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But you miss the point here: it's not about GDP numbers, or even general economic strength. More generally, Euro-elitists smugly enjoy a sense of superiority over things like crime, urbanism, healthcare, which isn't really directly related to GDP growth, and more about systemic factors directly rooted in US life—not easily gotten rid of with a bigger economy.
Also, insufferable? Maybe, but Americans often exhibit similarly chauvinistic behaviors too... bashing western Europeans over their cowardice and pacifism is a pretty popular trope, especially virulently in the 2000s hysteria over Iraq ('Freedom fries' and posters like "Now Iraq; Then France": there was a lot of butthurt back then)
And that's to say nothing of criticism of other, often poorer nations...
Elitism over issues like crime is often a way to signal leftist ideals to boost one's social status, e.g. saying that crime is bad because of racism. That's the preferred way to explain disproportionate shares of black criminality in society. Hence the implication that white Americans are in effect partly to blame for this state of affairs due to their past and present sins.
It's not even elitism that's intelligent, which would be arguing that the US should police violent people more harshly without regard to race, so it comes across as fairly meaningless. Europe's lower crime rates are an accident of history (few imported slaves) rather than an inherently superior system.
So my contention is that even in areas where there are reasons for Europeans to be objectively smug over Americans, the way it's done is often incoherent and displays ignorance of the root causes of US dysfunction, such as crime in this instance.
As for healthcare, that is partially about income too. While I am no expert on healthcare, I think the meme that a large proportion of Americans are just one paycheck away from medically-induce bankruptcy has been disproven countless times yet it keeps resurrecting itself. I'm not sold on the idea that Europeans have better healthcare than Americans. If you look at the amount of innovation in the US healthcare system, nowhere in Europe does there seem to be any equivalent. Perhaps only Switzerland comes close in per capita.
Nah, the narrative is more often about guns.
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You do know that American white homicide rates are sky-high by European standards?
Not really. Lithuania is nearly twice the level of white Americans. US white numbers are above the EU median but nothing unheard of, and certainly not "sky high".
Isn’t Lithuania’s murder rate an outlier in the EU? I agree that sky-high might be a bit of an exaggeration, but US white homicide rates would be shocking in most of Europe.
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From a perspective outside to both - Australian - my experience of both continents was that the natives were generally very friendly and kind, but both also had a tendency to be intolerably smug in some way.
In America, it took the form of the unthinking, automatic assumption that America is the best place in the world, that everyone else seeks to be like them, and then on some level there was this patronising belief that everyone else should be flattered to be noticed by America. Americans firmly believe that they're the greatest in the world, and they like hearing that repeated by others. Americans also like to deign to offer other countries their recognition and sympathy as if we should feel grateful for it. There's this whole underlying belief that the world revolve around America, and no comprehension that other people may not feel that way.
In Europe, it took the form of an only-partially-buried condescension, and the sort of bitter resentment that understands that they need foreigners, but that they ought to be on top of the relationship. It's often very visible when it comes to language, but even in the UK, every now and then you come across the sense that they are the centre of civilisation and on some level we're still just a bunch of unwashed colonials who've gotten inflated opinions of ourselves. I can remember people on the continent saying 'merci' or 'grazie' with a tone of utter contempt, or I can remember people snottily saying 'in this country...' before explaining something in a way that makes it clear that they consider every other country to be not really civilised.
Americans are smug in the infuriating, un-self-conscious way of people who know they're the superpower. Europeans are smug in the quiet, bitter way of people who know that they ought to be the superpower, but aren't.
They can both be quite ugly.
However, to be clear, none of this invalidates the many wonderful people I met or wonderful experiences I had in both regions, and the majority of memories I have of each continent are very positive and happy.
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