The northern European dream looks something like this: get home from work in time for dinner with the kids; no stress about paying for their education or healthcare; safe streets in a safe region; an affordable home near your extended family; frequent holidays and a long life. You won’t get rich, but you won’t need to either. This vision of the good life has rarely been articulated (except in Jeremy Rifkin’s 2004 book The European Dream) but it animates the region bounded by Iceland in the west, Germany in the east, and France in the south. Now the northern European dream is displacing the much better-known American dream — even, remarkably, inside the US itself.

The American dream of “chewing gum, liberation and democracy” was imported into war-ruined Europe by occupying GIs, said German historian Paul Nolte at a debate organised by the Swiss newspaper NZZ in Berlin last week. Postwar, the core component of the dream became individual economic ascent, writes Sarah Churchwell in her new book Behold, America: anyone could make it if they wanted it enough (and read enough self-help books). I grew up in 1980s northern Europe imbibing this dream from soap operas such as Dallas and Dynasty, from the lives of celebrities such as Madonna and, above all, from adverts.

But that dream has faded. After Donald Trump descended the golden escalator in Trump Tower in 2015 to launch his presidential run, he intoned the new commonplace: “Sadly, the American dream is dead.” He himself is living proof of that: though he pretends to embody the dream, he is in fact an heir leading a society dominated by heirs, the predictable result of 80 years of national wealth accumulation and low to non-existent inheritance taxes. The US has less social mobility than northern Europe, according to Pew Charitable Trusts, the Brookings Institution and others. Being an average American now is like running a struggling small business: you’re always on the brink.