The EU shares common regulatory characteristics as well as a common capital market often. Comparing the two systems is not "nationalistic flamebait" and I find it sort of absurd to suggest so.
Different economic systems have an impact on people's well being. I didn't realize it was verboten to suggest so.
re: paywalls, I agree they are annoying (ironic that given the subject matter of the post they will likely become much more common), but you can use archive.is
I think that's pretty telling.
You're not doing "a comparison between different economic systems" in the sense of wanting to compare trade-offs. The picture you're painting is so one-dimensional that it's no basis for discussion. It's just a rallying point for people to argue whether Europe sucks or the US sucks.
I feel it doesn't, as it doesn't even try to present any sort of nuanced argument, it's really just nationalistic flame-bait.
It's one thing to express the opinion that one worries that excessive regulation might mean a competitive disadvantage in the long run. It's quite another to accuse the whole continent of Europe to be "free-loaders" just because some (paywalled) opinion piece in the Economist wrote it, or to accuse it of making its people poorer.