Except that our social safety nets are practically non-existent. I bet if you made a middle-class comparison where you took a bunch of the typical EU social benefits, and equated the private costs middle class Americans pay to take care of them privately (healthcare, especially for a family, care of elder relatives, how much they'll need to save up to put their kids in college and retire even meagerly on their private income, etc)... I bet the Americans come out on the losing end of it on average.