People in some European countries don't know how good they have it, not having to worry about things like healthcare and medicinal costs, parental leave, vacation leave, and access to higher education.

I raise you South America, where we have low income, high taxes and public healthcare which barely works so we usually end up paying for private healthcare too. Pretty much the same with education too.

No, we constantly hear how good we are supposed to have it with healthcare and education, and how it's horrible in the US.

Nobody talks about how qualified workers are earning 3x more in the US, with everyday items costing less.

Life is pretty awesome for top 10% in the US compared to European countries, and comparable for top 20%. But bottom 80% in Europe will have have better quality of life than bottom 80% in the US, which is the source of those price savings on everyday items and 3x incomes for “qualified” workers.

Not sure about your percentages, but yes in essence this is the pros and cons of socialist countries. Now the question is wether this is good for a given country in the long run, knowing that socialist countries will tend to attract poor people, and will tend to lose some of their rich people.

If there is a correlation between an individual's economic success and that individual's contribution to society, then socialist countries will become less and less competitive compared to the other countries who on the contrario will be gaining people that contribute more to society and losing people that contribute less.

Yeah all those costs are just distributed elsewhere. Like healthcare, dental, eye care, lower wages in everything other than tech, housing, lack of public transit... etc.

I feel most of what you say...

But I'm happy with high prices for technology and free healthcare and almost free education.

You can spare 500€ when you're not spending 5-10 k€ or more in hospital bills.