Your American income number is for individuals, but your British number is household income, not individual (your source is confusing, but the official government site states that the median household income is £29,900 [1]). The US has a PPP adjusted median individual disposable income of $42,800; the UK has a PPP adjusted median individual disposable income of $25,738 [2]. These numbers are after all taxes and benefits are paid. Someone earning the median income in the US has health insurance through their employer; the average premium for a single individual is $106/month and the average premium for a family is $466/mo [3]. So that brings our median income for a single earner family down from ~$43k to around ~$37k, which is still far ahead of our median Brit (though it's likely the single earner with a family is earning closer to the household income, not the median income of all workers, which affects the numbers for both countries). And this is comparing the entire US to a richer part of Europe! If we were to use the median PPP adjusted individual income for the entire European Union (plus UK), it'd be even worse as the US is weighed down by its poor regions but the poor regions of Europe are being excluded. Sorry, but Europeans are a lot poorer than Americans, and your governments spread lots of propaganda to prevent you from realizing it. The European argument for social service benefits outweighing lower wages only applies for the poor; for anyone middle class or above the increase in wages is greater than the decrease in services. You can talk about inequality all you want, but when comparing the lifestyles of the median person that is irrelevant.

The typical American does not see *any* benefit to giving up their car and house. Every single benefit like < 10 minute travel time is already a reality (because what matters is how long it takes to run an errand, not how it is run), but they'd have to live in a smaller house. They are a short drive already from all the activities they could ever want and are friends with all of their neighbors. Their kids can play in the street safely as there might be a dozen cars a day traveling down their street, most of which belong to people who live there. There is no need to though, because everyone has a yard to play in. You admitted that most of your friends could not set up a shop if they wanted to, and the ones who do have them live on the outskirts of the city and have to add 20 minutes to every trip (unless they drive). For the typical middle class American, increasing density offers *no* benefit as literally everything you describe is either something they already have or something irrelevant, but it has significant downsides.

If all you talk to are internet urbanists and tech people living in the Bay Area, you are *not* getting an accurate picture of how the average American lives. This is why urban activists (and Europeans who have pride for their hometowns) are constantly bewildered as to why anyone resists them and think it's because people just don't understand the benefits or are brainwashed by car companies, not that they've heard your arguments before or visited your ideal areas and decided that they just don't want to live in an area like that. Urban activist types tend not to be the type of person who would have a home shop in the first place or have any hobbies that require space and they have fewer (if any) children. They are a vocal minority in the US: only 19% of Americans want to live in a dense urban area [4].

[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income#Median_equivalen...

[3] https://www.investopedia.com/how-much-does-health-insurance-...

[4] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/america...