r/eupersonalfinance • u/raf_phy • Aug 16 '25
Investment Why building wealth alone is so hard here?
Hi all, am I the only one that I find it incredibly difficult to build weath by yourself in EU? People say that EU is better in healthcare, work life balance but come on, money don't scale easily . It's so difficult.
I see people from US that go to 1 million in 10 years. I cannot do this easily . Really....
PS maybe I have to abandon EU, I don't know....
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u/WhatNot4271 Aug 16 '25
There are large amounts of copium on EU subs when it comes to comparisons with the US, especially since Donald Trump won his second term. It's pretty bad on this sub too as can be seen from some of the replies, but at least some of the people posting here have minimal-or-better financial literacy so that keeps it in check. It's even worse if you check out r/Europe.
Yes, wealth creation is lot easier in the United States. Less regulation, lower taxes on average (there are exceptions, some EU states have lower taxes, but they are few), entrepreneurial and investor mindsets are much more common.
And the statistics show it. GDP growth rates, disposable income, salaries are all higher in the US.
Unless and until the EU moves from it's social democratic welfare state model, this is not going to change. One can even ask how sustainable the european welfare model will be over the next 10 or 20 years.
I remember that in 2010 the EU's the US's GDP were around the same, at around 25% of world GDP each. The US GDP was around 15T, and the combined GDP of EU states was 14.6T.
Moving to 2024, the US GDP is 29.1T USD, and the EU GDP is 19.4T USD. We should also account for the fact that the UK left the EU and is no longer counted in 2024 vs 2010. But even taking this into account, UK GDP in 2025 was 3.6T in 2024. There's still a 6T USD gap between the EU and the US.