Sure, but that's hardly a panacea. There are better and worse analysis, but this stuff is genuinely not easy to do well. No simple statistic alone will do it if you are comparing quite different distributions.
The US is well below many European countries (and others) by median wealth, and well above the same ones by mean wealth; That doesn't paint a clear picture either.
The top 250 million adult Americans are richer than the top 250 million adults in Europe, Asia, Latin America, or Africa. So what are you talking about?
The median American is far richer - with a far higher income and disposable income - than the median in Europe, Asia, Latin America or Africa. It's not remotely close in fact.
The median in Europe for example, pegs you down toward an income of just $12,000 and a net worth of only a few thousand dollars.
The US is a country of 330 million people where the median person is wealthier than Germany or Sweden. The US is by a considerable margin the wealthiest per capita large population in world history.
> Yet another example of the surprisingly poor living quality in the USA in aggregate terms relative to GDP.
If your friend grows up in a rich neighborhood and all of his friends drive BMWs, and he's upset because he's driving a brand new Accord, would you feel bad for him? Probably not, but this is how people criticize the USA's relative poverty and income inequality.
If you disregard absolute terms and only look things relative to the mean, then of course that means countries with low populations and high in homogeniety (e.g. scandinavian countries) will look superior in comparison.
> A factory making billions to its owner doesn't improve the revenues, wealth or standard of living of more than 1 person... A factory producing luxury Louis Vuitton handbags... is irrelevant to the living conditions of the workers
> Come on, this is Econ 101 and basic logic.
You griping about luxury goods on principle isn't "Econ 101" or "basic logic".
You can look at basically any material metric you like (cars owned, house size, etc.) and Americans come out ahead. Nominal GDP numbers are kind of nonsense, but they're directionally the same nonsense everywhere, so they actually work OK as an international comparison.
> most Americans are lucky to even have a positive net worth
The median American has a positive net worth of around $55,000. That's higher than Germany or Sweden, and just below Finland.
> A traffic ticket hurts your average American much more than this
The average American has a positive net worth of over $300,000 and represents the fourth richest average of any nationality. As such, the average American would shrug off a parking ticket every bit as much as Musk would shrug off a $20m fine.
> US is 7th country on cars / people metric, below New Zealand and just above Poland.
It doesn't really matter when US has 56 times the cars of the first 6 countries combined.
You're comparing San Marino (a small city) with the entirety the US. It's just noise.
Consider also that San Marino, Andorra, Monaco, Liechtenstein and Malta are all very small and rich countries. It is normal for the wealthy to own more cars than necessary. Not so normal for tens of millions of americans who live currently under the threshold of poverty.
I suspect the other countries could do with way less cars, americans would still need more than they have (given the lacking public infrastructure) but can't afford them.
> Whether you compare median or mean, Americans reliably come out ahead, except for a few small Euro countries (mostly tax havens for American companies).
Well here is an actual study that found the poorest 20% of Americans consumed more goods and services than the average people from affluent countries. Including Europe.
>The US is well below many European countries (and others) by median wealth
The US ranks 6 in median household income and median per capital income. The ones above us are much smaller nations, and it's easier to for them be statistical outliers compared to a large nation like the US. California, which has a larger population than any nation that scores better than the US in median income, blows any of them outside the water no matter what wealth metric you use.
> It is pointless to compare richest subset of Europe to the entire US. If you want to do a fair comparison, compare entire Europe to the entire US.
I don't think that's really a fair comparison. Every city from NYC to a small town in Midwest get the same benefits of being one of the richest countries in the world. American federal policies affect everyone in America, rich or poor, in big cities or small towns. Comparing with every European country is disingenuous because that group also consists of Ukraine, Serbia etc. I would way a fair comparison will be with European countries with similar economic indicators as the USA. If you do that, you will notice that metrics are indeed better in those countries.
> And the above attitude is why the US is a joke with people who can't afford education, healthcare, or a home
The median American has all of these things better than the median European, except maybe healthcare. That's tough to compare. Some countries like the UK clearly have worse healthcare than the US.
Most of the top colleges are American. American homes tend to be much larger and nice than European homes.
> Then you're comparing countries with better distributed quality of life based on GDP
The distribution is really not that skewed. In most states, median income is within 40% of mean income.
Whether you compare median or mean, Americans reliably come out ahead, except for a few small Euro countries (mostly tax havens for American companies).
> The poorest states in US have higher wealth than the GDP/capita of say UK and other western EU countries.
> What does that tell you?
Nothing.
Why would you compare wealth of a state (the aggregate of a stock) with GDP/capita, a per person flow. I mean, it's true, but it's also true that the poorest EU country has greater wealth than the GDP/capita of the richest US state.
Heck, the poorest country even in the process of joining the EU, Montenegro, has $26 billion in wealth, the US state, territory, or federal district with the highest GDP/capita is D.C. with $200,277, which is ~5 orders of magnitude less.
> The US has been the richest country in the world in terms of average individual consumption (not income, some small countries like Norway have higher incomes) since independence and before
You’re wrong. After the civil war it’s arguable and it’s certainly true after 1900, but American policies favoring agriculture (thanks to romantic notions from Jefferson among others) retarded widespread industrialization in the US until much later than the UK, France, and Germany.
Rate of personal bankruptcies? Homeownership rate? Median household net wealth?
The amount of cars Americans have on absurd loans is entirely irrelevant to their personal wealth or lack thereof.
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