The choice isn't about getting massively poorer, it's just whether you want to be able to look your fellow citizens in the face and know you aren't for supporting a system that sees their children die so you can save a few dollars more in tax.
Incidentally, it's also the only country in the EU with a higher GDP/capita than the US.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
As for national incomes - see my comment below but unless you are subtracting out costs for healthcare and other services offered to all citizens that are not offered by the US government you are not comparing apples to apples either.
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.CD?location...
Also talk about ajusted PPP, to account for higher or lower local costs (and accounting shenanigans like double irish with dutch sandwich)
When not cheating, US is #2, only behind Luxembourg, even if my local observations do not support this conclusion:
Apparently healthcare in the US is something like $10k per person per year? Seems fair to take that from the US median income so we are comparing apples with apples. Looking at your wikipedia link that would put the US down around 11th... After Belgium, Norway, Austria, etc and that is before we start talking about education.
Look - your point that people in USA have more money is mostly true. But when you add in the extras you have to pay for the difference is not as big as you might think. And none of that explains why pregnancy related deaths are so comparatively high.
No, because it's a choice.
Many people don't go to university etc and do just fine.
Likewise, healthcare is a choice: some people don't want that (ex: DNR)
You want to push your values, and say impose higher education, but the way I look at it, since the people with the more education are generally at the top of the "foodchain" in the EU, I only see that as them voting for themselves a right to paid education, in theory accessible to the poor/immigrants etc but in practice that is mostly used by those at the top of the foodchain themselves, yet and subsidized by the rest of the population.
I'm not a big fan.
> Look - your point that people in USA have more money is mostly true. But when you add in the extras you have to pay
You don't have to pay for them - it's OPTIONAL. That's freedom.
What even is wealth if you won't use it to prevent the death of children when that is in your power to do?
The price can't be that high because countries poorer than ours find a way to pay it. What are we getting instead? What is it you're afraid to give up, for this?
About the only thing I'd be unhappy about trading with Europe, as far as income plus services and worker standards (time off, healthcare, retirement, primary-university education, child care, et c.) goes, is their housing situation.
Of course, ours is completely fucked too and some of us are only doing better because wages are more uneven here.
Like, if we could actually get all their social services and other perks in exchange, I'd be OK with a big pay cut. I mostly need this much money here to make up for not having those things, or for the ones provided being terrible and having to be supplemented or replaced out of pocket.
Well, that depends. Are we talking about your child or my child?
Give it a few generations and it doesn't matter.
Funny enough, in the US, our rich and retired try to move to the EU, while young people from the EU try to move to here.
So if the people flow is to be believed, it's clear which place favors the working class, and which places favor a rentier approach.
US politicians when someone proposes a military budget: here, have 50% more just in case
If you would travel to those places, you would find stark differences in real quality of life which can't be easily measured by simple aggregate numbers, people's happiness and life satisfaction.
A better question is, why should the state support people getting fired?
> If you would travel to those places, you would find stark differences in real quality of life which can't be easily measured by simple aggregate numbers, people's happiness and life satisfaction.
I did: oh yeah it's nice, as a tourist. But here is no amount of money you could pay me to work and live there - and that's assuming the money would make sense on the paper, unlikely given the high taxes while the prices are also high.
The killing factor is the very small amount of private options if you want to avoid dysfunctioning government monopolies.
See, you admit it yourself - you went as a tourist. Thus you have clue how people actually live, how happy they are etc. Europe is cca 30 very different and diverse states and you clearly saw tiny fraction since what you state is simply not true in quite a few.
For my case point - I've lived in US, LA and Maine. While I loved common folks for their openness, the system is utterly fucked up for me and I would never want to live and raise my kids there, regardless of paycheck (which as I stated is useless measure since its not what you save if you actually live and manage to get old). Also - high criminality, police state and messed up jail system, workoholism attitude, effective class system based on career/income/wealth. And so on.
Since you don't react to that use of your tax money to wage wars and killing of hundreds of thousands of innocents I guess you don't care about that at all.
Also, it's missing the crucial implication: at what price?
With infinite amount of money, there are many things we could do. We don't have infinite money.
Consider how the richest EU state in adjusted PPP per capita (so price levels can't be blamed) is just now barely richer than the poorest US state, in both the median and average
Do we really want to become that poor? Is equality (in everyone being poor) a social goal?