The flip side of this is Europeans discrediting America because it doesn’t perform as well as Nordic countries. This kind of chauvinist attitude is really commo

The flip side of this is Europeans discrediting America because it doesn’t perform as well as Nordic countries. This kind of chauvinist attitude is really common on this site and it’s super obnoxious, because Nordic countries really aren’t comparable to the US as a whole, on basically any measure that you choose. Iceland has roughly the population of Glendale, California, which is one of a couple dozen satellite cities which, along with Los Angeles proper, make up the Greater Los Angeles area, which is one of two major metro areas in California, which is one of 50 states of the US. You can find plenty of ~300k metro areas in the US that are a good match for Iceland, and plenty that aren’t. If you want to understand American over and underperformance on various metrics, you have to look at why, say, Sweden does so well on various metrics and, say, Greece does not. Because the scale of the US is similar to Europe as a whole.