Is the "American Dream" now in Europe? American Reacts

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Hello. Thank you for joining me. Oh boy.

[00:00:03]I got an exciting one today. I'm very excited. I mean, look at this title. Is the American dream now in Europe? Whoa, that's a good title. I am enticed. And I expect the answer to this to be nuanced.

[00:00:18]I'm hoping for a nuanced, you know, analysis out of this, but it is something that I do find very fascinating. You know, I mean, the American dream, what even is the American dream? Kind of have to define it. I guess it's kind of in general viewing America as like a land of opportunity where hard work, you know, with enough hard work you can accomplish whatever you want. Oftent times that being like owning a house, starting a business and maybe even, you know, even the biggest dream, you know, starting a gigantic company, you know, is possible.

[00:00:52]So is, you know, it's kind of a complicated thing or there's many facets to it, I'd say. But anyway, I'm very intrigued by Well, look at this.

[00:01:02]Quantifying an ideology. That's what I love. See, this is a bunch of graphs that try to quantify this question and compare America to Europe. I mean, to me, being in America, it's kind of obvious that like the American dream to some extent has been diminished um over the last few decades seemingly it kind of feels like things have kind of solidified a little bit. you know, like some corporate bureaucracy has has kind of solidified.

[00:01:30]America moves a little bit slowly. It's not as and in that way it doesn't just feel as much as I imagined it used to feel like this just land of fresh new opportunity. But okay, I mean I don't know. I still really I still like America despite Donald Trump. Anyway, let's do it. You know, is it in Europe now is the question.

[00:01:53]Economic mobility. That's a good one.

[00:01:55]You know, are you richer than your parents or can you, you know, move up the income scale, freedom and independence, fair opportunity? These are great things.

[00:02:04]Here we go. In fact, moving up the income scale. Um, so this reflects the ease of climbing the income distribution ladder. European safety nets and funding support a stronger median relative climb. So, here we go. the United States kind of right there in the middle at 70. I'm not exactly sure what that that metric measures. Oh, it's an index. Okay. So, but okay, the European average is actually higher right off the bat.

[00:02:35]European average 75. And in some countries like Denmark, I mean, this is of course is this is going to be a a thing that's a little bit difficult about this entire u assessment is just that we're comparing the United States, one country, to a bunch of countries.

[00:02:51]But yeah, who cares? Let's just do it.

[00:02:54]Certain countries, like in Denmark, apparently, you know, moving up the income scale more attainable than in the United States and in fact in Europe on average, it's more attainable.

[00:03:06]That's that alone a bit shocking. Now, the United States still seems like at a healthy 70 and you know, it's not like it's at the bottom of all European countries, but it's certainly not like some amazing outlier at all. In fact, it's, you know, I mean, really looks like Denmark is a pretty amazing outlier already. Fascinating.

[00:03:32]Fascinating. Let's move on. Richer than your parents. So slightly different metric. I'm trying to think of how this exactly is even different than moving up the income scale. I mean it is different. It really shows two things I think. Like obviously America's GDP has gone up and is continuing to go up very steadily and quickly really. But is that wealth being distributed among the people and among the younger generations? right here. I mean, it's not even really funny, but I can see apparently not very well only 50%. And I do think this is a this can be a little bit of a confusing metric though I will say because like the boomers for example here in America are just very rich and so trying to be like for the next generation to be richer unfortunately difficult thing to do because they're so rich and they kind of like pulled up the ladder a little bit behind them you know at least it feels that way but here you go anyway European average 68% % richer like um well let's see absolute income mobility I guess it means that 68% of people in Europe are or will be or are richer than their parents were in the US only 50% and in Sweden oh man the the Nordic countries are killing it guys Sweden 77 richer than your parents okay so far Europe is killing educational opportunity. Okay.

[00:05:14]USA upper end, you know, higher than the EU average.

[00:05:22]Terriiary attainment. US is highly competitive at 50% ahead of the EU average, 41%.

[00:05:29]However, several EU states like Germany rely heavily on fully funded vocational programs not tracked here.

[00:05:37]That's just another, you know, difficulty in like quantifying this. You know, it's a very difficult thing to quantify because there's different systems in different countries. So, it's frankly just not exactly fair. And honestly, in some of these, it might not be fair toward the United States, but in this instance, it's not fair to, you know, Germany, for example. It's misleading.

[00:05:59]That's what sucks about trying to boil something down just to one number, you know. But with that said, you know, obviously educational opportunity despite exorbitantly high cost still good here in America. That's good to see.

[00:06:15]Personal and economic freedom. This is a this is an interesting one always. Now, freedom's notoriously difficult to quantify. There's a million different indexes that you can look up and say, "Aha, you know, US is number one or aha, US sucks ass." And it just depends on how you measure freedom. You know, very difficult, especially considering, you know, you have like positive and negative freedoms. Like what, you know, what do you prioritize? The freedom to own a gun or the freedom to not get shot? I don't know. Anyway, but with all that said, um, honestly, I don't think there's like a major difference and this kind of, you know, like backs that claim up. Like I don't think there's a huge difference. There might be a couple differences in some categories like freedom of speech which I do value very highly but like overall the fact that we all live in relatively free democracies you know is pretty good but okay so with that said um USA slightly higher than the EU average um but also you know Switzerland higher and for the most part it's not too far off not Too much variance.

[00:07:33]Business ownership rates. Okay.

[00:07:35]Interesting. Interesting.

[00:07:38]Wait, what?

[00:07:40]Greece 32%.

[00:07:44]And the US is all the way down there at 6%.

[00:07:48]And the EU average is 14%. Wow, this is another really shocking one. But I'm also just sitting here thinking like, hold up, hold up. Greece 32%. Like, what does that mean? I mean, like nothing against Greece. In fact, I think Greece is absolutely gorgeous, but like I don't think of it as like uh incredible economic opportunities in Greece. And that number is just weirdly high, you know, 32%. I'm asking the all powerful you um AI guys.

[00:08:21]Greece, the Greek economy is heavily dominated by tourism.

[00:08:25]These specific sectors inherently favor small localized operations. Okay.

[00:08:30]Familyrun hotels.

[00:08:34]Okay. Interesting. Interesting. Whereas the US has become really a more corporate machine. Okay. And this is also an interesting point like apparently in Greece especially after um the debt crisis a lot of people were kind of like forced to try to open up their own small business um because of a lack of jobs.

[00:08:59]Now with all that said Germany is actually still outpacing the US which is actually surprising to me and very interesting. And I imagine it's not for the same reasons as like Greece. The EU average is more than double the US. Wow, that's that's wild. Health insurance and pension ties to W2 jobs block the US risktaking whereas universal coverage lowers the risk. See, that is I I think that's just genius. And it goes just so much toward the argument that we should have some kind of universal health care system here in the United States because not only is it the ethical thing to do, but as far as even like what we're trying to do as a country, like provide people like that's the great thing about a safety net. It's what it's saying right here, you know? I mean, it provides people the opportunity to take some risk because they know they're not going to die.

[00:09:49]Yeah. And I mean in the United States we have, you know, incredible bankruptcy laws for this purpose. And it it it serves that exact same purpose. You know, like it mitigates a lot of the risk because, you know, worst case scenario, you can declare bankruptcy and, you know, essentially get a second clean slate, a new chance. But like we need that for health insurance, too.

[00:10:12]That would be so beneficial. And I'm reading over here in Germany um there's like a lot of the economy is like um a lot of these like master tradesmen that open up their own operations like uh whatever trades you know so that's interesting. That's part of the reason why this number is so high. I think that's a really cool thing and I do think that goes toward like what the idea of the American dream is is to be your own boss. you know, to be a master at a trade and be able to be your own boss. And Germany is doing an a better job at it than the United States. So, that's pretty remarkable. That is pretty remarkable. This is definitely one of the things, one of the takeaways I will take from this is wow the the business ownership, you know, the amount of business owners lower in the United States than in Europe by a lot. It's a little little bit like the opposite of what I would have thought, but it makes sense when I think about it.

[00:11:22]Okay, hypers scale growth gap. Now, this is an interesting one because this is like maybe the only category or the key category when you think of like why is the United States economy so big and what is it, you know, like that the United States does so well and I think this metric might, you know, be a good metric to sum it up. Active unicorns valued at greater than $1 billion founded less than 20 years ago.

[00:11:55]Wow. While Europe excels at small-scale business survival, the US operates a monopoly on massive venturebacked hyperrowth tech systems. There you go.

[00:12:06]That is a very interesting thing. And that is, you know, for as much as it honestly would seem that a huge amount of the American dream is slipping away and is actually more attainable in Europe. Now, I don't even know if I would call this the American dream, though.

[00:12:23]For some people it is. And it's definitely something that I would say is cool and good that we have a bunch of, you know, really young companies that are able to be founded and then grow to a billion dollar valuation. That's pretty amazing. But is that really like the American dream? Not really. But it is it is an interesting metric to look at and be like, you know, why is the US economy what what is special about it?

[00:12:47]And this is one thing that is special about it. So that's interesting because I mean it's absolutely I mean, I'm thinking right now, you know, obviously the United States is a much bigger country. So, that probably in a large part explains, you know, why it's so much bigger. But if you compare it to if you like normalize the population, it's like how many people are in Germany? 80 million, right?

[00:13:13]Um, yeah, 84 million. So, we have like, you know, four times the population. So multiply this by four it's 120.

[00:13:23]So you know it's this disparity is not as big as this graph shows but it is still big desire to start a business.

[00:13:34]This is this goes toward like more of a cultural mindset which is interesting and it's something that the US is ranks high high in. So the United States, it's actually kind of sad to be honest because what this shows is that United States, everybody wants to start a business, but in Europe, people actually do and can because there's just more small business opportunity and and because of the health care thing, you know, it is difficult to take that risk here in the States and give up your health care and have to pay out of pocket for insurance.

[00:14:10]you know it's very expensive just to buy healthare insurance and so like a lot of people just even though they want to so the culture of wanting to is very much there but the system is not set up to enable it very well but it is interesting to see that you know like that American entrepreneurial spirit is still alive it's actually kind of sad we need to fix the system a little bit here in the states I'd say although I mean it's not that much bigger here, you know, 14% European average, 21% U US average. So, it's 50% higher than in the Europe average. Interesting.

[00:14:48]Home ownership.

[00:14:51]Wow. Romania 93.

[00:14:55]And you average actually higher. And I consider this a key component of the American dream is like, I want to own my own home, you know, and apparently in Europe that's more common now.

[00:15:08]Wow. And I knew Germany, you know, for all sorts of reasons, home ownership not as popular, but Europe as a whole actually outpaces the US. US at 65%. But Romania, what the hell's going on in Romania? Everybody has a home, 93%. The EU average sits slightly above the US. The rate is pulled up by postcommunist privatization in the east while renters are the majority in Germany due to exceptional tenant rights.

[00:15:39]That's an interesting one. That's another kind of a surprising one to me as an American, you know, because that is a key component. I want to own a home. You know, that's the American dream, but um not as common. Only 65% here in the States and EU not much different, but 70% median disposable income. Oh, I like that. Disposable income, you know, specifically.

[00:16:10]So, this is um and this is um PPP price pairing par or whatever you know adjusts for the cost of living and inflation highlighting real purchasing power or pricing p power parity. That's what I meant. And taxes and transfers.

[00:16:30]The typical American household, 46,000, is over 75% wealthier in direct purchasing power than the EU average, 26,000.

[00:16:42]Luxembourg.

[00:16:46]Okay. I'm thinking about like is this a component of the American dream? I mean, I guess this is a very fundamental type of just component of wealth. I guess it's interesting thinking about it compared to those first charts where it's like in a lot of European countries, they're outpacing the United States by a lot and like are you richer than your parents were? But the United States is still very much a rich country in which like even if you're poorer than your parents, on average you're still pretty wealthy. But there is also then like and this is the median. So this is good you know as opposed to the mean. This is not just the average. This is like the biggest middle section you know but it does not show you know that in the United States to be fair there's a lot of people that are kind of like suffering because um the social safety net is not very good.

[00:17:43]Income equality the wealth gap.

[00:17:47]Jesus, look at this.

[00:17:52]Look at So this is this is the wealth.

[00:17:54]So wow. You can just see it's exploding here in the United States over the last 40 years, whereas in Europe, it's remained relatively constant.

[00:18:06]Pretty interesting. The 1% pre-tax income share shows extreme polarization. While the US offers a higher ceiling for elite performers, Europe excels at preserving middle class growth distribution.

[00:18:23]Wow, that's a pretty interesting thing.

[00:18:24]I did not know that um income inequality was not a very big problem in Europe.

[00:18:33]That's an interesting thing to think about because like that's that is a very big problem here in the states and it's you know only becoming a bigger problem.

[00:18:46]The optimism paradox guys US optimism despite documented statistics drops in mobility over 70% of Americans believe effort and hard work alone guarantee climbing out of poverty.

[00:19:00]This reveals a strong cultural commitment to a merito meritocratic narrative.

[00:19:07]Conversely, fewer than 50% of Europeans believe that hard work alone easily overcomes systemic barriers. Despite leading in relative social mobility, structural skepticism is far higher.

[00:19:22]Whoa. Isn't that interesting? Despite leading the United States in upward mobility, you guys have less optimism that it's possible to do that and the United States has a lot more optimism.

[00:19:37]That is just really interesting, huh?

[00:19:39]And that's a very difficult qu like this makes it seem, you know, saying that hard work alone guarantees climbing out of poverty.

[00:19:48]Well, first of all, I want to say I'm an extremely optimistic person. So whether I was in the United States or Europe, and I feel like these charts kind of prove that, um I believe it's possible in either one. But with that said, that's not the full picture. Like that fails to acknowledge that tragic things can happen in anyone's life that totally prevent them from being able to, you know, accomplish their dreams. Things that are outside your control. I mean, it happens all the time to everybody.

[00:20:19]And especially somewhere like here in the states um where education has such variance you know like primary education there's a huge variance in quality and if you attend a really lowquality school then my guess is that your outcomes are just not nearly as good and of course the children are not picking what schools they go to. But with that said I do think it's still possible. It's just obviously more difficult for some people than others. And I think that's probably also true in Europe and America. Like no matter how you cut it, if you're born in into like a rich powerful family, it's probably going to be easier for you to be rich and powerful.

[00:21:00]Unfortunately, that's just kind of the nature of uh the world. But it's the interesting thing is trying to develop systems and societies where like overcoming that you know and being born into a non-privileged scenario you know making sure the system still gives you that opportunity that's the interesting thing and so to conclude I thought that was absolutely fascinating and honestly uh the conclusion is that in a lot of metrics actually yes Europe is now leading America in a lot American dream metrics, but America still does have its strengths. That was really interesting, guys. I thought so, at least. Thanks for watching. I'll see you guys tomorrow.

[00:21:45]Bye.