For some definitions of wealth, surely. By most quality of life metrics, the average (Western) European is doing as well or better than the average American.
The article suggests heavily that, the way things are going, that's not going to be the case in the future. Right now, Europeans are still living off past prosperity, but if they don't build a real technology industry and innovate, then future Europeans will be much worse off.
> Right now, Europeans are still living off past prosperity, but if they don't build a real technology industry and innovate, then future Europeans will be much worse off.
As an American, I've heard some variant of this for literally my entire life.
Europe is technologically conservative in ways that the US is not. It's unclear that this has, is having, or will have any impact on the actual material wellbeing of the people who live there.
Compare life expectancy[1], or just about any self-reported QoL metric[2] (where the US doesn't perform badly, just not better!).
It seems odd that the Europhiles always fall back on such oblique support. Life expectancy, for example, is heavily impacted by things like demographics and obesity. The 'better life index' is literally editorial content. Its outcomes are driven by its creators' choices with regard to the wording/framing of their questions and the weights of the various components of their scores. The US, for example, has an average household net-adjusted disposable income per capita of >60% the OECD average.. but gets an "8.5" on income? Weird.
I'm not any particular Europhile. The closest derisive (?) term would be an American urbanist; I'm very happy where I am in the US.
I don't think it makes sense to wave away life expectancy as a demographic anomaly: there are counterbalancing anomalies that favor the US (such as tobacco and alcohol consumption), and yet Europe still averages out on top. But even if it was: obesity (and societal compromises made to accommodate it) are part of self-reported QoL metrics. Why ignore that?
The same is true for the Better Life Index: Europe is not exceeding the US in many (or even a majority) of metrics, but is consistently at par with them. The conclusion to draw is that the OECD's framing can be biased, but that bias doesn't actually appear to favor Europe.
As for income: it turns out that perception is everything. Joe Schmoe in America might have more disposable income than the average German or Italian, but he's also aware of his country's lopsided income distribution[1]. That kind of inequality permeates through QoL perceptions.
It doesn’t really succeed in making that case though, there’s a lot of invective but few facts. If you used the same criteria as the author for the US outside of SV how does it compare?
> Today’s Europeans are not yet poor — they are still living off the prosperity created by prior generations, and that enables their passive consumption
Americans have significantly higher disposable income[0] and household net worth[1], and less debt[2]. By what QOL metrics is the average Western European doing better than the average American?
I’ve travelled to quite a few places in Europe and coming from the American Midwest, we are beating much of Europe in most/all QoL metrics by a mile.
Much larger and nicer homes, larger properties, mincer automobiles, more variety of all consumer goods, higher incomes, more wealth and social mobility to name a few and I live in “flyover” country.
Based on conversations I've had, it seems most Americans who think that way took a vacation to a ritzy area of Barcelona, Nice, or Florence, and and deduced that 100% of Europeans, must live like that.
Suicide rates are a good place to start. Overall the EU's suicide rate is 10.25/100k vs 14.04/100k in the US, and it looks like many places in the Midwest are doing worse than the US average.
It's a matter of opinion and what people want, but from American i crossed path with who settled in western Europe: accessible health-care, better infrastructures, holidays and work-life balance are some of the things that are recurring.
I meant by both proxy statistics (e.g. life expectancy) and self-reported statistics (e.g. QoL metrics). I've linked both of those in comments in an adjacent subthread.
I, like many Americans, would take a strong safety net, sustainable urban development and a smaller home over the US's mess of a safety net, socially devastating suburban sprawl, and a 4000 sqft McMansion.
This is what we refer to as "europoor". Sure they have taxpayer funded "healthcare", council "housing", public "transportation" but it's not really what i would want for myself. Those things only exist because the middle class in europe is foced to give up a lifestyle of freedom/autonomy to average it out so the folks below them can get (1 + 0)/2. It won't stand on its own otherwise.
Thankfully the decision isn't being made for me by making those things prohibitively expensive to force me to live in urbania.
It's a decent house out in the suburbs vs some dense urban inner city apartment or something attached to other people with people of varying crazyness for lack of a better word living around you. And if you do want to own a house, it's going to be crazy expensive and cars you can't drive unless it's tuesday and you have an odd numbered license plate.
The people living in the villas are the actual wealthy who gets to bypass the system (ie billionaire flying a private jet to a climate change conference to try to get the government to ban cars to force you to use a packed train). I'm advocating for freedom/autonomy for the middle class instead of grouping everyone who isn't a billionaire together. I'm just saying we add one more partition.