Comment by sofixa
14 days ago
> This attitude is why EU countries are mostly quite poor compared to the US and have relatively unproductive and low-tech economies.
Source? Are you adjusting for cost of living, per capita, and using the median?
14 days ago
> This attitude is why EU countries are mostly quite poor compared to the US and have relatively unproductive and low-tech economies.
Source? Are you adjusting for cost of living, per capita, and using the median?
> Source?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
> Are you adjusting for cost of living, per capita, and using the median?
Yes, yes, and no (irrelevant because it barely shifts the result)
GDP and GDP PPP are almost irrelevant with regards to personal wealth or lack thereof. 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 good for GDP and the wealth of the factory owner, but is irrelevant to the living conditions of the workers. A private equity firm making wild bets is very "productive", GDP wise, but again , entirely irrelevant at a personal level. Even the worker's salary is tough to compare in isolation between countries because of the vastly different costs of living - an American having to pay tens of thousands of student loans back, with obscene housing prices, absurdly expensive healthcare... $200k/year in San Francisco might not get you as far as e.g. 100€k/year in Berlin (throwing numbers for illustration, haven't actually done the math).
Come on, this is Econ 101 and basic logic.
> 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.
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