As the World Cup continues along, the historic victory of the U.S. over Europe becomes ever clearer.
It's 2026, and we can now confirm that the U.S. defeated the Nazis and then went on to defeat its former allies, the USSR and Western Europe. The USSR went down in flames during the reign of Gorbachev, and we now see how lost the Europeans are in comparison to their hillbilly/cowboy cousins in America.
In 2008, both the American and European GDPs were around $14 trillion. In 2026, the U.S. GDP is $31.8 trillion compared to Europe’s $22.5 trillion. GDP per capita in the U.S. is $93,000 compared to Europe’s $43,000. How did America run away from Europe in less than two decades? The answer is entrepreneurship. Europe not only does not promote an environment of startup formation and VC funding, but it actively tries to punish successful American companies by taxing or fining them for violating draconian speech rules. The European Union took in last year $3.8 billion from U.S. tech giants in fines versus $3.2 billion in taxes from publicly listed European tech firms. The first number does not take into account taxes that subsidiaries of American firms pay to their European hosts. Look at artificial intelligence (AI). China and the U.S. are throwing enormous amounts of money in order to dominate the field. Little Israel is also trying to stay relevant and is investing in brainpower as it can. But what of Europe? Does anyone ever mention Europe or any European firms when AI is the subject? Not that I know of. Yet, they have top-flight universities in England and France. They have young students who could be leaders in the various branches of AI research and development. But they don’t have the ethos. Their tax system and lack of support for a startup culture give zero incentive to develop a farm team of local companies. That is the reason why Europe is rarely mentioned in tech; they use it, but they don’t make it.
How bad are things? While the EU has over 100 million more people than the U.S., it has only two companies in the top 40 by market valuation: Holland’s ASML, the maker of photolithography equipment for the semiconductor industry, and British ARM, maker of semiconductor chips. The U.S. dominates the list, with over 30 entries. How come the U.S. has so many, and Europe has so few? Air conditioners.
No, the Europeans are not less successful in business because their brains are fried in the summer. But this summer has shown the major difference in culture that drives American success and wealth and leaves the Europeans high and dry. Europe is presently very hot. Yet, many countries like France and England do not want their citizens or companies to have air conditioners, as the latter’s use of electricity will drive “climate change.” Let’s forget the nonsense in the argument. Let’s just focus on citizens being last, to the point of many dying. In the U.S., one can go to Walmart and get an air conditioner for under $200. Electricity in most areas outside of California is cheap enough that one can afford to heat and cool his house as needed. People live better lives and are more productive; they are allowed to keep more of their money, and thus there is a good incentive to make more of it. In Europe, they are denying a normal human trend: to overcome one’s surroundings. It used to be accepted that keeping warm in the winter and cool in the summer were great human successes: we were no longer limited by the realities of our surroundings but could tame them for our own benefit. Brits are directing their citizens to replace wood-burning stoves with more expensive and less reliable heat pumps. And they don’t want air conditioners to make life pleasant during hot stretches as they presently have. Americans want to succeed and push the envelope to do so; the Europeans want nature to dictate their lives, and nature’s last recorded message was, “You’re a bunch of losers.”
The manic drive in Europe for “Net Zero” will mean that cavemen will have lived better lives than the next crop of Europeans. The amazement of those visiting the U.S. for the World Cup is a double story: American success and material growth versus European stagnation on its way backward. Net Zero will destroy European industry. Already, Volkswagen—once the engine of German industrial strength—is considering up to 100,000 job cuts. The Germans stupidly shut down all of their nuclear plants in response to the Fukushima disaster; if they were actually serious about cutting carbon dioxide production while remaining a strong producer of electricity, they would definitely not have ended the best source of electricity with zero carbon footprint. But they live in the lefty fantasy where only unreliable wind and sun are allowed, and their electricity prices are among the highest in Europe, taking with them industry and quality of life. An American can afford to heat his pool; his European cousin can afford to buy a magazine with pictures of American homes with heated pools in their backyards.
One would hope that a MAGA-style movement would grip one or more European countries and change their trajectory. They definitely have patriots, and it would seem that a large percentage of the population is tired of uncontrolled immigration and worse lives at much higher prices. But elections don’t bring change, and all of the tentacles of the EU and individual states are aligned against any meaningful progress or hope. The U.S. is a production powerhouse because it understands that taxation must allow for making money. The U.S. has the world’s only trillionaire and more billionaires than any other country because it allows people to keep much of their wealth when they make goods and services that we all want. Walmart would have died in England from taxation and regulation. Self-hating Americans don’t realize how good they’ve got it compared to the rest of the world. In most places in Europe, you don’t have air conditioning. I just saw German police trucks shpritzing water on tourists at the Brandenburg Gate due to the high temperatures. Maybe if a good citizen leaves his window open, the police can cool him down in his bed as well.
The U.S., as long as it doesn’t fall for the Democrats’ fake socialist shtick, will continue to run forward as Europe stagnates and falls. The importation of millions of illegal aliens has only made the member countries’ situation worse: more tax money is being thrown at the upkeep of these people rather than being given back or used to advance the locals to help make them competitive with the U.S. and China. Europe will buy and pay dearly for AI services that will become the backbone of future commerce. They could have been at the table but were too busy praying to the climate gods to notice that AI would progress with or without them.
How bad are things over there? “Supermarket Fridges Can’t Cope With the Heat in Broken Britain,” was a recent headline in The Telegraph. Has it ever been so hot or so cold by you that the local major supermarket could not keep its refrigerators and freezers working? But when your goal is Net Zero, you might end up with Net Zero citizens. Many who recently visited the U.S. jokingly said that they did not want to go home. Maybe they weren’t joking so much. Life in the U.S. is far better, more comfortable, and more rewarding than for all but the wealthiest of Europe’s citizens. It didn’t have to be this way, but after World War II, the Europeans took the path to managed decline. And now they can’t keep themselves cool.