Public transportation is very bad in the U.S. Even in major cities. For the vast majority of people a car is a necessity in the U.S. Most Americans end up in debt to buy a car. Then there is insurance and the opportunity cost of the government having to spend a great deal of money on road maintenance that could otherwise be spent on things like education.

European cities have much higher population density, and the lower personal income (often via higher taxes and, ironically, worker protection laws) changes the tradeoff between driving and taking pub trans, so more people take the bus. The tradeoff is that a lot of people live in small boxes.

And european governments have plenty of bs job creation engines like roadwork, too.

Would be nice to have some data. One related observation, that seems less surprising the longer I live here, is that europe has no spacex, google, tesla, nasa, coherent mars rovers, the list goes on... if you give people stuff, they're mostly just afraid someone's going to take it away. But yeah, to echo someone else's comment, I'd rather be poor, or even average, in Europe. I guess being super wealthy here wouldn't be that bad either, since nobody's nipping at your heels.

> europe has no spacex, google, tesla, nasa, coherent mars rovers, the list goes on...

The European Space Agency, Airbus, a huge number of car manufacturer, ... It's not surprising that the #1 economy in the world has more big company than the #3 one (when they decide to group). A lot can be said also about the American culture and politics when it comes to entrepreneurship. But presenting Europe like its devoid of any important industry is also outright false :) .

> And european governments have plenty of bs job creation engines like roadwork, too.

Do you really think that there isn't economic value in roadworks?

US BS job creation is in healthcare, particularly insurance processing and billing, not roads.

Printing paper checks in the 21st century....

>that seems less surprising the longer I live here, is that europe has no spacex, google, tesla, nasa, coherent mars rovers

These lists are meaningless. I can do the same thing and get smug about Intel, TSMC and Samsung buying EUV equipment from Europe.

Cars are required in most cities in the US to hold a job due to lack of public transportation.

Cars are required in most rural areas in the US because there is no other way around.

On that second point, a perspective note for non-US people who don't realize: Sweden has about the same geographic area as just California. Only covers about 5% of the whole contiguous US.

And there's 40 million people in California compared to 10 million in Sweden. So comparatively California is a densely populated mecca.

Transportation costs for most individuals are related to density at a city level, not a nation level, so I don’t see the relevance of comparing density of a nation.

Size comparison, for reference: https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTM4NDAyOTc.MTA5MjczODQ...