The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust

https://www.economist.com/special-report/2024/10/14/the-american-economy-has-left-other-rich-countries-in-the-dust

by miles • 2 years ago

47 139 2 years ago

rcarr• 2 years ago

mistrial92• 2 years ago

It is ridiculous on its face to compare America with other nations by raw numbers as if there were some single measure like that... dozens of quality-of-life and cost-of-living indicators in many regions of the USA are strongly in the opposite direction for many real households.

ten percent of people are vastly wealthier while fifty percent plus of people are worse off and more so ..

the machinery of economics are driving their own numbers. ref Piketty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...

oceanplexian• 2 years ago

But we’re talking about economic output, not a qualitative assessment.

America has lower transaction costs, a better regulatory environment (e.g the EU with AI), better access to lending and investment, and a more robust consumer market. The US is clearly doing some things better.

ta12433• 2 years ago

Not convinced that AI is doing things better. And transaction costs in what sense? The US banking system is an international joke, so I'm guessing you're talking the lack of language barrier?

ta12433• 2 years ago

Yes, the US really leaves the bottom third behind

If you look at incomes for graduates in the US vs the UK, it's far higher. [0]

For non-graduates it's the same, and the social safety net in the UK is far better.

This ties into median wage in the UK being barely above minimum wage.

What this tells me is "don't bother educating yourself, just leave school asap and get a crap job stacking shelves"

The UK just isn't an attractive place for graduates to work in, and the few that are there (mainly in London and the south east [1]) massively subsidise the wealthy retired and the minimum wage jobs.

[0] https://www.ft.com/content/570d23b3-d286-4cb9-a319-b49cc4056...

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/e5c741a7-befa-4d49-a819-f1b0510a9...

klelatti• 2 years ago

and the few that are there

Completely wrong as roughly 25% of the UK population has a university degree. The U.K. has lots of problems but a lack of graduates isn’t one of them.

mperham• 2 years ago

Exactly. If the US economy is 10x larger but 90% of the economy is benefiting only the richest 0.1%, what's the point? Too many mainstream media pieces focus on overall GDP when they should be focused on averages.

The end of the article handwaves away this criticism.

Many critics of America’s economic model contend that it is intrinsically flawed, beset by extreme inequality and ever-more dominant companies crushing competitors. But these are exaggerations. There may be scope for a fairer distribution of the country’s wealth without undermining America’s growth, but the widely held belief that the top 1% are taking it all is overdone.

Handwaving.

As for tech behemoths such as Apple and Amazon, their potential for dominance must be watched and, if necessary, curtailed, but it is also true that they have generated incredible value in daily life and shaken up stodgy industries. And they face fierce competition to stay on top.

Where's the fierce competition? Apple and Google have a phone duopoly.

Measuring the economy is not measuring quality of life or health of the population.

mistrial92• 2 years ago

Nobel Prize winner of 2024 Simon Johnson interviewed:

Johnson told the AP that economic pressures were alienating many Americans.

“A lot of people who were previously in the middle class were hit very hard by the combination of globalization, automation, the decline of trade unions, and a sort of shift more broadly in corporate philosophy,” Johnson said. “So instead of workers being a resource to be developed, which they were in the 19th and early 20th century, they became a cost to be minimized … Now, that squeezed the middle class.’’

“We have, as a country, failed to deliver in recent decades on what we were previously very good at, which was sharing prosperity,” Johnson said.

One key for the future, Johnson said, is how societies manage new technologies such as artificial intelligence.

“AI could go either way,” he said. “AI could either empower people with a lot of education, make them more highly skilled, enable them to do more tasks and get more pay. Or it could be another massive wave of automation that pushes the remnants of the middle down to the bottom. And then, yes, you’re not going to like the political outcomes.’’

InDubioProRubio2• 2 years ago

But the us american economy is subsidized by everyone on the planet that trades in us currency and thus buys up the money its able to print. So those numbers are- dubious baseball stats at best?

ambicapter• 2 years ago

What makes that dubious? It makes this advantage rest on a single factor, but the advantage is still there, no?

CoastalCoder• 2 years ago

I'm the furthest thing from an economist, but I'm guessing that it feels like we're in a vulnerable position.

I.e., that it indicates our "wealth" could be pulled away from us on very short notice.

Contrasted to, e.g the wealth being from sales of some commodity that the rest of the world will need for the next decade: crops, certain metals, or (maybe) oil/LNG.

LUmBULtERA• 2 years ago

I don't buy the assumption that others are "subsidizing" the USD when they choose to use it -- they're choosing to use USD for their own benefit.

r3trohack3r• 2 years ago

I disagree with OPs conclusion but not the thesis.

I do, currently, think there is some level of “subsidizing” (wrong word) happening in the west.

USD is the wests reserve currency. It’s held by many western countries and much of western trade is denominated it in.

When the US prints money, they dilute the western reserve currency. It lets the US spend the value of every USD holder (including the value of debt denominated in the currency).

In other words, I think the US can spend the value of a large slice of the western economy (not just its domestic economy) on its own infrastructure and military projects through inflation by printing money.

adamnemecek• 2 years ago

Choosing is the wrong word as there aren’t many other choices.

datadrivenangel• 2 years ago

The US Dollar is an export.

It'll be hard for our economy if we stop exporting it, but that's true of any export.

TrainedMonkey• 2 years ago

U.S. dollar is reserve currency for a significant portion of the world. This means when U.S. can inject a lot higher fraction of the GPD into the economy for the same inflation cost. As a matter of fact U.S. wants some inflation to devalue high amount of debt they have - so there is an incentive to print USD.

busterarm6• 2 years ago

It's not just that. Compare the GDP per capita of individual US States to other countries. Even the poorest performing US State is still doing better than most of Europe.

vanrysss• 2 years ago

I'd invite you to visit Mississippi and then any of the top five EU countries and let me know which one you'd rather live in.

legitster3• 2 years ago

This is a terrible, terrible understanding of how international trade works. It's also not even relevant when comparing GDPR per capita.

seizethecheese• 2 years ago

This feels not even wrong.

The American economy is generating massive amounts of goods and services. This is a relatively hard fact.

The effect of the dollar being a worldwide currency is complex and not so straightforward. Strong demand for dollars actually would increase dollar value, which would increase borrowing costs, ceteris paribus. The US then increases money supply, to accommodate. It’s unclear that this dramatically increases GDP.

Unless your assertion is that the financial industry is overdeveloped? I don’t think it’s more than 10% of GDP off the top of my head.

recursivedoubts• 2 years ago

And yet it doesn't make the top 20 in happiness.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-...

Really makes you think.

indoordin0saur• 2 years ago

Money doesn't make you happy, although it helps. This is common knowledge.

slowmovintarget2• 2 years ago

Yes. Insufficient money can make you unhappy. After caring for needs, money won't make you happy.

DEADMEAT• 2 years ago

That's a very privileged attitude. Certainly someone already wealthy will not get much more happiness from gaining more wealth, but for many Americans a few thousand dollars could be a life-changing amount of money.

Sohcahtoa822• 2 years ago

I spent the first 12 years of my adult life making barely over minimum wage and never having more than $1,000 in my checking account.

I now make $215K/year and can spend $500 on a really nice dinner on a whim for me and my wife and not even feel the need to budget for it. I can have a top-of-the-line gaming PC and play all my games at 100+ fps with maximum detail settings.

I'm a fuckton happier now than then.

The way I see it, there are really only two people that truly believe (or at least claim to believe) that money doesn't buy happiness:

1. Business owners that use it as an excuse to keep wages low. Just convince the workers that a higher wage won't make them happier!

2. Poor people that tell it to themselves to cope with being poor.

Certainly, you reach a point of diminishing returns. $100M won't make you 10x as happy as $10M. But I know there's some article that's been passed around a LOT that says the diminishing returns begins at $70K/year, and that's just flat out wrong. $70K/year won't even buy a house in most cities.

slothtrop4• 2 years ago

"[...] specifically monitoring performance in six particular categories: gross domestic product per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make your own life choices, generosity of the general population, and perceptions of internal and external corruption levels."

US ranks pretty high in GDP-per-capita. Given the remaining factors, I imagine the obesity rate and intensified political polarization is skewing the result. The perceptions might be informed in large part by rate of consumption of news media content on social media (other developed countries have this problem, but lesser polarization may mute the impact).

Among good news is that the obesity rate has stalled in recent years, iirc.

InDubioProRubio2• 2 years ago

Also known as - starvation due to poverty

roughly3• 2 years ago

A lot of the charm of this kind of triumphalism wears off when one spends time in those other rich countries. It becomes rather sharply obvious on one’s return what America has traded off while min-maxing its GDP score.

ahmeneeroe-v27• 2 years ago

Those other countries' wealth is often mostly composed of the kind of thing that is easy to enjoy as a tourist and hard to enjoy as a resident.

E.g. beautiful real estate that is owned by the same family that owned it hundreds of years ago. An American tourist can rent space there and enjoy but a resident can never hope to earn enough to buy a piece of that.

or amazing public transit, which to a resident is just a commute to work but an American tourist sees the novelty in

roughly3• 2 years ago

I live in a city that tourists visit in America, I'm not getting starry-eyed on account of some old buildings.

red-iron-pine7• 2 years ago

E.g. beautiful real estate that is owned by the same family that owned it hundreds of years ago. An American tourist can rent space there and enjoy but a resident can never hope to earn enough to buy a piece of that.

The US housing market is ossifying rapidly and will likely be exactly the same within a generation. Canada and Australia are as well.

amadeuspagel• 2 years ago

The Economist is a british magazine. It's not triumphalism if they claim that the US is doing better then the rest of the world.

NoGravitas3• 2 years ago

It's triumphalism if a magazine in Airstrip One claims that Oceania is doing better than Eurasia and Eastasia.

roughly3• 2 years ago

The Economist is a pro-market publication, so yes, this is absolutely triumphalism on their part.

spacebanana74• 2 years ago

when one spends time in those other rich countries

Visitors usually get a warped view of the places they visit. You can't judge the UK by London, for example.

anvil-on-my-toe2• 2 years ago

Phrases like "the American economy is booming" or "America is out-performing Europe..." are simplistic and ridiculous. My least favorite part of getting a degree in economics was the endless story-telling that pretends to be scientific. "America" is not equivalent to the asset portfolios of the richest 1% of the population. Just say what you're measuring (rich people's wealth) and don't try to dress it up as a measure of a thriving nation. Don't call it "America" or "the economy", call it GDP.

Purchasing power is down, birth rates are down, life expectancies are down, young people's expectations of the future are down. We should account for things we care about when we talk about how the country is doing.

corimaith• 2 years ago

Everything you've listed is apparent in other countries and even more so. Even today, anybody ambitious would kill for the kind of opportunities Americans have.

rqtwteye2• 2 years ago

"anybody ambitious would kill for the kind of opportunities Americans have"

That's probably true for the very ambitious. I think the US doesn't work as well for people who just want to have a decent life.

BizarroLand2• 2 years ago

You're talking about the lottery winners, comparing the wealth and opportunities of the top 50,000 Americans to the average joes of the world and overlooking the reality of the other 369,950,000 Americans who have roughly the same quality of life that the people in your country do.

I'm from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, the poorest location in America. I have memories of my uncles sleeping in the snow, 14 people stuffed into a 2 bedroom home, dirty streets and boredom being the norm, no jobs and what little money was to be had spent across state lines in White Clay for cheap liquor.

There are far more of people like us than there are the people living the lifestyles of the rich and the famous. Don't stab your brother in the back in hopes of being one of them.

Gud3• 2 years ago

I disagree.

I am ambitious and from Europe. I live in Switzerland and I love it here.

There is no way I would wish to move to a dysfunctional country like the US(no offense).

piva00• 2 years ago

Life expectancy is definitely not trending down in a lot of other developed countries, that's quite unique to the USA in that cohort.

bitcharmer2• 2 years ago

American exceptionalism is strong in this one.

No, most of us would not like to live and work in the USA.

As always, you guys think too high of yourselves.

slowmovintarget2• 2 years ago

Right. Our food lines are merely shorter than those in other countries. Sigh.

u-2-silly• 2 years ago

Let's not forget:

- US Military patrolling the world's shipping lanes-- with US Citizens & Companies tax dollars directly subsidizing the price of oil & international goods for a significant portion of the world (the prices would be higher without some outside country prividing protection)

- US Military bases-- 750 in 80 countries-- with US Citizens & Companies tax dollars directly subsidizing the security of a significant portion of the world

As an American, I really wish we left the world to their own devices, and paid for their own security and shipping lane protection. The world takes the US for granted. I think we should let them squabble for a few years, then beg us to come back-- when we have them leaning over a barrel, then we charge high fees :P

dehrmann• 2 years ago

The US has been borrowing money from the world to pay for the world policing duties. Leaving the debate over those for another day, I'm worried the world will stop borrowing dollars that subsidize that service, and the US will be left holding the bag for the cost of it.

bryanlarsen• 2 years ago

The US gains far more than it loses. Shut down the Suez Canal and the Malacca Strait and the US economy would collapse. Not as badly as everybody else's economy would collapse, but it would collapse none the less.

LeChuck• 2 years ago

This phrase gets repeated a lot, “U.S. patrolling the worlds a shipping lanes” but what does it mean, concretely? Which shipping lanes and how? They’re certainly not doing a stellar job of it in the Red Sea, for instance.

blackhawkC173• 2 years ago

Sometimes, I wish the U.S. should suddenly leave the world alone, including NATO. That's when people will realize that the EU is too militarily weak to tackle Russia's aggression, and the Middle East will fall into chaos.

People who yap so much about America frankly deserve a real-life lesson to correct their brains.

M95D2• 2 years ago

If the US military won't patrol world's shipping lanes, I'm sure the Chinese military would take over that job.

axpy• 2 years ago

I think you might underestimate how much this is an important factor in the strength of the US economy.

BAHKA• 2 years ago

As a non-American I also really wish you left the World alone :)

iwontberude• 2 years ago

Actually in the US, real wages increased in the last several years (adjusted for inflation) so actually purchasing power is up on average. The data is always changing, good to keep up to date!

slothtrop4• 2 years ago

Then take note of GDP-per-capita growth. The whole of the developed world had to deal with inflation and financial repercussions of covid. What's exceptional is the US recovery and the fact is economic conditions in the US has improved at a more rapid pace.

young people's expectations of the future are down

Relative to?

birth rates are down

Absent GDP, this matters because...? The country is growing as a matter of policy through immigration.

Purchasing power is down

Wages are recovering

orwin3• 2 years ago

Since US firm invented and mastered the improperly called 'shadow banking' (they're not banks, banks issue and destroy new money. Shadow intermediary maybe?), GDP is a worsening indicator of consumption+investment (or overall production if you will).

The reason is simple: GDP grow with money velocity, and 'shadow banking' artificially increase that number, with very low impact on the real world (I'm not saying null, this boosted the US car consumption a lot with easy car credits, but the effects aren't in the same order of magnitude)

loeg2• 2 years ago

Purchasing power is up, actually.

Life expectancies are not a conventional measure of "the economy" but also (IMO) likely to improve in the medium term with widespread use of GLP-1 drugs.

As far as young people -- I'm not sure. There is certainly a Taylor Lorenz adjacent crowd of "doomers" but I don't think they're representative of the median young adult.

anvil-on-my-toe2• 2 years ago

No, purchasing power is down. Costs of living have gone up more than median wages. How much gold can you buy with USD today vs. 10 years ago? Less because the USD is worth less than it was. How much housing can you buy with $100,000 or with 1,000 hours of labor? Less housing.

Young people are objectively doing bad. Not trying to be depressing, but economically, behaviorally, health-wise, (at the median) they are worse off than their parents.

busterarm6• 2 years ago

Taylor Lorenz is also 40 and spoiled. Not a young adult, she's middle-aged.

I agree with your sentiment though. I just want to point this out because Taylor is a dogshit human being.

krunck• 2 years ago

birth rates are down

Good. Zero population growth is what the world needs. Not more of a people that consume far more than everybody else.

busterarm6• 2 years ago

This is like claiming to know the future.

Nobody knows how much population growth we need. In the future we might not have enough bright minds around to solve our resource crises. We might have a global epidemic that causes us to miss critial population thresholds that severely drop our quality of life.

I think that if we want our species to escape this rock before our sun wipes us out (or sooner), people should be having kids.

EasyMark• 2 years ago

You seem to be totally overlooking the fact we had a major once a century or so event—the Pandemic. Purchasing power is quickly recovering, birth rates have been down for decades, life expectancies are only down because of covid and quickly returning to where they were before, young people will do fine and adjust, or if they vote they can get more populist policies on the books rather than wring their hands over it. When people realize it’s the 99% vs 1% they will do quite a bit better.

sershe2• 2 years ago

Well this is about comparing with other countries, isn't it?

Also [citation needed] for purchasing power is down. Again, comparing with other countries, US disposable incomes are in a completely different ballpark. I wasn't aware of them going down.

charlie0• 2 years ago

Those phrases refer solely to how well the stock market is doing.

mjamesaustin• 2 years ago

GDP is increasingly a poor measure of economic well being, as wealth inequality becomes so bad a handful of individuals capture the lion's share of growth.

slothtrop4• 2 years ago

GDP-per-capita is a thing

NoGravitas3• 2 years ago

And highly misleading if there's significant income inequality.

Sohcahtoa822• 2 years ago

GDP-per-capita still doesn't capture inequality.

sheefrex• 2 years ago

Sometimes I like to think of GDP as a measure of economic (productive) power more than well-being. But other indicators are more important for the long-term, such as those on demographics, education, debt levels, etc. You probably don't want to sacrifice those for a transient boost in GDP.

rqtwteye2• 2 years ago

Does this translate into better quality of life for the majority of the population? I don't think so.

Workaccount22• 2 years ago

America is the ultimate example of fortune favors the fortunate.

A well diversified economic powerhouse with a friendly neighbor to the north and a cheap labor neighbor to the south, comparatively politically stable, and annnddd its energy independent?

America is ridiculously OP from an economics standpoint. Even more over it only looks like the position is going to strengthen, at least until either AI or climate change upend everything.

red-iron-pine7• 2 years ago

neat. when is any of that going to trickle down?

rubymancer• 2 years ago

Average wages in America’s poorest state, Mississippi, are higher than the averages in Britain, Canada and Germany.

This doesn't sound right.

Googling around, the median income (a much better metric than average) between Mississippi and Germany are about the same.

A huge difference: Britain, Canada and Germany don't have to pay for health care and education. I'm not sure how to factor that in, but something tells me if you do you'll find our Canadian and European friends are doing drastically better than those in Jackson, MS.

bradleyankrom• 2 years ago

You'd think The Economist would know better than to use the average there. Stats 101. Geez.

mistermann• 2 years ago

The ability of people to actually receive free medical services has certainly been in a downward trend over the last decade or so.

ch4s3• 2 years ago

but something tells me if you do you'll find our Canadian and European friends are doing drastically better than those in Jackson, MS.

This will show a lot of selection bias. Any Europeans with American friends who are in the forum are unlikely to be representative of the median German/Brit.

I have a cousin who is a mid-level manager in a steel plant in southern Illinois near near Missouri and he lives like a petty king. I've known FedEx drivers with lake houses in low cost of living areas. Middle income people in low cost of living states often live quite well in the US.

spacebanana74• 2 years ago

Europeans and Canadians might be healthier and better educated, but its very unlikely they'll earn more than an American electrician.

jhoechtl2• 2 years ago

The European has paid leave and a somewhat existing medicare system. I do not think this is taken into the equation?

red-iron-pine7• 2 years ago

but its very unlikely they'll earn more than an American electrician.

what's he going to be putting his money to, if not being healthier and smarter?

otherwise he's just fatter, dumber, and full of plastic kitch manufactured overseas, much of which is now floating around his bloodstream in microscopic form.

but hey, at least he's got a big truck.

legitster3• 2 years ago

Median income can also be misleading. If the government is taking on lots of debts to pay for things like health care or education, that's not necessarily sustainable economics.

GDP Per Capita is overall the best metric when thinking on a long-term economic scale.

As to how the people in Jackson, MS are doing - a lot of this comes down to what communities are doing with that wealth. There are lots of young professionals having decent lives, even in Mississippi - but a lot of that wealth disappears into cars and big private properties and other unequally distributed things.

hollerith• 2 years ago

Britain, Canada and Germany don't have to pay for health care and education

That is not true: British taxpayers have to pay for the health care and education of Brits.

The point is that when you add the money the government spends on you plus the money you spend on yourself, America has significantly more money per-person to go around.

What you should have written is that although America spends more money on health care per person than Britain does, Americans have worse health, so the money is spent less efficiently than in Britain.

(It is also true that America spends more on "criminal justice", e.g., prisons, but has more crime, so the criminal-justice money must be being spent less efficiently.)

randomdata• 2 years ago

but something tells me if you do you'll find our Canadian [...] friends are doing drastically better than those in Jackson, MS.

Perhaps true, but also keep in mind that Canada and the US were on more equal standing until the last five years or so, when we started to see a significant divergence emerge. You can ride on the past for a while. Assuming the trend continues, it may simply be that it is too early to see Canada turn into Mississippi.

apercu• 2 years ago

I lived in Ontario for ~18 years. While national healthcare is fantastic (and the US should totally have it), Canadians are getting squeezed, and have been for the last 5-6 years.

busterarm6• 2 years ago

When I lived in Ontario 20 years ago, Ontarians were getting squeezed and complaining then to.

There used to be something like 3 MRI machines across the entire province. The province containing 1/3 of the country's entire population. Wait times for screening procedures could be months. My exe's entire family drove down to New York to get their dental care, paying out of pocket, when it mattered. (UB's College of Dentistry became the 7th best dental school in the nation & 11th in the world largely on the back of this trade)

It's better now, but not better _than what can be bought_ in the United States. Does the US need to improve? Certainly.

red-iron-pine7• 2 years ago

Canadians are getting squeezed by the same things that are squeezing America -- and much of the world. Just slower, and with a few more safety nets.

hamster774• 2 years ago

A truck driver in Oklahoma makes more than a doctor in Portugal

red-iron-pine7• 2 years ago

Doctor in Portugal has healthcare and won't die at 55 from a preventable heart attack.

Instead, OK guy gets to have a Ford F-150, so he can drive a truck when he's not driving his truck.

And he doesn't have to pay high taxes, which is nice because it means his kids only get school 4 days a week: https://okcfox.com/news/local/rural-school-district-district...

Of course that means he has to be thousands more in daycare, but at least it's not the gubrment!

legitster3• 2 years ago

The important thing being missed here is that America, unlike the rest of the G7 or China against which it is being compared, is not aging as rapidly.

Take the book with a massive grain of salt, but the mechanisms are well described in The Accidental Superpower.

jacknews• 2 years ago

IMHO this is entirely miss-measurement or miss-characterization.

Probably if you look at dollar gains of stocks, land prices, etc you'll find Americans leading, but look at the actual lives of average people, and they are not so much better off, if at all. In other words it's mostly accounting/financial mirages.

jhoechtl2• 2 years ago

In the past the Us making other countries poor via the printing press was very often the applicable explanation.

Is it now any different?

spacebanana74• 2 years ago

I'd love to learn more about exactly why Europe fell behind. Only a few decades ago Britain and France had competitive or higher GDPs per capita than the US.

Many people argue the stricter business and environmental regulations hampered European growth, but these things were mostly even stricter 30 years ago.

Whatever the cause is, it's something that's happened in the last 15 years or so.

orwin3• 2 years ago

Peak oil in the north sea(2007), peak gas in the north sea (2006). While the US found out extracting their massive shale oil/gas reserves eROI was finally competitive.

hamster774• 2 years ago

Combo of energy and better capital markets and banking system

NoGravitas3• 2 years ago

This is the perfect example of why, when you read "the economy" in a mainstream publication, you should replace it with "rich people's yacht money".

mikewarot2• 2 years ago

Long personal anecdote deleted (it was too personal)

Lies like this story, which I can't afford to read, are why absolute bullshit artists like Trump are able to get votes at all.

Consider this, and the more than 1 gun per person state of the US population, and things don't look good for the future.

Civil wars are horrible, but they do boost the profit of the arms industry.

kyleee• 2 years ago

Interesting, is it better for the economy to have fewer guns per person? How do the graphs look for that metric across countries?

blackhawkC173• 2 years ago

You didn't read the story but conclude it's a lie? The Economist is a respected publication, the type that cites factual stats rather than spin BS like many mainstream news outlets.

mikewarot2• 2 years ago

The lede paragraph was all I could see, so I had to draw conclusions from that.

As I said

this story, which I can't afford to read

nojvek• 2 years ago

American economy is really about cheap oil/gas. They had a leg up in semiconductors and then that led to mega tech corps.

Average GDP per capita looks good on paper, but heathcare and education are really expensive. They increase the GDP because money is spent but in Europe it's a lot cheaper so they seem poorer but by purchasing parity they are richer.

If you earn in USD for US company and spend in another country, then yeah the money goes further, otherwise median American isn't doing that much better.

RickJWagner• 2 years ago

Huh. An incendiary article about the economy, a few weeks from election day.

Who would've guessed?

The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust

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