The article itself cherry-picked France and Mississippi to compare income levels, which is why I continued the example. The additional data points are interesti

The article itself cherry-picked France and Mississippi to compare income levels, which is why I continued the example. The additional data points are interesting and valuable, though speaking of cherry picking, Azerbaijan somewhat dubiously qualifies as a European country (neither it nor Moldova are part of the EU or Schengen, for instance). Anyway, the fact that the best of US is somewhat worse than the best of EU continues to help make my point, which is that high US income does not compensate for the poorer quality of life.