fought a Civil War only two generations in. "States Rights" have been a flashpoint ever since, including more recently as "Blue States" express angst over a Trump-dominated federal system.
But, in terms of dealing forcefully with foreign policy challenges, resolving region-wide structural issues, and fostering a very competitive single-market, it's really the only way.
''some bullshit response about cultural differences in Europe''
I am afraid this is simply the reality. There is no European demos, I don't see this changing with our different cultures anytime soon, any plans for a federal state are just fantasies in my opinion. Simple example: in all my national media its everyday about what's going on with national politics in parliament, hardly anytime I see or hear anything about the European parliament. Most people don't have a clue what they are doing at the EU level. You cant have a federal democracy if people don't feel involved like they do now on a national level.
while urban planning simply doesn't exist in the US it's state if still gravely tragic in Europe
there are no cities (and host countries) with any kind of urban vision. there's always some talk about urban renewal this or that, but that's absolutely common sense "too little too late" infuriatingly small-scale slideware bullshit. (oh, let's convert the old rail yard to a new government district. woah. amazing. did you come up with that all alone? no it took the full country? good, good, we're very proud of you. oh wait, city hall rejected the plan? amazing, at least we can film Trainspotting 3 and 4 and a dozen more there.)
we see cities flailing around with rent control and sustainable this or that, but all we end up with in practice is that there's regular inefficient, slow, expensive development, and a trickle of effort to reduce car dependency.
the green spaces in these schemes are small, boring, almost sterile, disrespectfully minuscule compared to what people need (and why they go out of the city for recreation), the associated public transport development is even smaller, even more deferred (which naturally triggers NIMBY voices due to completely correctly predicted increase in road traffic), and of course the actual buildings look like janitor closets in Dubai.
... of course we can argue whether this is mostly a symptom of typical developed-nation rich city-dweller conservatism (and the relative sanctity of private property) or it's the cause.
(and I'm not suggesting that cities need to start bulldozing themselves immediately, but at least having living aspiration for something significantly more than endless low/high-density sprawl with untouchable sacred cows from the previous millennia would help - a motivating vision manifested as a 25-50-100 year plan to guide and encourage decision-makers, to give something to future and present citizens to wait and be around for - or leave, if they can't identify with that vision, and let others move in instead)
I agree with the general argument that Europeans often use Anti-Americanism as "cope" to avoid addressing their own (considerable) societal challenges going forward. But as an American who has lived in Europe for a decade, I really take issue to your statement below as not just being factually incorrect, but also *feeling* extremely off-base on the ground:
"But more fundamentally, there’s just not that much difference between the European and American systems. Both are basically capitalist economies, with fairly high levels of taxation, robust social safety nets, and fairly efficient public services."
Facts almost aren't even material to this discussion when people (like you have here) can say that Norway and the United States are "basically capitalist economies," when one has about half of its economic activity falling under the auspices of the public sector, including 68 State Owned Entities which are among Norway's biggest enterprise firms! So, sure, if you want, basically every country (including "Communist" China) fits under this description, but nobody would say that the Chinese and the American economic systems are equivalent, would they? There are, at the very least, meaningfully distinct forms of capitalism (not just in different countries, but also in different historical eras). But, for rhetorical purposes, you can make that subjective argument that every country on the planet (maybe exempting North Korea and Eritrea) has some form of capitalism today.
And you *could* gloss a Denmark and a United States as both having "fairly high levels of taxation," when median Danish workers pay 36% of their income in tax and their VAT is at least more than double American sales taxes. And, look, I'm all for counteracting the right-wing propaganda that "everyone in Scandinavia pays 50%+ of their income in tax," which also isn't true and is sometimes based on ignorance of how progressive taxation actually works. But I do, myself, pay noticeably higher taxes in Sweden than I did in the United States, especially as a higher earner. Half of Americans don't even pay federal income tax at all; but basically every Swedish worker pays some income tax! That's a fact. Conversely, American taxation is only "fairly high" when you compare it with low-tax/low-capacity developing countries, not when you use other developing countries as a reference.
Lastly, how much work is the vague phrase "fairly efficient public services" going to do in this essay? Are we talking about State Department Passports and U.S. Citizens Services? I'm a fan! Or the USPS? It's absolutely world-class! Social Security and Medicare are truly great (though the latter is pretty inefficient, due more to the overall nature of the American healthcare system than anything it can control). But everything else...? isn't the low performance of state services and lack of American state capacity often cited (including by you) as a key reason why the right-wing anti-government messaging works? State services in Europe aren't perfect, but they are noticeably better both in absolute terms and especially in efficiency terms than in the US. Even with something as flawed as the UK NHS, could you even imagine if US Medicare/Medicaid were able to provide universal healthcare provision at that cost? Everyone knows that Europeans have public healthcare, but my Swedish taxes also pay for things like public Early Childhood Education/childcare and eldercare which cost my American peers five-figures a year!
(Yes, I'm comparing the US with Scandinavia, which isn't like-for-like. You wrote this from Ireland, which is an interesting middle-case because you get American levels of state services at European levels of taxation. I felt it was a pretty shit deal when I lived there, frankly! Ireland does have a public healthcare system, but it's worse than the NHS and definitely below the level that Mainland Europeans enjoy. It has no subsidized childcare, and the private costs are worse even than in the US. Ireland also literally doesn't have a (secular) public school system in most of the country. Its public transit is a joke. Housing is ruinously expensive and to a low standard. But it's a *great* place to find work if you're in tech, banking, biotech, etc.)
But, anyway, such comparative stats discussions go on forever. And, as I said, these debates aren't even about statistics on paper but mostly about perception and lived experience:
You often write about how Japan *feels* a lot more rich than it seems on paper or in the "Lost Decade" Declinism Narrative about it in the Western media. Well, Europe *feels* much wealthier on the ground in the same way, nominal wealth and GDP growth figures aside. I can tell Americans that I pay more taxes and get X and Y services for them which are worth $Z cost-savings. I could even point to "objective" measures of HDI, lifespan, etc. But the real measure is just the vibe. And the United States *feels* so much poorer than it actually is, something that strikes me every time I go home to visit a few times a year.
Even our president is wont to comment on the sorry state of American airports and other infrastructure: Flying into Newark, as I usually do, I am a little scandalized by how absolutely terrible it is. Fine, it's an airport--and an old one. But then I get onto the NJ Turnpike or I-95 and I think to myself, "Jesus, in the land of the car, THIS is the best we can do even with the highways!?" And then as I drive through some of the wealthiest communities in the country, I look around me at the streets, sidewalks, houses, strip malls, drive-ins, etc. and am overwhelmed by how much squalor Americans live with, despite all the money! And it's not just the built environment that is ugly, slipshod, and tumble-down. The people you see aren't exactly screaming wealth, health, and prosperity, either. And, again, this is in the "Acela Corridor," which is like the more-industrialized, affluent "Blue Banana" of Europe.
Part of it is this disorienting "Private Affluence and Public Squalor" contrast that's very uniquely American: the last time I was in Colorado, I drove by literal shacks in the wasteland with expensive, spotlessly-clean cars and trucks parked all around them. Sometimes with these fancy "fifth wheel" RV-type trailers that were bigger and shinier than the homes (or anything else)! And the roads are all cracked up and there's absolutely nothing around. But that's just the extreme version of how you see a (distinctly Developing World) tendency for even wealthier Americans to cloister themselves away from a pretty bleak, neglected public sphere behind walls and in large, expensive houses, vehicles, and other private spaces/property. But any Mexican or Brazilian or Nigerian elite can tell you that there's a limit to how much you can actually recreate your own functional society behind privatized walls. And even the poorer or more rural parts of Europe have decent infrastructure and pleasant communal space in the way that American communities don't. A European living at the American poverty line in terms of income lives a life that is just nicer than even Americans in the lower-middle-class. Maybe the richest Europeans don't live in (private) affluence at levels that the richest Americans do. And maybe it's debatable whether a big-ass truck is nicer than functional transit or whether a McMansion can make up for never taking a vacation. That is a values discussion.
And then you have one of those discussions with your (again, pretty well-heeled) friends or family where you are reminded about shocking things that are very normal in American society that you'd totally forgotten about: Medical debt or bankruptcy. Insurance claims denied. The impossible dilemmas of eldercare for "sandwich generation" Millennials who have aging parents and young children and everything just costs so damn much! And, like, these are the anxieties that face the upper-middle-class, professional, well-educated group that I know. I can only read voyeristicaly about the horrifying reality facing the simple majority of other Americans who aren't lucky enough to to fit in the top 20% of household incomes. Their lives are pretty bleak on paper, but their experience is strangely invisible as the United States is also very segregated by class and what remains of the American news media and pop culture focuses almost entirely upon people who have more means.
I'm restricting myself to the dystopian stuff that is directly related to state capacity, but you have other qualitative things like omnipresent drug abuse, homelessness, violent crime, random shootings (and especially the ambient fear thereof) that Western Europeans just don't even think about. Arguably a stronger, better-funded state could address a lot of these concerns--and that's exactly what happens in the better-governed states of the United States. But even the best-run American states have HDI-like welfare metrics that lag behind the Western European average. And that's plainly obvious to see on the ground!
I can agree with the sentiment how difficult it is to compare countries. On taxes, I recently read that some US states apparently have real estate taxes that can be in the ten thousands per year, that is unheard of in my European country and not something you see in for example income tax comparisons.
I also agree with the vibe: as much as I admire the US for many things, when I visit one of the US big cities I wonder why they cannot take better care of their public spaces, that would make life more enjoyable. I guess what matters is that the US is more a continent than a country which makes it more difficult to compare. Thinking about the US, the phrase 'creative destruction' comes to my mind, they are good with the creative part, but their neglect can border destruction.
That the US is more a continent than a country is crucial to these discussions, but Europe is, too!
My point holds up even if you restrict yourself to only the richer parts of US vs. EU or, conversely the poorer: When Americans talk about "Europe," they really mean Western Europe and specifically the places that Americans tend to frequent as tourists or otherwise are more aware of. My examples from Scandinavia would be salient, since Americans both frequent and admire the likes of Denmark and Norway. Then, of course, you have the UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, and a few other places forming the mental map of "Europe" in the American mind. And Europeans tend to return the favor by forming their impressions of the United States via New York, California, and Florida. We're not comparing Albania to Arkansas here, generally.
Also, when people talk about "New York," they really mean "New York City," and not Binghamton, NY, where my mother's family is from. It's quite different. And when Americans talk about Denmark, they really mean Copenhagen and not rural Jutland.
But what if we *were* comparing Albania to Arkansas? You'd find, thanks to the EU's various financial transfers, that impoverished, post-Communist, post-authoritarian Albania is now pretty... OK. It's even an emerging tourism hub, familiar enough even to more intrepid American travelers looking for the "next Greece." But how many Europeans are going to want to go to Arkansas? And what would they think if they did? Even I, as an American, can find myself pretty shaken by the kinds of commonplace sights I'd see driving through Arkansas. And that's the point: the median community in the United States is just seemingly more threadbare than a random city in Poland you've never heard of. And the poorest parts of the US are so bleak you'd really have to dig into the more forsaken parts of Romania to find an European equivalent.
You don't even have to look to find place in the US that make you feel like you're in a Third World Country. They're in every American community, but apart. People who live in those places and can afford to avoid them do. Many Americans have never even seen them, themselves, though they're mere blocks away from where they stand. The segregation that allows such degradation to hide in plain sight is a tradition that goes back centuries and is enabled in the contemporary era by the dominance of the car, the ubiquity of the suburb or exurb, and the new possibilities for isolation from strangers unlocked by the Internet and smartphones.
This is the French, L'esprit de l'escalier, "the wisdom of the stairs" for those snappy comebacks that you only think of after you leave the room.
It's also a lie for the healthcare part and a pretty egregious one.
The measure he uses to show that the US is comparable to Europe is an odd one. "'Share of total health spending that is out of pocket."
This has no real dollar amounts attached to it and it allows Noah to pretend that the US is comparable. Noah is leaving out that the us is spending a slightly smaller percentage of a much more expensive pie.
It's statistical sleight of hand that Noah as an econ writer should be ashamed of.
Here is the total per capita spending for these countries in 2023 from the Kaiser family foundation, link to source at bottom). This is inclusive of out of pocket spending and spending by all other actors.
The US, 13,432$
Germany 8,441$
Sweden 7,522 $
France 7,136$
UK 6,023$
Now let's apply those percentages that Noah used in the piece to get the out of pocket spending in real 2023 dollars.
Based on that chart in the piece,
The US, 11% is out of pocket
Germany 11% is out of pocket
Sweden 13% is out of pocket
France 9% is out of pocket
UK 14% is out of pocket.
Multiplying that out, we get the following per capita out of pocket spending.
The US, 13,432$ x 11% = 1,472$
Germany 8,441$ x 11% = 928$
Sweden 7,522 $ x 13% = 978$
France 7,136$ x 9% = 642$
UK 6,023$ x 14% = 843$
Man, it's almost as if the US spends a ton more person than anyone else. Why didn't Noah say this? You can look up per capita out of pocket spending from several reputable sources and all of them will show the same.
I wonder why this post doesn't talk about it... Maybe because the Europeans are justified?
There are problems in European health systems, to be sure. But they do not have people living in mortal terror of an ambulance ride due to healthcare costs like we do in the US.
Total health spending:
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#GDP%20per%20capita%20and%20health%20consumption%20spending%20per%20capita,%20U.S.%20dollars,%202023%20(current%20prices%20and%20PPP%20adjusted)%C2%A0
Out of pocket spending per capita:
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/indicator/access-affordability/out-of-pocket-spending/
The US spends a lot more on for total healthcare because we allow a lot of choice, don't ration care, and of course providers make a LOT more.
The avg UK doctor makes $170k the avg US doctor makes $260k
We do ration care. But the ration decision making is given over to private companies and we have an awkward kludge of laws that force them to do what they really don't want to do from a business standpoint, namely writing checks to help sick people.
Also, our doctors operate as a cartel via the AMA. We could flip a switch in our immigration and licensing laws and get two million excellent qualified English speaking doctors from the rest of the world almost instantly. It would be great for patients and increase capacity while lowering prices, but we don't so as to protect that 260k salary.
I'm with you on the AMA. Also, on importing qualified doctors from the rest of the world.
I noticed it too, the measure is odd. But if the rich pay out of pocket, what is the problem?
Because the rich aren't the only people paying?
The way European systems work is that EVERYONE buys in, rich and poor, so that the costs are distributed.
Health insurance gains money from young, wealthy, and healthy people. It loses money covering the old, the poor, and the sick.
In a European system, like the Netherlands, that's not a problem because everyone buys into the same sort of insurance (one of many heavy regulated companies in the Dutch case) and the public purse subsidizes the very poor, if the basic cross subsidization of a "big pot of patients" doesn't lower prices enough for those particular patients.
For the American case, the public purse gets to pay for the old, through Medicare, and the poor, through Medicaid.
Meanwhile, the profits that come from insuring the young, healthy, and wealthy are reserved for god fearing private insurers.
No one else does it this way. Not Japan. Not Taiwan. Not Israel. Not Switzerland.
Yes Noah, Europeans take the Mickey out of the US, and deservedly so. No need to get upset about that, nor do I think that Europe is trying to build a moral high ground vs the US of A. Nor do I think that Europe will benefit from talking the US down.
But you have to bear in mind the fact that the US always (after the WW2) wanted to be big brother and the ¨salvation armÿ, building a strong industry partially from federal defense expenditure, we could go on…. But there was trust and gratitude in Europe.
But at this moment in time where a presidency under the Heritage Foundation and complete lunatics is causing havoc on the world, Americans show cowardice and lack of spine to stand up against the would-be dictator, what to expect?
The US will continue to be ridiculed and increasingly isolated, not because others will want to hide their own shortcomings, but because the US has so utterly ridiculed themselves in the eyes of the world.
These are unprecedented times.
Weird to say that American obesity and drug problems are to do with purchasing power when these problems are rife among the poorest Americans. They do account for the difference in life expectancy, but it’s due to factors other than income (and actually the opioid problem is probably more directly related to the pharmaceutical/ healthcare system).
Neither Norway nor Switzerland have these problems, very rich countries.
Swiss people have universal health insurance which everyone has to buy and expensive food.
Are you used to buying meat with the price per pound or kilogram? Nein! In Switzerland, it is per 100 grams.
So your point is that food is relatively less affordable in CHE, which is why Swiss don't have lower life expectancy? Does it really hold up?
If the point is that health care is better in Switzerland, then it kind of refutes Noah's point.
Switzerland does refute the point. But Switzerland also doesn't have cheap food.
Noah is entirely correct. Europe has much to learn from USA, as has been acknowledged in the Draghi and Letta reports. There are very important moves towards deregulation and market opening under way, albeit in our slow torturous European way.
Unfortunately, the spectacle of Trump has magnified a bias against America inherent in some of us. It should not stop us from reforming our economy and extending our single market, including learning lessons from USA success.
I hope Noah’s experience at Kilkenomics, which I witnessed, will not put him off attending next year. It’s great crack!
I mean strictly speaking, Ireland is quite successful, so the same arguments don't àpply, compared to Europe as whole?
Ireland suffers from most of the same issues as the rest of Europe, over regulation and the lack of a single market for services in Europe. Our biggest issue, housing supply, is among the worst examples of over regulation preventing building.
Okay the bat and parking lot thing I agree with. Bats are awesome.
To paint with as broad a brush as I’ve heard many Europeans paint Americans with, “they” also killed “all” their native animals so they probably do need to save that bat