No, Americans Aren’t Better Off Than Western Europeans

There has been a weird debate over the last few months about whether the United States is better off than Western Europe. The participants of this debate tend to operate under the shared premise that people in the United States are richer than people in Western Europe, and then quibble over whether that means it is better. But this shared premise is incorrect. Once you adjust typical economic aggregates for hours worked and inequality, Western Europe clearly pulls ahead of the United…