Maybe it's just ignorance then. Quality of life in Northern Europe is far better than it ever was in California, which in retrospect looks like a joke.
Probably the most objective way is to measure how people vote with their feet.
I don’t know, my siblings and I do better than our parents who put time in to raise us. We didn’t have much except each other. We weren’t without but we never had a vacation or went out to eat. Went to public schools, etc. But my parents respected each other and sacrificed a bit to raise us. I’d say my family has moved from working class into middle class and upper middle class for some of us.
Our quality of life seems pretty nice. It’s weird because when I moved to nyc many of the people that complained a lot were from well to do families and they clearly weren’t doing better. They were being recycled downwards and they seemed to resent successful people because of it. They make a lot of noise but my friends back home, many of which are doing better than their folks, don’t go on social media talking about.
Yeah, you have a “engineer” bias: people move to the US when they make top 10% income because it’s the only way your life is better than in a Western European country. You don’t see Europeans making median wage in the US because that would be quite stupid.
My parents combined make maybe 15-20% of my income in the US, they still go on more vacation than me, don’t have to worry about figuring out how healthcare work (yup gotta make sure you don’t go to a out of network hospital by accident otherwise hello 300000$ debt), and sent their kids to university for almost free.
I guess it would sound like that if you don't know anything about it and don't bother to look into it and don't realize people, including the OECD, thoroughly study it. [1][2] Furthermore, it's pretty idiotic to ignore subjectivity since it's the only thing that really matters in the end. If people in Europe rate their life better then Americans do then clearly Europeans are better off.
