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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Nobody is forced into mediocre existence. People just don't care about material things like they do here.They don't produce as much waste a much as Americans. Perhaps this is your measure of good life. Add $10k of crap Americans buy a year, and health, property taxes, education to that $50k. 
It never crossed my mind in EU that I will be homeless or can't afford to go to the doctors. If this were in the back of my mind all the time, sure I want to become well off. This is not a worry in EU.
The ones who have the drive, do get rich. Look at the unicorns per capita for Estonia. The education level for the poor is so much better than in US (see Pisa 2022). If any, the poor are forced and stay in poverty in US because of their education level. 
Don't confuse not wanting to be uber rich with being held back. Europeans can invest in the markets/real estate just like anyone else. It's just not as important as it is here.
It actually seems more important to Eastern Europeans as we remember not being able to do so. But our kids are getting 'soft' as the need for extra things or money is not there. Experiences yes, but not things. They definitely travel more than people in US.
I'm from EE, but living here. I talk about money and the need to get rich more than my friends back at home. They need me to shut up and just enjoy the party.
They have access to American stock market and their own markets. They have the 20 euros a day to throw into it to retire early. They'd rather enjoy it, because they already live as if they are semi-retired.
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Europeans don't consume "10k of crap a year" because they can't afford to. It's that simple, they're not more altruistic.

There's plenty of homeless people. Not sure why you're implying this. Most if not all are people with clear substance or mental problems. Which is also true for homeless people in the US too... look around DC, these aren't people temporarily down on their luck. We also have plenty of Section 8 subsidized housing. We can make this a battle of stats, but I find it weird people are trying to place Europeans on some kind of higher moral plane, which makes no sense to anyone who's actually lived in Europe and knows 1) they're just as materialistic, 2) they make less money, 3) they have plenty of issues of their own, 4) each country is different so what works in Austria doesn't mean it's the case in the UK (which has massive housing shortages and affordability issues, for example, far outstripping the US). [/quote]

This really isn’t true.  A good friend is a principal at a PE group in Germany that owns consumer products companies.  He makes millions.

He commented to me that it’s very odd analyzing acquisitions in the US because the average person buys two or three of something when the average European will own only one no matter their income.  His company specializes in high end consumer products, so it’s not looking at super mass market.

As an example, at one point they owned (maybe still do) one of the high end European stroller companies.  The average European that can afford it, owns one of these (including himself…and absent having twins), while the average for an American was like 2.5.  Again, they account for number of kids, twins etc…this is just Americans having a different consumer view on items.

This guys could afford to buy as much crap as he wants, but he says it’s a huge cultural difference in consumerism.  He only owns one car even though he could own 10 if he wanted…but he lives in Frankfurt and has no need for more than one.[/quote]

Anecdotal. Irrelevant. "I claim this online without any data to back me up."

I can match your anecdote with any anecdote from the US where we do have frugal altruistic millionaires too. I don't care about "friends" who happen to live in Europe. I've actually lived in Europe, both in the UK and Germany. The idea people are deliberately less materialistic across society as opposed to a particular individual or a particular group of people is, frankly, quite bizarre. And anyone who's spent time on the high streets and downtown shopping areas of any city and town in Europe knows how silly this is! Most people are limited by two things: income and space. Americans spend more because we can, we have the income and the space.

It can mean Europeans face a somewhat different basket of goods, allowing them to do things like spend more on vacations because they may get more vacation time and they have access to a vacation based economy that makes it affordable and feasible to spend a few weeks at an all inclusive hotel along the Mediterranean somewhere. On the other hand, Europeans in most of the major cities face issues over housing affordability (often even worse because of lower incomes) and scarcity of housing supply. Most Europeans live in far less salubrious or interesting areas than those typically visited by American tourists. [/quote]

The problem is you didn't read the post.  It's not an anecdote on how my one friend spends, but rather how a major global PE company analyzes (Permira if you care) consumer products companies and commits real money to buying them.  They have to accept that an American consumer will purchase a $1000 stroller for home and one they will just leave in the car because why deal with the hassle of folding it up and putting the one stroller in the trunk...which is a foreign concept to most Europeans even at same levels of income and wealth.  The spending profiles that they are looking at across entire countries at similar incomes and wealth are very different between Europeans and Americans.

What's bizarre is for you to make your ridiculous claims based on absolutely nothing other than people walking down high streets in European cities...which also happen to be the highest tourist areas of these cities as well.[/quote]

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