I can’t speak for all of Europe, but certainly I feel very rich in the UK in a way I do not feel in the US. A lot of the sceptred isle is obviously shabby and declining. Even London has gone downhill a lot. It felt wealthy indeed (mutatis mutandis my own relative wealth) when I visited in 1989 or 1990. Now it has the atmosphere and sense of disarray befitting a third-tier American city in a lot of ways.

Europe is getting relatively poorer, and in many cases, absolutely poorer. Not all of it, but a whole lot of it. Krugman et al. are just wrong. They want to hold on to the fantasy.