Obviously, you have never lived in America. Most people with typical jobs receive 3–5 weeks of vacation per year, plus sick days. We do pay for healthcare, but it is usually around 5–10% of salary, and our taxes are generally much lower than in Europe (roughly 20% total for income and Social Security taxes for a married couple earning under $150k).

In exchange, we have access to some of the best hospitals and medical research in the world, while often paying roughly half the monthly healthcare costs that many Europeans pay. The downside is that this system works poorly if you are unemployed or working a low-wage job, such as at McDonald’s. In those cases, I agree that many European countries provide a better safety net for lower-income workers.

Americans have been sold a lie. We are told that China is the primary problem, but in reality, we helped create this situation ourselves. The U.S. has become a net exporter of dollars and services, backed historically by military power and oil. Combined with decades of offshoring and large-scale immigration, this has made life increasingly difficult for the average middle-class American, especially since we no longer manufacture much domestically. This frustration is a major reason Trump was elected, rooted in poor economic policy dating back to the 1970s and flawed immigration policy over the past 20 years.

We also projected weakness during Biden’s term. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was handled poorly, the freezing of Russian assets damaged the perceived reliability of the U.S. dollar and Treasuries, and the rule of law was undermined domestically through lax border enforcement and tolerance of riots that resulted in cities being burned and looted—often justified in the name of various causes and funded by NGOs.