UK and France are ~1/3 lower. Italy and Spain are ~50% lower.
1: https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/gdp-per-capita
(USGDPPC - EU28GDPPC) / AVERAGE(USGDPPC, EU28GDPPC) = 0.338
So the comment you're replying to was correct, for at least one plausible definition of "1/3 lower than the US".
As for the countries you mentioned:
Monaco: < 1 square mile, not reproducible in a larger country
Norway: Giant oil reserves / tiny population, not reproducible without that
Switzerland: Valid
Ireland: GDP numbers shouldn't be taken at face value because tax laws[2] encourage corporations to attribute EU-wide revenues to Ireland. Reported GDP per capita is 135% of the US value, but 2016 median household income[3] was only 87% of the US value[4]. This cuts both ways, though - other EU countries should have their estimates nudged upwards.
Iceland: 92% of US GDP per capita[1]
Denmark: 91% of US GDP per capita[1]
Sweden: 86% of US GDP per capita[1]
Austria: 91% of US GDP per capita[1]
Finland: 79% of US GDP per capita[1]
UK: 75% of US GDP per capita[1]
France: 74% of US GDP per capita[1]
Italy: 68% of US GDP per capita[1]
Spain: 65% of US GDP per capita[1]
EU (all 28 countries): 71% of US GDP per capita[1]
[1] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDB_LV
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
[3] https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-gpii/geog...
[4] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
(USGDPPC - EurozoneGDPPC) / AVERAGE(USGDPPC, EurozoneGDPPC) = 0.283
Roughly speaking, you could write this as "The GDP per capita of the Eurozone is 28.3% lower than the US".
All jokes aside, I'd make that trade any day for the relevant social safety nets.
--Higher GDP European state--
Switzerland pop: 8.5m gdp/capita: 65k -- reputation as a tax haven
Ireland pop: 6.5m gdp/capita: 69k -- reputation as a tax haven
Norway pop: 5.3m gdp/capita: 85k -- petrostate
Iceland pop: 364,260 gpd/capita: 54,753
Monaco pop: 37,497 gdp/capita: 162k -- french riviera
--Most populous Western Europe nations--
Germany pop: 82m gdp/capita: 44k
France pop: 67m gdp/capita: 38k
UK pop: 66m gdp/capita: 39k
Italy pop: 60m gdp/capita: 32k
Look I'm all for a larger welfare state, and there are plenty of things our nation could learn from Europe. But to pretend that if we made our country more European our economy would grow to resemble a tiny nation/tax haven like Ireland more than the UK, France, or Germany is unrealistic.
There's no single apples-to-apples measurement we can make; the US has more natural resources than the EU, suffered far less harm from all the major conflicts up through WW2, &c.
I don't know whether or not liberalizing the economy of the EU would raise per-capita GDP or not, but the post I was replying to was claiming that a very specific and easy-to-check fact was wrong, so I checked it.
Norway is all oil, Ireland is the tax haven of the Fortune 500, Ditto Switzerland, Monaco is the tax haven of the rich, and Iceland is pure tourism.
Pulling out Iceland or Monaco and comparing them to the entire US is like pulling out Palo Alto and Seattle and comparing them to all of the EU.
UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, etc are a much better representation of what larger, mores diverse European economies look like.
In fact, if you take the whole EU together (as you should, the US number also includes places like the South and the Midwest), the parent comment is correct.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/emphasize-...
I lived in Germany for a couple years and now live in one of the poor(er) states. A comment above this says to jettisoning Idaho will game GDP numbers for the US. I'm currently experiencing earthquake aftershocks AND low GDP.
I honestly think for most people, Germany had a high quality of living (if you ignore AC when it's 35 degrees in summer). But in the US, we've got Mammon and, for better or worse, GDP is how we track that.