>the US experiences significantly higher GDP per capita
This is to be expected, if Americans are working longer hours than their European counterparts.
If you do a little back-of-the-envelope normalization (GDP/capita/average hours worked), the results are much closer. Norway, of course, absolutely dominates by this metric.
> So which is it? How can the USA be the richest country in the world if Norwegians make more money?
Norwegians make $62,767 per year per capita on average.[1]
Americans make $49,965 per year per capita on average.[1]
So an average Norwegian makes $12,802 more every year.
You know that Norway is a pretty small country compared to the USA : 5 millions inhabitants vs 300 millions.
That is you should try simple maths :
5,000,000 * 62,757
300,000,000 * 49,965
I'm pretty sure the second result will be slightly bigger.
> Also notice that some of these countries have higher or similar GDP per capita to USA.
In the US, households have 10% more money than the second closest competitor (Luxembourg), and 20% more money than next closest (Germany & Switzerland).
I think that's a much better comparison than GDP (which isn't necessarily connected with employment), and shows how these tradeoffs work.
> Most industrialized nations have stronger restrictions on free speech than America, for example.
Yet, most have a higher quality of life. France (for example) works the fewest hours per week, yet the highest GDP per capita (EDIT: added hour) hour. They get 5 weeks minimum for vacation per year, plus 22 days more if you choose to work more than 35 hours per week!
"Think about it. Nationmaster ranks France as #18 in terms of GDP per capita, at $36,500 per person, yet France works much less than most developed nations. They achieve their high standard of living while working 16% less hours than the average world citizen, and almost 25% than their Asian peers as per UBS. Plus, if you visit France you'll also realize that their actual standard of living is probably much higher than GDP numbers would indicate.
Thus, if one were to divide France's GDP per capita by actual hours worked, you'd probably find that the French are achieving some of the highest returns on work-hours invested. Labor Alpha, if you will.
We can actually calculate this Labor Alpha using statistics from Nation Master.
France has $36,500 GDP/Capita and works 1,453 hours per year. This equates to a GDP/Capita/Hour of $25.10. Americans, on the other hand, have $44,150 GDP/Capita but work 1,792 hours per year. Thus Americans only achieve $24.60 of GDP/Capita/Hour.
This puts the French Labor Alpha at about $0.50 GDP/Capita/Hour over the US. It may sound small at first, but add that up across millions of people, and a few decades. Now you've built a lesson for the rest of the world to learn."
Than Norway? The country with 25% higher GDP per capita than the US, a 33h average work week, and an infant mortality rate of a first world country? Nah
> This assumes ex ante a similar quantity of wealth. Europe’s GDP per capita is lower than America’s.
European GDPs per capita have been by and large lower than the US one since at least 1900, so this doesn't tell us much.
You know, having a continental sized country with continent sized resources and a population all speaking the same language, plus the last conflict on its territory having happened 150+ years ago, seems to be paying off.
This is a non-sequitur and non-argument, there are many, many other differences between the labour market in Sweden, and the EU compared to the US to rely solely on that fact as a reason for higher median income.
> People in this thread are comparing Norway to Sweden. One way of interpreting the median income data I linked is, if Sweden adopted the sort of capitalist approach you see in the US or Switzerland, the increased economic dynamism would be the equivalent of discovering $1.5 trillion in oil wealth, from the perspective of the median worker.
There's nothing in what you shared that support this, at all. Sweden also ranks higher in economic freedom than the US [0].
>on a side note France (and Germany) ranked very high in output per worked hour the last time I checked, way higher than the US.
I am not trying to start an argument with you (and France seems like a great place to live and work) but in Googling around, I found the following, which reports that German GDP per hour worked is .92 of the American and French is .958 of the American:
If you click on the "Show information" tab on the right, you see that "At the beginning of the year 2012, GDP per hour worked was significantly revised for a large number of OECD countries". Could it be that you relied on the "pre-revision" figures?
More generally, do you remember where you got your data?
> The effect of this is visible, e.g. when you look at efficiency of e.g. german workers compared to their US counterparts.
Can you please then explain to me how ~ 332mm people in the US are more productive than ~448mm people in the EU by almost 5 trillion dollars if the Americans are less efficient?
> I’m using productivity as a measurement. Ideally, productivity accounts for inefficient work by comparing inputs (labor) to economic outputs. The U.S. is more productive in this sense, so it’s more than just butts in seats.
We all come into this with a lot of context. However, America has I think something like the highest average and median wages outside the Nordics [0, 1]. And the Nordics are potentially a statistical aberration.
If somebody "gets" 2 weeks of paid time off, but at the end of the year their average salary is (50/52)% of someone who gets no PTO, are they really being paid for time off? It doesn't look paid to me.
The real benefit would be a culture where you can take unpaid time off then return to the same job later on. The per-hour pay is likely to correct quietly via ye olde market forces, and everyone enjoys the best of all worlds. High pay if they want it, time off if they want it.
>> Unsurprisingly, USA near the top with 1780 hrs worked annually by the average worker
According to the chart, US workers work < 1% more than the average for OECD countries. There are only two countries that are closer to the average.
"Near the top" is not even a close description of this data.
Given that your premise is false, how do the rest of your claims follow?
Brutal is an exaggeration. Americans don't come close to leading in the 50+ hour work week category. The US now ranks below: Iceland, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea on that metric and has been falling down those rankings for decades.
> The average American earns more than the average European, let alone the average global citizen. Heck, even construction workers in the US make way more than in Germany or Denmark.
Is this based on data or a is it a generalized assumption?
A short time ago, on HN, there was debate about the exactly opposite argument - that the purchasing power significantly decreased¹.
This is to be expected, if Americans are working longer hours than their European counterparts.
If you do a little back-of-the-envelope normalization (GDP/capita/average hours worked), the results are much closer. Norway, of course, absolutely dominates by this metric.
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