I'm talking about countries like the France and Germany, etc. The U.S. continues to outperform those countries but I'm not sure you can chalk it up to the effectiveness of our government. I'd chalk it up to the U.S. having a head start from WWII and the major European powers being late to adopt market economies. Since then, they've caught up. For example, the U.S. had 50% higher labor productivity per hour of work than France and Germany in the 1970s. Today, it's identical: http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2017/01/09/of-productivity-in....

But again, both countries have less than a third of the US population. And no, I don't think our government gives us any special advantage. But my point is that you can't begin to compare the US to these fractionally sized countries that have the advantage of chasing off all the poor into other cheaper countries in Europe due to high cost of living.

Why are Bel-Air and Manhatten so rich? They are just doing so much better than the rest of the US. They barely have any poor! Must be their local governments and better market economies!