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> higher education are free

Many of the states[0] have started offering free or low cost tuition for their public community colleges and trade schools, and low cost tuition for their colleges and universities. For example, Minnesota offers tuition at a state college starting at $6k a year[0] and free tuition at community colleges if you're earning under $80k[1]. Those prices are before financial aid, grants, scholarships, etc which are widely available from multiple sources.

[0] https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/states-with-free-tuition/

[1] https://www.minnstate.edu/admissions/affordability.html

[2] https://www.nhcc.edu/free-college-tuition-nhcc

As for the rest of your comment, you have a very distorted of what life in the US is like. Also, nothing you list is "free" in Europe, there's just a lot of rather regressive taxes that are collected to pay for it all. The US federal tax structure is actually rather progressive, but that also means there's less money for the feds to pay for all of those "free" things.

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Not sure we do have better quality of life in Europe. We may have in the 2000s, but we're in decline relative to the US. Even if you take things like healthcare into account:

US average disposable income is $51,000, while it's $32,000 in the UK (with higher rents in the UK than the US).

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Citation? Median earnings is less than that. And median household income is only marginally more.

the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the median annual earnings for all workers (people aged 15 and over with earnings) was $51,370; and more specifically estimates that median annual earnings for those who worked full-time, year round, was $63,360.

According to the CPS, the median household income was $70,784 in 2021.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

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That's income, not disposable income. It's also median, instead of mean. It's also incredibly wrong. Median income in the UK is £39,039 which is about $49,500.. You linked to the US Wikipedia page twice.

OECD is the source for disposable income.

US: https://oecd-better-life-index.truth-and-beauty.net/countrie...

UK: https://oecd-better-life-index.truth-and-beauty.net/countrie...

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The UK is still better a lot of ways but there's a reason it's called "the America of Europe"
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