[observation]

European countries are much smaller than the USA. I realize that within the USA there exist differences but I think your population centers are far larger than ours. Europe has a larger population but it is very dense with small, medium and then rarer large communities (similar to Japan I think). The USA appears to me (this could be quite wrong) to have large, very large and then sparse communities.

I wish I could summon up a one of those nice charts on this subject from gapminder! That would show immediately if there's something to it.

It could also be simply that the American media and intellectual class are unusually neurotic and there similar issues exist everywhere but the local reporting in my country doesn't emphasize it as much.

[crispinb]

The relevant comparison is amongst all the wealthy nations (European, N. American, Asian & Australasian), not "USA" vs "Europe" (the various nations constituting the latter have highly divergent social policies).

There are many differences among these nations. Some are densely populated (the Netherlands), some sparse (Australia). No comparisons I've ever seen amongst them however remotely suggests that as you add more sophisticated social welfare policies, this reduces social cohesion. On the contrary, such policies tend to smooth out the effects of inevitable industrial change, rendering populations more resilient. It's no accident that nations clinging to relatively crude social policy (the US, the UK) have far lower economic mobility than those using the state of the art (Sweden, Germany). And it is about sophistication, not absolute expenditure, by the way. France, for example, has high spending, but it's badly targeted and rendered inflexible by traditional interests, so on many indicators other than health, it looks more like the laggards (US, UK) than leaders (Sweden, Denmark, Canada).

[observation]

This is where the rightist points out that most positive examples historically had ethnically homogeneous populations and that those populations with growing minorities also are developing integration problems that are usually blamed, perhaps scapegoated, on social welfare policy.

Do you have a deconstruction of that?

[_Tev]

Actually all mentioned countries have sizeable immigrant minorities (except Denmark I guess).

I'd say burden of proof is on the side claiming "developing integration problems" and such in Australia / Sweden / Germany. Without any data it seems like empty rightist populism.

[observation]

Data:

https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/...

[_Tev]

Terrorism is unrelated to integration problems. Also, Germany is the (second? Idk how that's measured) most inviting country? Why does it have least attacks on that chart? That chart actually reinforces my point ... Just empty populism connecting random things to desperately prove its point.