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.

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 :) .

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

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