Scott—your "F1 engine in a Volvo wagon" line applies even more forcefully to the country sitting right on America's border. The usual American dodge on Sweden is "sure, but they're small and homogeneous—can't scale here." Canada kills that excuse. Continental, immigrant-built, federal, resource-and-market-driven, economically fused with the US at the hip. Same model as America almost everywhere—except the safety net.
And the result? Universal healthcare at 11.3% of GDP (the US burns 16.7% for shorter lives), life expectancy of 81.7 years, 33 unicorns, and in Shopify a homegrown ~$200B company. Hardly a stagnant welfare state.
But your real thesis is trust, and that's where it lands hardest: Canadians trust their federal government at 49% against an OECD average of 39%, and trust each other at 66%. The US, as you note, scrapes the bottom on both. Canada isn't some far-off Nordic experiment Americans can wave away. It's the same continent, the same neighbourhood, the same capitalist engine—and it still chose to build the seatbelts. The variable isn't geography or scale. It's whether people trust each other enough to ride together. Canada does. That's the whole story.
~$200+ billion of medical debt is in active collections
~$38K = Avg cost of health insurance through an employer (family w/ PPO coverage) PER YEAR
The math isn't that complicated. Our "lower taxes" just means our wages are intentionally depressed so that we can pay for-profit corporations a premium for the privilege of going broke - and then crowdfunding our cancer treatments.
I believe progress towards the goals you outline in the USA starts with Universal Healthcare
I support a Nationwide Universal Healthcare system in the United States similar to what France has in place as the first step to a better United States at 250 years.
While other challenges exist, I am confident providing all citizens with basic healthcare, (similar to what government employees enjoy), would be the starting point allowing for greater job mobility and entrepreneurship, along with greater home ownership and more couples having children.
Knowing you will not be left without basic healthcare if you get laid off, leave a job, or start a company, brings a different level of peace of mind and ability to make long term decisions, (mortgage/kids)
I am confident that Universal Healthcare in the USA would boost the overall economy and I am willing to pay higher taxes toward this goal.
(This is coming from a lifelong right of center conservative)
As always, I sign off encouraging you to run for public office.
I don't think the problem in the U.S. is a fundamental lack of empathy. One-to-one, Americans are among the friendliest, most generous people in the world. Whenever there is a natural disaster, if they have the means, Americans are often first on site to render aid as in the Indonesia tsunami of 2004.
The problem is Americans have such a narrow view of what is in their own self-interest. On the health care issue (and K - 12 public education as well, for that matter). unlike Europeans and Canadians, Americans don't understand it is in their own personal interest that all their citizens have access to decent health care and a fundamental education. Ensuring provision of those two basic services at public expense (which the rest of the world readily accepts as part of the social compact) is surely of the "ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" sort.
Having spent some time in the EU in a sales role I would point out that there's a fundamental difference between the EU and the US that affects their economies - the Tort system in the EU is largely "Loser Pays" whereas in the US there is no concept of "Loser Pays" except in rare circumstances. There is very little risk if you file a lawsuit here in the US unlike the EU where filing a lawsuit creates an immediate economic risk to the entity filing the suit. In my experience this slows down the sales cycle considerably.
Scott Galloway's essay argues that Sweden and the Netherlands prove capitalism and expansive social welfare can coexist. On the surface, this sounds compelling. After all, who wouldn't want thriving businesses, billionaires, universal healthcare, and a strong social safety net all at once?
The problem is that Galloway mistakes small, highly cohesive nations for scalable models that can simply be transplanted onto a country of 340 million people. More importantly, he ignores the very factors that make the United States the world's economic engine.
The United States is not struggling because it lacks social programs. America already spends trillions of dollars annually on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, housing assistance, food assistance, disability programs, unemployment benefits, and hundreds of other federal and state programs. The issue is not whether government exists. The issue is whether government is becoming too large, too expensive, and increasingly disconnected from the taxpayers who fund it.
A growing number of Americans believe government is no longer helping them get ahead, but instead has become an obstacle to prosperity. Many working families see themselves paying higher taxes, facing rising inflation, higher housing costs, and increased healthcare costs while receiving fewer benefits than those who contribute little or nothing to the system. Whether that perception is entirely accurate is almost beside the point. Trust is declining because millions of Americans feel the system no longer rewards work, savings, entrepreneurship, and personal responsibility.
Galloway argues that trust is the missing ingredient. But trust cannot be legislated. Trust is earned. When citizens watch government run trillion-dollar deficits, accumulate $40 trillion in national debt, and repeatedly fail to solve problems despite growing budgets, confidence naturally erodes.
The immigration question further complicates the comparison. Sweden and the Netherlands have struggled with immigration integration despite having populations smaller than many American states. Meanwhile, the United States faces immigration pressures on a scale neither country has ever experienced. Many Americans question whether government should provide housing assistance, healthcare, education, and other benefits to individuals who entered the country illegally while citizens struggle with affordability and homelessness. Regardless of one's political position, this debate directly impacts public trust.
Perhaps the biggest flaw in Galloway's argument is that he overlooks what truly distinguishes America from Europe: innovation.
The United States is not merely another wealthy nation. It is the world's primary innovation platform.
America attracts the best engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, physicians, researchers, and investors from every corner of the globe. The H-1B visa program, despite its flaws, has helped bring extraordinarily talented individuals to the United States. Many of the founders, executives, and innovators behind America's most successful companies were either immigrants or the children of immigrants.
The reason these individuals come here is not because America offers the largest welfare state. They come because America offers something far more powerful: opportunity.
The United States rewards risk-taking more aggressively than any society in human history. Venture capital markets are deeper. Capital formation is easier. Bankruptcy laws are more forgiving. Labor markets are more dynamic. The cultural acceptance of entrepreneurial failure is unmatched.
Europe certainly produces successful companies. Sweden gave us Spotify. The Netherlands gave us ASML. These are remarkable achievements.
But Europe has not produced the equivalent concentration of world-changing firms such as Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, Tesla, Oracle, and countless others. Nor has Europe consistently attracted global talent on the scale America has for generations.
The lesson is not that Sweden and the Netherlands are failures. They are impressive countries with admirable institutions.
The lesson is that America's success comes from a different formula.
America became the most prosperous nation in history because it created the greatest environment ever assembled for ambition, innovation, investment, and upward mobility. Weakening those advantages in pursuit of a European-style model risks undermining the very engine that funds America's prosperity in the first place.
The choice is not between capitalism and compassion.
The real challenge is preserving a system that rewards contribution, encourages innovation, welcomes talented immigrants, and provides a reasonable safety net without creating dependency or eroding the incentives that drive economic growth.
Sweden and the Netherlands have found a balance that works for them.
America must find the balance that works for America.
You get Nazi vibes in USA after visiting Netherlands? You do realize people from other countries risk their lives to arrive here? You should closely examine your vibe sensing. I’ve lived and worked in all of these paradises. It’s skim milk with a touch of”Brave New World”. Tiny Northern European countries making a system built for hippie farms work while losing all industry save handbags and perfumes and yes a sole survivor ASML. This is criminally dishonest for a guy with your talents.
The load-bearing beam is the trust-as-infrastructure claim, and it’s the least supported one in the piece. Everything routes through it — capitalism + welfare coexist because of trust — but he establishes it with an anecdote (Spotify founders) and a correlation (OECD rankings), never a causal mechanism. It’s a values essay wearing a data jacket.
There’s also a selection problem he half-admits: he picks Sweden and the Netherlands — two of the strongest-performing EU economies — to represent “the Europe I’ve encountered,” while conceding elsewhere the continent is stagnating. That’s choosing the winners and calling them the rule. And the winners’ stories partly undercut his model: ASML’s dominance is path-dependent and near-accidental (Philips spinout, a contrarian EUV bet that almost failed), not an obvious output of welfare-state design. Sweden’s deficit-financed defense ramp and housing/private-debt risk, which he mentions in passing, cut against the tidy “F1 engine in a Volvo” framing.
The “follow the Netherlands and halve our healthcare spending” line is the weakest analytical move — it treats a system as portable while ignoring US wage structure, demographics, pharma pricing, and litigation. You can’t lift managed competition into a different cost base and assume the output transfers.
The closing Weimar section is straight polemic, not analysis. The comparison between modern America and the late Weimar Republic is extremely weak. Weimar Germany had:
* hyperinflation
* mass unemployment
* political assassinations
* paramilitary street warfare
* recent military defeat
* collapse of democratic legitimacy
The U.S. has polarization and declining trust.
Those are real concerns. But they’re not remotely equivalent conditions.
The analogy generates emotional force, but it doesn’t generate analytical clarity. Hat trick Claude and CHTGPT
Great article to get us to think more globally. When will we finally develop a mindset of learning from other countries? I often notice that other countries collaborate and learn from each other. They seem to keep moving forward as we are focused inward on our ‚greatness’ and I worry to our ultimate decline.
Good article, but think it misses the big points is scale & efficiency. Scale that each European states are small enough to "micro-manage", make adjustments to policies & actions to get results -> deliver public services efficiently. Intervene in organizations when needed.
America however is much bigger, population size and geography, which limits the ability to "micro-manage" effectively, and that results in inefficiency in the American public services that often spends much more than others yet deliver below desired quality.
The answer to tax more is just too blunt and simplistic for an effective, long term solution in our globalized world unless is small enough to micro-manage. I think America should always start with the basis of minimum taxation, and find ways to deliver -> using what Americans are best in, market competition to bring down costs and drive up quality. The East Asians (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and now China too) have shown this could be done. Universal healthcare, excellent public infrastructure, affordable public services like education -> done with low taxes - efficiency.
“If we followed the Netherlands, we might cut our per capita healthcare spending in half, improve outcomes, and keep private insurance.”
Okay Scott, let’s follow the Netherlands (and Sweden):
Social Taxes Paid (USD, incl. payroll):
Netherlands $16,200
Sweden $19,400
US $12,300
Marginal tax rate at median income:
Netherlands 36.9%
Sweden 32%
US 22%
Percentage of taxpayers paying zero national income tax:
Netherlands 14%
Sweden 30%
US 40%
Percentage of national income tax paid by top 1% of earners:
Netherlands 28%
Sweden 23%
US 42%
And so on. It’s pretty simple: There is only one way to afford what Scott and many commenters here are advocating, and that’s higher taxes for everyone except the very poorest.
And that’s fine; let’s just be honest about it: everybody has to pay, and the middle 50%-ile of taxpayers is going to have to pay a whole lot more than is paid today. Some folks like to say that you just need to tax the rich more, but It’s pretty simple math to show that there aren’t even close to enough “rich” people, no matter how you define that term, to fund a single-payer system.
Perhaps Scott you could tell us all what you believe the “fair share” contributions should be by each decile of income, and how that will fund the existing social welfare obligations of the federal government.
The challenge is that the operating system that is driving capitalism is scarcity and the nation state that figures out the new rules for trust, abundance and a new social contract, will redefine what’s next.
Is that what’s missing from Mark Carney’s ‘middle powers’ conversation (of which Europe is the poster child and anchor tenant )?
I think it is, and this essay, @Scott Galloway , hints at it clearly.
Scott—your "F1 engine in a Volvo wagon" line applies even more forcefully to the country sitting right on America's border. The usual American dodge on Sweden is "sure, but they're small and homogeneous—can't scale here." Canada kills that excuse. Continental, immigrant-built, federal, resource-and-market-driven, economically fused with the US at the hip. Same model as America almost everywhere—except the safety net.
And the result? Universal healthcare at 11.3% of GDP (the US burns 16.7% for shorter lives), life expectancy of 81.7 years, 33 unicorns, and in Shopify a homegrown ~$200B company. Hardly a stagnant welfare state.
But your real thesis is trust, and that's where it lands hardest: Canadians trust their federal government at 49% against an OECD average of 39%, and trust each other at 66%. The US, as you note, scrapes the bottom on both. Canada isn't some far-off Nordic experiment Americans can wave away. It's the same continent, the same neighbourhood, the same capitalist engine—and it still chose to build the seatbelts. The variable isn't geography or scale. It's whether people trust each other enough to ride together. Canada does. That's the whole story.
~1/3 GoFundMe listings are medically related
~27 million Americans are uninsured
~60-70 million Americans are underinsured
~$200+ billion of medical debt is in active collections
~$38K = Avg cost of health insurance through an employer (family w/ PPO coverage) PER YEAR
The math isn't that complicated. Our "lower taxes" just means our wages are intentionally depressed so that we can pay for-profit corporations a premium for the privilege of going broke - and then crowdfunding our cancer treatments.
Nice article, thank you.
I believe progress towards the goals you outline in the USA starts with Universal Healthcare
I support a Nationwide Universal Healthcare system in the United States similar to what France has in place as the first step to a better United States at 250 years.
While other challenges exist, I am confident providing all citizens with basic healthcare, (similar to what government employees enjoy), would be the starting point allowing for greater job mobility and entrepreneurship, along with greater home ownership and more couples having children.
Knowing you will not be left without basic healthcare if you get laid off, leave a job, or start a company, brings a different level of peace of mind and ability to make long term decisions, (mortgage/kids)
I am confident that Universal Healthcare in the USA would boost the overall economy and I am willing to pay higher taxes toward this goal.
(This is coming from a lifelong right of center conservative)
As always, I sign off encouraging you to run for public office.
;-)
Excellent piece Scott.
I don't think the problem in the U.S. is a fundamental lack of empathy. One-to-one, Americans are among the friendliest, most generous people in the world. Whenever there is a natural disaster, if they have the means, Americans are often first on site to render aid as in the Indonesia tsunami of 2004.
The problem is Americans have such a narrow view of what is in their own self-interest. On the health care issue (and K - 12 public education as well, for that matter). unlike Europeans and Canadians, Americans don't understand it is in their own personal interest that all their citizens have access to decent health care and a fundamental education. Ensuring provision of those two basic services at public expense (which the rest of the world readily accepts as part of the social compact) is surely of the "ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" sort.
Having spent some time in the EU in a sales role I would point out that there's a fundamental difference between the EU and the US that affects their economies - the Tort system in the EU is largely "Loser Pays" whereas in the US there is no concept of "Loser Pays" except in rare circumstances. There is very little risk if you file a lawsuit here in the US unlike the EU where filing a lawsuit creates an immediate economic risk to the entity filing the suit. In my experience this slows down the sales cycle considerably.
The False Comparison: Why America Is Not Sweden
Scott Galloway's essay argues that Sweden and the Netherlands prove capitalism and expansive social welfare can coexist. On the surface, this sounds compelling. After all, who wouldn't want thriving businesses, billionaires, universal healthcare, and a strong social safety net all at once?
The problem is that Galloway mistakes small, highly cohesive nations for scalable models that can simply be transplanted onto a country of 340 million people. More importantly, he ignores the very factors that make the United States the world's economic engine.
The United States is not struggling because it lacks social programs. America already spends trillions of dollars annually on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, housing assistance, food assistance, disability programs, unemployment benefits, and hundreds of other federal and state programs. The issue is not whether government exists. The issue is whether government is becoming too large, too expensive, and increasingly disconnected from the taxpayers who fund it.
A growing number of Americans believe government is no longer helping them get ahead, but instead has become an obstacle to prosperity. Many working families see themselves paying higher taxes, facing rising inflation, higher housing costs, and increased healthcare costs while receiving fewer benefits than those who contribute little or nothing to the system. Whether that perception is entirely accurate is almost beside the point. Trust is declining because millions of Americans feel the system no longer rewards work, savings, entrepreneurship, and personal responsibility.
Galloway argues that trust is the missing ingredient. But trust cannot be legislated. Trust is earned. When citizens watch government run trillion-dollar deficits, accumulate $40 trillion in national debt, and repeatedly fail to solve problems despite growing budgets, confidence naturally erodes.
The immigration question further complicates the comparison. Sweden and the Netherlands have struggled with immigration integration despite having populations smaller than many American states. Meanwhile, the United States faces immigration pressures on a scale neither country has ever experienced. Many Americans question whether government should provide housing assistance, healthcare, education, and other benefits to individuals who entered the country illegally while citizens struggle with affordability and homelessness. Regardless of one's political position, this debate directly impacts public trust.
Perhaps the biggest flaw in Galloway's argument is that he overlooks what truly distinguishes America from Europe: innovation.
The United States is not merely another wealthy nation. It is the world's primary innovation platform.
America attracts the best engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, physicians, researchers, and investors from every corner of the globe. The H-1B visa program, despite its flaws, has helped bring extraordinarily talented individuals to the United States. Many of the founders, executives, and innovators behind America's most successful companies were either immigrants or the children of immigrants.
The reason these individuals come here is not because America offers the largest welfare state. They come because America offers something far more powerful: opportunity.
The United States rewards risk-taking more aggressively than any society in human history. Venture capital markets are deeper. Capital formation is easier. Bankruptcy laws are more forgiving. Labor markets are more dynamic. The cultural acceptance of entrepreneurial failure is unmatched.
Europe certainly produces successful companies. Sweden gave us Spotify. The Netherlands gave us ASML. These are remarkable achievements.
But Europe has not produced the equivalent concentration of world-changing firms such as Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, Tesla, Oracle, and countless others. Nor has Europe consistently attracted global talent on the scale America has for generations.
The lesson is not that Sweden and the Netherlands are failures. They are impressive countries with admirable institutions.
The lesson is that America's success comes from a different formula.
America became the most prosperous nation in history because it created the greatest environment ever assembled for ambition, innovation, investment, and upward mobility. Weakening those advantages in pursuit of a European-style model risks undermining the very engine that funds America's prosperity in the first place.
The choice is not between capitalism and compassion.
The real challenge is preserving a system that rewards contribution, encourages innovation, welcomes talented immigrants, and provides a reasonable safety net without creating dependency or eroding the incentives that drive economic growth.
Sweden and the Netherlands have found a balance that works for them.
America must find the balance that works for America.
Copy/pasta AI slop. Please think for yourself and stop outsourcing your counterarguments to ChatGPT.
You get Nazi vibes in USA after visiting Netherlands? You do realize people from other countries risk their lives to arrive here? You should closely examine your vibe sensing. I’ve lived and worked in all of these paradises. It’s skim milk with a touch of”Brave New World”. Tiny Northern European countries making a system built for hippie farms work while losing all industry save handbags and perfumes and yes a sole survivor ASML. This is criminally dishonest for a guy with your talents.
Good work- Strong essay.
Note the following-
The load-bearing beam is the trust-as-infrastructure claim, and it’s the least supported one in the piece. Everything routes through it — capitalism + welfare coexist because of trust — but he establishes it with an anecdote (Spotify founders) and a correlation (OECD rankings), never a causal mechanism. It’s a values essay wearing a data jacket.
There’s also a selection problem he half-admits: he picks Sweden and the Netherlands — two of the strongest-performing EU economies — to represent “the Europe I’ve encountered,” while conceding elsewhere the continent is stagnating. That’s choosing the winners and calling them the rule. And the winners’ stories partly undercut his model: ASML’s dominance is path-dependent and near-accidental (Philips spinout, a contrarian EUV bet that almost failed), not an obvious output of welfare-state design. Sweden’s deficit-financed defense ramp and housing/private-debt risk, which he mentions in passing, cut against the tidy “F1 engine in a Volvo” framing.
The “follow the Netherlands and halve our healthcare spending” line is the weakest analytical move — it treats a system as portable while ignoring US wage structure, demographics, pharma pricing, and litigation. You can’t lift managed competition into a different cost base and assume the output transfers.
The closing Weimar section is straight polemic, not analysis. The comparison between modern America and the late Weimar Republic is extremely weak. Weimar Germany had:
* hyperinflation
* mass unemployment
* political assassinations
* paramilitary street warfare
* recent military defeat
* collapse of democratic legitimacy
The U.S. has polarization and declining trust.
Those are real concerns. But they’re not remotely equivalent conditions.
The analogy generates emotional force, but it doesn’t generate analytical clarity. Hat trick Claude and CHTGPT
Those 6 bullet points that Jeff uses to define the roots of Weimar sound just too close to our own horizon.
Doesn’t make any of it wrong.
Great article to get us to think more globally. When will we finally develop a mindset of learning from other countries? I often notice that other countries collaborate and learn from each other. They seem to keep moving forward as we are focused inward on our ‚greatness’ and I worry to our ultimate decline.
Great article. Come explore Poland next. A new G20 country and growing.
Good article, but think it misses the big points is scale & efficiency. Scale that each European states are small enough to "micro-manage", make adjustments to policies & actions to get results -> deliver public services efficiently. Intervene in organizations when needed.
America however is much bigger, population size and geography, which limits the ability to "micro-manage" effectively, and that results in inefficiency in the American public services that often spends much more than others yet deliver below desired quality.
The answer to tax more is just too blunt and simplistic for an effective, long term solution in our globalized world unless is small enough to micro-manage. I think America should always start with the basis of minimum taxation, and find ways to deliver -> using what Americans are best in, market competition to bring down costs and drive up quality. The East Asians (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and now China too) have shown this could be done. Universal healthcare, excellent public infrastructure, affordable public services like education -> done with low taxes - efficiency.
Typical Prof G cherrypicking of data.
“If we followed the Netherlands, we might cut our per capita healthcare spending in half, improve outcomes, and keep private insurance.”
Okay Scott, let’s follow the Netherlands (and Sweden):
Social Taxes Paid (USD, incl. payroll):
Netherlands $16,200
Sweden $19,400
US $12,300
Marginal tax rate at median income:
Netherlands 36.9%
Sweden 32%
US 22%
Percentage of taxpayers paying zero national income tax:
Netherlands 14%
Sweden 30%
US 40%
Percentage of national income tax paid by top 1% of earners:
Netherlands 28%
Sweden 23%
US 42%
And so on. It’s pretty simple: There is only one way to afford what Scott and many commenters here are advocating, and that’s higher taxes for everyone except the very poorest.
And that’s fine; let’s just be honest about it: everybody has to pay, and the middle 50%-ile of taxpayers is going to have to pay a whole lot more than is paid today. Some folks like to say that you just need to tax the rich more, but It’s pretty simple math to show that there aren’t even close to enough “rich” people, no matter how you define that term, to fund a single-payer system.
Perhaps Scott you could tell us all what you believe the “fair share” contributions should be by each decile of income, and how that will fund the existing social welfare obligations of the federal government.
Galloway: Empathy and equity! Empathy and equity! I worry about Americans’ declining empathy for one another.
Also Galloway: Anyone who doesn’t get the Fauci shot should be fired and have their lives ruined.
Focus on community, sharing resources, ensuring everyone can live, tolerance all round, history.
Vs
Dog eat dog, look out for yourself, homeless villages across metros.
The challenge is that the operating system that is driving capitalism is scarcity and the nation state that figures out the new rules for trust, abundance and a new social contract, will redefine what’s next.
Is that what’s missing from Mark Carney’s ‘middle powers’ conversation (of which Europe is the poster child and anchor tenant )?
I think it is, and this essay, @Scott Galloway , hints at it clearly.
solid work, sir.
“The demonization of immigrants “
Yeah, tell that to Henry Nowak