US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

This literally does not happen in normal operation (because train stations security or police aided by social workers will direct people to homeless shelters, or make them leave if they refuse homeless shelters), and only happened a few times during the height of the refugee crisis in the big cities with new arrivals coming in at a rate where the refugee and homeless shelters in those major arrival cities were overloaded and bureaucracy was too slow to process and re-distribute these arrivals quick enough to avoid some camping in train stations.

The wikipedia article explicitly states:

> This is a list of countries (not all 195) by the homeless population present on any given night. Different countries often use different definitions of homelessness, making direct comparisons of numbers complicated.[3]

For Germany it further states: >*Includes around 350000 refugees in temporary housing or awaiting asylum.

Temporary housing might be shit, but it's still better than living in a cardboard box on skid row. Unless your government provided temporary housing is a literal cage, of course, but we don't have those here.

In Germany "homeless" includes all people who do not have a permanent residence, i.e. people living on the streets but also people who e.g. temporarily live with relatives or friends, e.g. because they have a hard time finding an affordable place in the overcrowded big cities.

PS: I was "homeless" for about a year in Germany. I was looking for a new place after uni, couldn't find one due to overcrowding in the city I was looking in, and stayed in my parents' house during that time, just like I did in my youth. I had a better life incl more privacy there than I previously had with some roommate arrangements. But I was technically homeless under the definition they use for the stats.

As to your changing the goal posts by talking about healthcare. There is nothing “perverse and dishonest” about measuring which country is the “richest” based on capacity for consumption. The vast majority of Americans, even at the 20th percentile, will never go bankrupt due to medical bills. But they will all get to enjoy much higher consumption (bigger houses, more cars, more TVs) than the average European. (And maybe, just maybe, Americans aren’t irrational and simply prefer the trade off they have made.)

Now, you may personally value the security of not having the possibility of crippling medical debt over the potential for higher consumption. I probably would too! But it’s not so obviously the only correct way to view things that it would be “perverse” and “objectively dishonest” to measure which country is the “richest” in a way that doesn’t place dispositive value on that security. Put differently, you’re simply defining “being rich” as “being secure.” That’s not the only way to define it.

E.g. if you scroll in the article you will find that Germany reports as homeless: "Living temporarily with family and friends due to lack of housing", "Living in institutions"

"Living in institutions" is clarified as: "Including people who stay longer than needed in health institutions needed due to lack of housing; and people in penal institutions with no housing available prior to release".

The US does not count these categories.

Now, it would be interesting to see how the numbers would change if the US actually counted all the millennials who moved back in with their parents because they could not find an affordable place, and all the prisoners and parolees who stay with relatives.