>Education Do you mean pre-college? In which case the US spends more per pupil than OECD average by quite a bit. If you mean college, then most OECD countries

>Education Do you mean pre-college? In which case the US spends more per pupil than OECD average by quite a bit. If you mean college, then most OECD countries have nowhere the number of people in college as the US. And there are ample cheap local colleges in the US - people choose more costly ones because they can. >healthcare Yep, I stated that one. We're about twice the per capita cost as OECD countries. That cost is spread through the system, including doctor and nurse salaries being quite a bit higher. This is likely due to Baumol's Cost Disease, since almost all higher skilled jobs in the US pay about twice OECD countries. So to drive our cost to OECD levels, you'd need to mandate locally low salaries for doctors and nurses, which would result in lower quality care. I'm not sure what a solution is here, but it's highly nontrivial. >transportation Gas far cheaper in the US than OECD average, and likely cheaper than most if not all OECD countries. Or did you mean in city busses? In which case ours are similar. Or did you mean metro tickets? Again, same cost. Or are you talking about intra-city routes, in which case again we're similar costs. Please clarify with data. >not to mention bad public services... All depends on where you live. To compare the US (by area and population) to somewhere else, you'd need to include the entire EU, or all of OECD, in which case you're adding places with terrible services. If you want to pick small, nice countries, then pick small, nice states, and again, very similar.