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Ikkon t1_ixz4n7y wrote

Reply to comment by Bull_City in Charted: Income Distributions in 16 Different Countries by TheThinker12

I’m not sure if looking at wealth is that good of a way of judging prosperity of a country and wellbeing of its citizens.

When looking just at median wealth, people in Portugal are wealthier than people in Germany, and Germany and Greece are about equal. Sweden, Ireland and the US are all very low, and average person in Norway is poorer than people in the UK or France.

I think average wealth can get pretty distorted by things like house value, since places that rank as the wealthiest usually also have really overvalued housing market

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Bull_City t1_ixzdr5y wrote

That’s a fair point. It’s prolly a mix of each tbh, like wealth and income to your point.

But I’d recommend visiting some of these other countries I mentioned if you haven’t. In the US the disparity in both income/wealth is crazy whichever you want to use.

Like your average Norwegian or Kiwi is much happier than your average American on most any happiness measure. You can just see the prosperity walking around compared to the US where you’ll see a Ferrari roar past a homeless tent. That shit just doesn’t happen in most countries we’d consider our peers in either wealth or income.

So I know wealth distribution has become a highly propagandized word in the US, but figuring out a way to at least get basic services to everyone would go a long way, whether taxing and providing services or figuring a way to get wealth sloshing around more evenly.

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