Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you really think that, if we spent more on our armies, you would spend less? Anyway, I'm not saying that our system is better - for example, here it's more difficult to find a job, and wages are usually lower enough (also because of the taxes necessary to finance the welfare state). What I was really thinking about is how much having to worry about medical expenses and retirement money changes the stress level in…
I think that if we spent less on our armies, we'd have more to spend on the sorts of social benefits Europeans regard as table stakes and pride themselves on having. In the abstract sense, it'd also be curious to see what effect on those social benefits would result from a termination of the security guarantees which the US has extended to an ever broader fraction of Europe since 1949. I'm not so cruel a man as to ac…
Regarding military spending, I'm surely grateful of NATO - especially during the cold war - but I think you're severely underestimating European defense capabilities and, most importantly, needs.
Let's say that for an act of magic NATO went away tomorrow and a EU-only army or alliance had to be created to replace it, and let's say we didn't even increase military spending from the current level. Who would/could attack such EU alliance?
The only neighboring power that would have the resources to even think about it is Russia, but then again - with current spending and capabilities - Putin would have exactly zero chances of successfully invading the EU. Just look at the size of our combined armies and the difference in economic potential (in case of a prolonged war). This, even without even counting that France (here I'm making the UK magically disappear as an ally too) has enough nukes to make such an invasion an act of folly, and that several other EU countries could easily develop nuclear capabilities if required.
Of course you're free to disagree, but my very strong impression - as someone who also has some family in the US - is that this "we can't have good, affordable health care because of NATO" is just a very convenient way for your politicians to put the blame elsewhere. The US is so rich that it could easily give EU-level healthcare at EU costs to everybody, but then doctors, insurance companies, big pharma and everybody related would need to be less rich, and all other high-income people should pay higher - and not even so much higher at that - taxes, as it happens in the EU.
You could do that even without cutting military spending which, by the way, is mostly geared towards the ability to project US power overseas wherever and whenever it's needed, not to protect Europe from Russia. I don't have the numbers readily available, but I'm pretty sure that your 11 carrier strike group cost much, much more than all your troops stationed in Europe.