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19/04/2025

Are living standards higher in Europe than the US?

In her softball interview with German newspaper Zeit, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen claimed living standards were higher in Europe than in the US.

“We don’t have bros or oligarchs making the rules,” she said, in one of her first direct criticisms of the US Donald Trump's administration.

“In Europe, children can go to good schools however wealthy their parents are…You can make money anywhere in the world. But where do you want to raise your children? Where do you want to be if your health isn’t great? When you get older?”

Comparing trans-Atlantic living standards involves many metrics, so for an overview I asked Artificial Intelligence Grok. The US strengths, I learned, are “higher incomes, larger homes, a dynamic economy and top-tier opportunities for high earners”. The US is the better choice “for those prioritising career growth and consumerism”.

Europe, on the other hand, enjoys “universal healthcare, affordable education, [a better] work-life balance, safety and equality”. It’s the best place to live “for those valuing security and community”.

In conclusion, the US “offers more individual freedom and earning potential but with greater risk and inequality”, whereas Europe “provides stability and equity but with higher taxes and less disposable income”.

Leaving aside the fact that both Europe and the US have large regional wealth differences, my interpretation of this data is that it’s better to live in the US if you are relatively wealthy, and better to live in Europe if you are relatively poor.

The current fortunes of the blocs’ economies should also be taken into account. The US has over the last decade grown much faster than the EU, especially since Covid. The US easily outpaces Europe in industries such as big tech. American labour mobility is higher, and energy import dependence lower. Starting and growing a business is much easier in the US, if only because the market is bigger, largely mono-lingual and boasts fewer inter-state bureaucratic barriers.

Europe on the other hand doesn’t have the US gun problem. European food variety is probably better, and its cultural heritage is unmatched.

As for the weather, the US has the edge; you can swim in the sea off Florida all year round, unlike in Europe.

It is, in the final analysis, something of a toss-up. Political polarisation is worsening on both sides of the pond. Both sides have lost geopolitical weight to Asia, although Europe’s slide seems to me to be more pronounced.

As a sign-off, I would like to protest that the Zeit interview bordered on the sycophantic. Why was Madame von der Leyen not questioned about the growing number of EU scandals? What about Qatargate and her text-based deals with vaccine manufacturer Pfizer? What are her views on the Romanian presidential election and the elimination of the front-runner?

“May I sing Europe’s praises?”, she asked her interviewer. “Absolutely”, came the answer. Pass the sick bucket please!

“Does the EU have the power to tame the ‘evil spirits’ within?” asked Zeit — a reference to Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni. Not much editorial impartiality there!

“Are you the leader of the free world now?” was one of the questions. The EC chief replied that she “didn’t like labels”, no doubt hiding her desire to answer in the affirmative.

Much has been made online of von der Leyen’s “bold” comments, though I would be considerably more impressed if she had given an interview to a publication that was less fawning.

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On this day in 1961, a famous island invasion began, do you know which one?

For the answer, check back in the next Brussels Calling.

As for our previous question:

On this day, who became the first woman to fly solo across the English Channel?

She flew a Blériot XI — a fragile monoplane made of wood and fabric, open to the wind, guided only by a basic compass and her own sense of direction. There were no radio communications, no real weather forecasts, and no modern instruments.

Pilots in those days were part flyer, part mechanic, part navigator, operating machines that barely held together in the air. Flight was not yet routine; it was still experimental, raw, and often dangerous.

Quimby’s journey from journalist to aviator was itself unusual. She had a background in writing and photography, not engineering, and earned her pilot’s licence in 1911 — the first woman in the United States to do so. At the time, female pilots were often treated as curiosities in airshows. But Quimby approached aviation seriously. She studied aircraft, wrote about flight, and sought out real challenges. The Channel crossing was one of the most iconic tests a pilot could face.

Her landing near Hardelot, France, wasn’t greeted with fanfare — news of the Titanic sinking had just broken — but her achievement stood on its own. She had flown alone, across open water, in a time when even short flights were unpredictable. It wasn’t a stunt. It was a small but important step in proving that controlled, long-distance flight could be learned, repeated, and refined.

That she was a woman made it notable. That she succeeded, in such a fragile craft, in such early days of aviation, made it matter.

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