141–150 of 248 posts
I suspect using the median net assets instead of the average would lead to vastly different results.
You would be correct, the US lags far, far behind in median wealth, behind countries like Korea and Spain. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-23/australia-tops-median...
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France is above the EU average. Probably more comparable to a large, above-average US state.
France's GDP per capita is definitely lower than the US, by a substantial amount.
Also I think the average hides a wider disparity in the US.
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When you take out a loan, it doesn't decrease your net worth, right? If I'm worth $X, then I take out a $1MM loan, at that moment I'm still worth approximately $X (because the $1MM the bank gave me and $1MM I owe the bank cancel each other out). So I'd rank them as: - Billionaire - Home owner - Minimum wage earner - Neurosurgeon
Why is a house an asset but an education isn't? Do you think a potential spouse would pass over the neurosurgeon?
You could and people have tried to make derivative securities to commoditize people's educations and then you could try to literally sell your education (or more like future returns on your work based off your education) but until you do that it's not a liquid asset.
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That uses consumption data for 2010, coinciding with the year the EU financial crisis really hit and dominated the news, while the financial crisis in the US was already in downswing.
Yes, I've checked data for 2017 and USA does not look too rosy anymore, matching most of western EU.
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How did you get from "slower internet" to "there is a pattern"? If you scroll two comments up, you'll see the most crucial difference: free healthcare. Healthcare-related expenses can bankrupt an entire family in the US, even with great health insurance... Then there is free education, but let's leave that aside for now.
That’s also consistent with the pattern. 75% of Americans have either employer paid insurance or Medicare. For those people, premiums and out of pocket costs are on average less than the extra taxes they’d pay in Europe for health insurance: https://www.assembly.ca.gov/sites/assembly.ca.gov/files/Arch... (page 18, showing 5.2% of household income spent on premiums and out of pocket costs). (Note that France doesn’t h…
As for education per percentage spending paints a distorted picture. A more thorough comparison is needed accounting for the cost of education, population size, absolute numbers as opposed to percentages. Otherwise I agree that the US has fancier, more exclusive higher education institutions and that professionals with a degree are paid much better than in France.
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The second decile in the US had in 2017 a wealth of $4798 (-962 for the first decile), while in France in 2015 the second decile had E12900, E4300 for the first decile. And, you know, access to health care :-)
and affordable highspeed internet.
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When you take out a loan, it doesn't decrease your net worth, right? If I'm worth $X, then I take out a $1MM loan, at that moment I'm still worth approximately $X (because the $1MM the bank gave me and $1MM I owe the bank cancel each other out). So I'd rank them as: - Billionaire - Home owner - Minimum wage earner - Neurosurgeon
Why is a house an asset but an education isn't? Do you think a potential spouse would pass over the neurosurgeon?