[culopatin]

Does anyone else feel weird about comparisons that match a subgroup of people in the US against whole continents? Why is it normal to smash all the countries of a continent into one? What “asian” or “European” student is making it into these standards? The ones with money to come to the US and be surveyed?

[adastra22]

1. When people compare with “Europe” they usually mean western and northern Europe. Wealthy democratic countries that were NATO members or aligned during the Cold War.

2. These countries pretty much all (to varying degrees) have a strong social democratic movement that has been able to set policy during the 20th century, resulting in fairly uniform (compared with USA) support for universal education, healthcare, and other things Americans can’t take for granted.

There is huge variation within Europe for sure, but western/northern european countries do largely cluster together when looked at the world as a whole.

[slackerchews]

I agree (and point out in my comment) that this is not a 1:1 comparison.