Just ask, if they think they prefer US-style "growth", would they really prefer to live in a country like the United States? (The answer for the very wealthy, or those who imagine they will become very wealthy, might be yes. For everyone else, there's really no comparison in quality of life.)

"The grass is always greener" can be a dangerous tendency in politics. "Don't it always seem to know you don't know what you got 'til it's gone." ~Joni Mitchell

Do you really wish Facebook, Google, Coinbase, Amazon were European “successes”? Maybe Apple, NVIDIA, but they are as much Chinese and Taiwanese as American stories. The programming language I write all day is developed in Switzerland and Poland. 1/

Europe lags not in technology, but friendliness to business and capital. And that is at best a double-edged sword. /fin

Are you sure the claim is true that the US has grown so much faster? It is true, if you define growth by conventional stats. 1/

But the US drops in ranking if, for example, you subtract health care from GDP (of every country in your dataset). 2/

If you think the US does not overall provide more welfare conducive health care than European states (a pretty easy claim to support!), then health care’s larger share of GDP in the US should not count as prosperity. 3/

The claim generalizes. Mechanically, rentierism increases GDP. If good internet costs twice as much here, because telecoms are not competitive, that’s scored as greater GDP. 4/

Magazines like The Economist will talk about US outperformance. But they implicitly view the world from the perspective of investors. Most people’s welfare is not primarily a function of financial investment returns. But they persuade us this is a valid, “objective” way to look at the world. 5/

Rentierism is real growth, from investors’ perspective. It is extraction from everybody else’s perspective. 6/

The contemporary United States is not to be emulated. It is a cautionary tale. Europe’s social difficulties stem from having taken too much inspiration from the US, not from failing to follow in US footsteps sufficiently. Careful what you wish for. /fin

it has not always been like this. it’s always been a thread of American culture, but during some time periods (especially the early postwar years), the US government was highly trusted. 1/

the failures and injustices of the early 21st century, plus media able to circumvent traditional gatekeepers which are well funded by plutocrats to discredit government, have left us in a very bad place. /fin