Good comment. Income is fairly subjective eventually, making 150k and paying 5k in rent per month in the US may be worse than making 40k in Belgium. Affordability, or simply, purchasing power, is a much more reliable measure since it objectively looks at the sum of goods and services that workers can obtain through labor.

But affordability necessarily necessitates low taxes, low energy prices, and low competition in the job market, which, through regulations, inefficient energy policy, high taxes and mass immigration, European countries have done the exact opposite of.