What makes the US truly exceptional

IT IS the best of countries, it is the worst of countries, or at least of the high-income ones. The US stands out for its prosperity and its brutality. This is how I have felt about it since I visited in 1966 and lived there throughout the 1970s.

The sustained prosperity of the US is astounding. A few Western countries have even higher real incomes per head: Switzerland is one. But real gross domestic capita per head in the larger high-income countries is below the US average. Moreover, these countries have fallen further behind in this century. In 2023, German real GDP per head was 84 per cent of US levels, down from 92 per cent in 2000. The UK’s was 73 per cent of US levels, down from 82 per cent in 2000. This relative outperformance is remarkable if one considers how big and diverse the US is or that one would have expected catch-up, not relative decline, by poorer countries elsewhere.

Not surprisingly, the US economy also remains far more innovative than other large high-income economies. Just look at its leading companies. These are not only far more valuable than those in Europe, but far more concentrated in the digital economy, as Mario Draghi pointed out in his recent report on EU competitiveness. Andrew McAfee of MIT stresses that the US “has a large and variegated population of valuable young from-scratch companies. The EU simply doesn’t. The American population of arrivistes worth at least US$10 billion is collectively worth almost US$30 trillion – more than 70 times as much as its EU equivalent.”