[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.