[whimsicalism]

Americans as a whole have a very high quality of life. If you consider the entire life time of our country, the US has accepted substantially many more poor immigrants than EU per cap - and then brought the median of those people to a quality of life comparable or higher than the EU countries.

If you consider just the descendents of the original population in the US in, say, 1900 - they are doing vastly better than equivalent in Europe. It is only because we let in so many more poor people that the median stays deflated, but people move up.

After eliminating differences due to obesity, the US also has better healthcare outcomes than the EU. Every time I go back to Europe it feels like the society is getting comparatively poorer.