I agree, but then the countries where tuition and healthcare is more accessible have other issues that make you feel like you're treading water.

In Canada for example, housing is significantly more expensive on a cost/hours_worked basis than large chunks of the USA, and many households have debt load levels higher than the US. Cost of normal goods such as gas, utility bills, food, consumer goods, etc are also more expensive than the USA. You can see similar dynamics in Europe too.

I watch USA and Canada in tv shows where middle class people buy huge houses that only the definitely rich would buy in Europe. If you want to stay out of debt, just don't spend too much.

IIRC you were talking about regular people's problems. Europe is not uniform, but in the richest countries you can live comfortably off a blue collar salary, no matter the taxes or cost of living. Actually it's infuriating how our government compares our taxes (Spain) to northern countries in percentage, omitting the fact that what you make after taxes and expenses is still higher because raw salaries are much higher there.

The TV shows are aspirational and have a bit of a filter effect. Think instagram. Many people in US/Canada buy small(er), uglier houses.

Since the price of housing is more land than the building itself typically, a house that is literally double or triple the size in interior sqft (1500 to 3000 sqft for ex) can cost 'only' %25-%50 more.

There is also an availability factor, most of the US & Canada is suburban, you don't really have much of a choice to buy a small house. And with the price dynamic described above, it doesn't matter as much. You need a house to live in either way.

I've also heard that housing is crazy expensive in places like stockholm, and people do crazy ass stuff in amsterdam like no principal payment mortgages, but I'm not as familiar with the real dynamics there.

From an ex-Soviet perspective, living in a house itself can already be considered bordering on a luxury. When I grew up, a family of 4 to 7 easily lived in an 800-900 sqft apartment.

Just point out that before 1960 in the US that was very common as well.