2022 may be remembered as the year when living standards in the US truly pulled away from those in Western Europe. One concrete piece of evidence is the collapse of the euro to parity with the dollar, or lower yet, but there is also a more general sense that the gap is widening.

The old narrative was simple: Per capita incomes in the US might range 30% higher or more, but Western European lifestyles are less stressful and more relaxing. European health care systems, and their near-universal coverage, are also superior.

That narrative now lies in tatters.

The major disruptor has been energy markets. The US really does seem to have energy independence. Americans complain about high gasoline prices, but the American way of life has barely been affected. This summer Americans took to the road in record numbers. Energy supplies to homes and businesses have continued, though rising prices have created some pressure.

But the situation in Europe is far worse. Much of Western Europe, dependent on gas supplies from the East, faces serious questions about how it will get through the winter. In Germany, Google searches for “firewood” have risen sharply. Even the French, with their heavy reliance on nuclear power, now face very high prices and serious shortages; they did not invest enough in the maintenance of their nuclear power system.

Germany still seems to be shutting down its remaining nuclear power plants. It is hard to regard European energy policy as anything other than a huge unforced error. Keep in mind that energy supplies are far more important than their percentage of GDP might suggest. Energy is the lifeblood of modern civilization.

The price of energy shows just how bad the European situation is, and winter is still months away. Germany right now is paying about 600 euros per MWh for electricity; as recently as 2020, a price of 100 euros would have been considered very high.

And it’s not just the high prices. The stress about the future availability of energy belies one of the fundamental motivations behind the social welfare state: to make a citizenry feel secure and taken care of.

Geopolitics have added to these problems. It seems unlikely that Russia will move militarily against the major nations of Western Europe. Still, there is the risk of a nuclear accident in Ukraine, the possible outbreak of a war in the Balkans, and a modest chance of the conflict embroiling the Baltic nations of NATO, risking a much larger escalation. It is hard to predict such matters — and that’s partly the point. There is no comparable geopolitical nervousness facing the US, and it is not clear when the European risks will go away, if ever.

A traditional trump card for Western Europe has been the quality of its health-care systems. But the boasting here is not nearly as justified as it used to be.

The pandemic revealed years of capital underinvestment in many of European health-care systems. Many Americans used to admire the UK’s National Health Service, but right now the whole system is ailing. There has been a labor and capital shortage, and a collapse of emergency health care services, which may be costing up to 500 excess (non-Covid) deaths a week. Similar problems exist throughout Europe, though they seem to be worst in the UK.

The American hospital and health care system long has been good — too good — at making expensive, long-term investments in care and technology. Often this meant excess prices and not much of an improvement in basic care. But in the pandemic and post-pandemic environment, that feature of the system has kept US health care up and running. All that capital investment turns out to have been pretty useful in a major crisis.

The longstanding charge that the US does not have universal health care now is less relevant. Obamacare is highly imperfect along a variety of dimensions, but US health care coverage has never been higher — the percentage of the uninsured population is now 8%. Keep in mind that many of those uninsured may have decided not to purchase health insurance, instead preferring to spend their money in other ways. That might be a personal mistake, but that is not the same thing as a systemic failure of the entire US health care regime.

America actually has something pretty close to universal coverage, at least as an option. And remember that some of the European systems, most notably in Switzerland, also require significant out-of-pocket expenditures. Other parts of those systems are paid through relatively regressive systems of a value-added tax, so they are not as “free” as they might seem.

As the world emerges from its current chaos, it will be increasingly obvious that the US has pulled away from the pack.

Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of economics at George Mason University and writes for the blog Marginal Revolution. His books include “The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream.”