Agreed. For context, in the Netherlands you pay about $100 in monthly healthcare insurance. You pay about $160 a month for college tuition. You don't need a car

Agreed. For context, in the Netherlands you pay about $100 in monthly healthcare insurance. You pay about $160 a month for college tuition. You don't need a car, and transport to work (by public transport, car or indeed bicycle) is generally paid for by your company. Student loans are available at 0% at the moment. There's housing and healthcare subsidies for lower-incomes. (<$34k) I'm not sure about housing though. There's a few crazy cities in the US, NY, SF, LA etc. But by and large, the median American pays a substantially lower square footage price than citizens of somewhat similarly rich European countries like the UK, Netherlands, France, Germany, as far as I'm aware. And we also have our outliers in London, Paris etc where the price-income ratio is off the charts. The US has far more land and is far less dense than Western-Europe, with land prices as a function of density (demand for land) I'd say Europeans have less real purchasing power on housing.