I recently attended the Kilkenomics festival in Kilkenny, Ireland. It’s a great event — comedians and economists on the same stage balance each other — and Ireland is lovely. Because I’m American, I ended up on two panels about the United States. Comedians joked about American health care, poverty, guns, and politics, and the crowd loved it. But what once felt like friendly teasing now felt strained. Europeans have good reason to be angry with the US over recent policy moves by Trump-era officials: cuts to aid for Ukraine and the Baltics, tariff threats, sympathy for Russia, and anti-immigration posturing. Compared with that, jokes about US health care and guns are mild.
Still, this recurring litany of American shortcomings often functions as a kind of cope: a way for Europeans to avoid confronting their own serious problems by consoling themselves with “Well, America is worse!” The common claims I hear include: Americans don’t have health care; the US is poverty-ridden with no social safety net; American politics is dominated by plutocrats; Americans are uneducated; and America is full of guns and violence.
Many of these claims are exaggerated or outdated. More importantly, even if they were all true, they wouldn’t reduce Europe’s need to face its own structural challenges.
America and Europe are broadly similar
Debates on social media usually frame systems as head-to-head competitions: which is better, America or Europe? That’s largely a zero-sum question and not very useful. Almost every country already has its institutions in place, and in practice the US and European states look a lot alike: capitalist economies with significant taxation, social spending, and reasonably efficient public services.
Contrary to widespread belief, the US is not stingy on social spending compared with many European countries. Measures of tax progressivity show the US is about as redistributive as parts of Europe (Fisher-Post and Gethin, 2025). Indices of “economic freedom” and World Bank indicators place the US roughly alongside North European countries on business-friendliness. Many differences reflect history and path-dependence more than deep philosophical divides. In short, whether a country styles itself on an “American” or “European” model, the end result would look surprisingly similar.
Why Eurocope is pointless
Criticizing the US has limited upside for Europe. First, Europe and America are allies; American weakness harms European security and prosperity. Second, pointing out American faults does nothing to fix Europe’s own problems. Europe faces stagnating living standards, an acute Russian military threat, high energy costs, burdensome regulation that impedes construction and new projects, and structural fiscal pressures. These problems interact: stagnation makes welfare and defense harder to fund; high energy costs erode industry competitiveness; and heavy regulation slows the green transition.
Journalists and analysts have highlighted these woes. The Wall Street Journal summarized Europe as aging, economically stagnant, and losing global clout, noting rising taxes and regulation, sluggish growth, and costly permitting processes. The Financial Times and industry bodies report that electrification has stalled at around 22–23% of final energy use for years, similar to the US, while China accelerates toward 30%. Energy costs in Europe remain two to five times higher than in the US or China in many contexts. Grid interconnection, permitting backlogs, energy taxation, and fragmented national priorities have hindered the energy transition, with some grid connections delayed into the mid-2030s.
China’s industrial ascent has also exposed Europe’s vulnerabilities. German industrial production and exports have weakened as Chinese manufacturing has scaled up and subsidized key industries. Chinese firms have gained market share in autos, chemicals, and machinery, threatening jobs and industrial clusters that once defined Europe’s comparative advantage. Europe should be well-positioned to lead in batteries, solar, and EVs given its climate commitments, but instead it largely imports green technologies from China.
Bashing America won’t build an EV industry, a domestic battery sector, or a resilient defense posture. Taunting US inequality won’t lower European electricity prices. Mocking American politics won’t let France build more power plants. Such comparisons distract from the hard work Europe needs to do: reform regulation, speed permitting, improve grid investment, and address competitiveness.
Some American traits would help Europe
That’s not to say Europe should copy everything American. But to build new industries and defense capabilities, Europe must loosen certain constraints: streamline factory and infrastructure permitting, ease restrictions on mining and mineral refining where appropriate, and reform labor and corporate regulations to encourage investment and scale. These changes could increase top-end inequality and short-term emissions, but they may be necessary trade-offs to create strategic industries and jobs. In that limited sense, becoming a bit more like the US on entrepreneurship and regulatory flexibility could help Europe achieve critical industrial goals.
Eurocope is outdated
“Eurocope” stereotypes often rest on an image of America from the 1990s and 2000s. Much has changed. Most Americans now have health insurance. Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act dramatically reduced the uninsured rate; many remaining uninsured are young people who often opt out. Americans also pay a smaller share of health costs out of pocket than British or Swedish citizens in some measures. The US still lags in access, equity, and administrative efficiency (Commonwealth Fund), so more reform is needed, but the claim that Americans “don’t have health care” is inaccurate.
America has also moved away from laissez-faire in many ways. Tax progressivity has increased and social programs like SNAP, EITC, the Child Tax Credit, housing assistance, and expanded health programs have strengthened the safety net. Research shows the US redistributes a substantial share of national income to low-income groups; some findings even suggest the US redistributes as much or more than many European countries once indirect taxes and in-kind transfers are counted (Blanchet et al., 2022). The persistence of higher US inequality is often due more to pre-tax wage disparities (“predistribution”) than to a lack of redistribution.
Education and governance stereotypes are overblown. On international assessments like PISA, American students show a wide distribution by race and ethnicity — unequal, but not uniformly underperforming. Political scientists note that middle-class preferences still matter in US politics, and corporate elites don’t fully dominate policymaking.
That said, some Eurocope claims are true: the US is more violent, more unequal, Americans work longer hours, and public transit in many US cities is worse than in Europe. But many common beliefs about American dysfunction are at least partly outdated.
What Europe should do
Europe needs to stop consoling itself with comparisons and focus on structural reform. Key priorities include:
– Speeding permitting and grid interconnection to accelerate electrification.
– Reforming energy taxation and incentivizing grid investment to lower industrial power costs.
– Easing regulatory barriers that block new industrial projects, mining, refining, and factory construction where environmentally and socially responsible.
– Investing in defense and coordination to counter Russia and other strategic threats.
– Supporting innovation and scaling of green industries so Europe makes, not just consumes, critical technologies.
These changes will be politically hard and will require trade-offs, but shrugging off or mocking the US won’t help. Europe would be better served by learning from constructive aspects of American policy responses (not by adopting its excesses), and by marshalling the political will to update institutions and industrial policy for the 21st century.
Conclusion
Mocking America for supposed barbarisms is a cheap morale boost that masks Europe’s deeper problems. Eurocope — the reflex to point across the Atlantic to avoid self-scrutiny — is counterproductive and often inaccurate. Many critiques of the US are outdated; many European complaints won’t be solved by scoring rhetorical points. Europe should stop making excuses and start the hard work of reforming its energy systems, regulation, and industrial policy so it can compete, defend itself, and deliver prosperity to its citizens.
