Welcome to Flyertalk.

What class of service do you plan to fly to Europe, economy or business?

You are discussing two entirely different approaches to redeeming credit card points for air travel:

ThankYou Network and Discover Escape are scrip programs. You accumulate points which are used to buy tickets at market cost. These are not "award" tickets, it does not matter to the airline that you purchased the tickets through a rewards program, and the tickets are eligible to earn miles the same as any other paid ticket. In most programs a point is worth $0.01.

Membership Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest do offer scrip redemptions, but their popularity is based on the mileage redemption because the points can be transferred to airline frequent flyer programs and redeemed for award tickets. Award tickets have limited availability and do not earn miles when flown, but can provide 2-3X the value of scrip redemptions if used for expensive tickets (typically intercontinental business or first class). Also, miles can be earned from many different activities (e. g. flying, hotel stays, car rentals, credit cards, banking, online shopping, etc), while ThankYou points and Discover Escape are more limited. This means you may be able to accumulate miles faster.

I suggest you read this thread about the American Express Premier Rewards Gold card. It's long, but embedded within it is a head-to-head comparison versus the Starwood Preferred Guest program:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...gold-card.html

In comparing programs don't be distracted by the number of points offered, because points are not of equal value. The best way to compare cards is to calculate the amount of spending required to earn the reward that you want.