The Richest Countries in 2023 • Hacker News Board

Re: The Richest Countries in 2023

#61

Post by splintercell » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 2:22 PM UTC

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #47

roflyear wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny in a way: because the US spends so much on its military, its allies do not have to. This of course is an enormous benefit to the US: but it's a great way for allies of the US to prosper under the might of the US military while maintaining security in this regard.

>because the US spends so much on its military, its allies do not have to The US also doesn't have to spend so much on military considering it has no enemies at it's borders. It can always ramp down and spend the extra on social services. Ask yourself why doesn't it do that? >but it's a great way for allies of the US to prosper under the might of the US military while maintaining security in this regard Oh please, st…

I can't believe you're saying these things in a post Russia-Ukraine war scenario. Yes, US has a huge military and it benefits from it, but I would say the primary beneficiary of this military are the friends of US who now don't have to spend money on military. Rather they spend money on their social programs.

Can US walk out of this role it plays, and still remain in a beneficial position? This is the biggest raging debate in the US right now. You can check the works of Peter Zeihan (who claims that US dollar will become even more desirable after the US walkout), or Brent Johnson (who claims that, even in a complete decline scenario, US dollar will still maintain its dominance above and beyond everyone).

Either way, Americans are hugely divided on maintaining this world order as it exists, and saying "you guys would lose so much without this", it's just taking a side on that debate.

Re: The Richest Countries in 2023

#62

Post by splintercell » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #38

killdisk wrote: post #6

As an American living in Berlin for 2 years while working as a software dev, this article very much confirms my experience. The move started with a bit of sticker shock at having my income effectively cut in half - lower salaries and higher taxes - but I feel just as "rich". Germany has very strong worker protection laws, I feel secure in my job, the time off minimum STARTS at 28 days a year, + holidays + effectively…

I guess it depends on what you’re looking for because I had the opposite experience. I went from carefully budgeting each month, thinking about buying a house maybe in a decade (or two). And put away a few hundred for retirement each month. Job opportunities were ok, but options limited. Then I went to the US and got a 100% pay bump. And pay has only increased after that. I bought a house 2 years after arriving in th…

Replace "rich" with "secure" in OP's comment, and it will make a lot more sense.

Re: The Richest Countries in 2023

#63

Post by FirmwareBurner » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 2:27 PM UTC

splintercell wrote: post #61

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>because the US spends so much on its military, its allies do not have to The US also doesn't have to spend so much on military considering it has no enemies at it's borders. It can always ramp down and spend the extra on social services. Ask yourself why doesn't it do that? >but it's a great way for allies of the US to prosper under the might of the US military while maintaining security in this regard Oh please, st…

I can't believe you're saying these things in a post Russia-Ukraine war scenario. Yes, US has a huge military and it benefits from it, but I would say the primary beneficiary of this military are the friends of US who now don't have to spend money on military. Rather they spend money on their social programs. Can US walk out of this role it plays, and still remain in a beneficial position? This is the biggest raging…

>Yes, US has a huge military and it benefits from it, but I would say the primary beneficiary of this military are the friends of US who now don't have to spend money on military.

That makes no logical sense. Why would the US invest so much money to protect its allies, if it weren't the primary beneficiary of it's giant military budget, and instead would mostly benefit its allies and not itself? The US always puts itself and own interests first.

The massive military sector is what gave birth to US's tech sector and the massive surveillance apparatus the US has at its disposal, and allowed it to own the aerospace sector too. All that give the US the biggest soft and hard power globally, and it also trickled down to its economy and to other sectors as well.

Protecting it's allies is just a happy side effect of them fitting underneath the giant umbrella the US has built primarily for itself, and it will never give it up because protecting its allies was never the main objective, but projecting its power.

Re: The Richest Countries in 2023

#64

Post by refurb » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 2:36 PM UTC

You have to be careful with GDP because for some countries that money goes offshore.

Ireland is a tax haven for corporations. Google sells their IP to Google Ireland, then charges for it across a swath of markets. Then the money flows back to Ireland as GDP.

But it doesn’t stay there, it flows back to Google USA.

Re: The Richest Countries in 2023

#65

Post by dudul » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 2:42 PM UTC

landedgentry wrote: post #50

gumby wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The metrics are complex and ill understood, because few people can make the comparison you have. The thing that jumps out to me about life in the USA is how much time you spend maintaining it rather than living it. Chasing down bills for health care, until recently a lack of autopay, steady stream of paperwork and decisions from the schools…just a million fine-grained decisions and responsibilities when compared to o…

It's death by a thousand paper cuts. A lot of things simply cannot be depended on to work in the U.S., and you have to spend a lot of time chasing them down. More examples: budgeting flexible spending accounts, choosing health insurance annually, finding doctors in your network (and checking again and again, with multiple sources), hotels losing your reservation, airlines overbooking flights, mail and deliveries disa…

I fail to see how a lot of these things are US specific with maybe the exception of annual enrollment.

Re: The Richest Countries in 2023

#66

Post by roflyear » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 2:50 PM UTC

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #47

roflyear wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny in a way: because the US spends so much on its military, its allies do not have to. This of course is an enormous benefit to the US: but it's a great way for allies of the US to prosper under the might of the US military while maintaining security in this regard.

>because the US spends so much on its military, its allies do not have to The US also doesn't have to spend so much on military considering it has no enemies at it's borders. It can always ramp down and spend the extra on social services. Ask yourself why doesn't it do that? >but it's a great way for allies of the US to prosper under the might of the US military while maintaining security in this regard Oh please, st…

I agree with you, for the most part. It's not a simple answer as you seem to be hinting but I agree with your principals.

How I phrased it emphasized that the US benefits the most from this scenario, so please don't twist my words.

Re: The Richest Countries in 2023

#67

Post by roflyear » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 2:53 PM UTC

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #63

splintercell wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe you're saying these things in a post Russia-Ukraine war scenario. Yes, US has a huge military and it benefits from it, but I would say the primary beneficiary of this military are the friends of US who now don't have to spend money on military. Rather they spend money on their social programs. Can US walk out of this role it plays, and still remain in a beneficial position? This is the biggest raging…

>Yes, US has a huge military and it benefits from it, but I would say the primary beneficiary of this military are the friends of US who now don't have to spend money on military. That makes no logical sense. Why would the US invest so much money to protect its allies, if it weren't the primary beneficiary of it's giant military budget, and instead would mostly benefit its allies and not itself? The US always puts it…

It can make logical sense, in game theory. For example, you can have two situations:

A) thing A is the most beneficial thing for person A to do

B) thing A benefits person B way more than person A

These are not mutually exclusive.

I'm not exactly arguing for this (I'm not sure if the US or its allies benefits more, and we'd have to define what "benefits" means and "who" benefits etc.. etc.. etc..) I'm just saying this is very obviously possible: where the US having a huge military is the best thing for the US, and also its allies benefit from this MORE than the US benefits from it.

Re: The Richest Countries in 2023

#68

Post by e12e » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 3:10 PM UTC

TheFragenTaken wrote: post #5

I read into the numbers behind "hours worked" from OECD [1]. It seems wild to me that the United States on average works 500 more hours a year, compared to the top counties on that list, and 300 more than the EU average. I've never really been a proponent (or opponent) of the four-day work week, but this seems to indicate you become "richer" if you work less. At least according to this type of ranking. [1]: https://d…

Re: The Richest Countries in 2023

#69

Post by e12e » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 3:31 PM UTC

thatwasunusual wrote: post #53

ObscureScience wrote: post #12

It would be interesting to see this using median income or similar meassure rather than GDP per capita. Inequality by itself doesn't have to be a problem (depending on economic ideology) but if all purchasing power is restricted to a few ultra rich that should be relevant to the discussion of whether a country is rich.

All this data is available on the interwebz. I'm a Norwegian, but has worked in several countries around the world, among them the US. According to this site,[0] the median income in US and Norway was $24K-ish in 2021 (2019 numbers for Norway), while this Wikipedia article[1] lists countries based on average annual working hours (OECD, 2022). Based on this, we can deduce that: * Americans are paid $13.3/hour * Norweg…

Fwiw those numbers look sensible for Norway - but note that median household income after tax is about double (590k nok):

https://www.ssb.no/statbank/sq/10090867

Not sure how that compares to the us numbers.

Re: The Richest Countries in 2023

#70

Post by atmavatar » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 5:28 PM UTC

actionfromafar wrote: post #37

nus07 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh we here in US got better things to do with taxes like spending it to build another fighter jet so we can send it to the Middle East in the name of Freedom . I am told you guys in Western Europe enjoy your stability because of the “freedom” we bring for all of you at the cost of our own healthcare , worker protections and social safety net. Look we are martyrs. *my brother in law lives in Germany making less than…

Sure, but replace jets with “health care middlemen” and you get the real spending.

Hey, don't knock our perfect healthcare system where we have 10 administrators for every physician because the hospital needs to negotiate rates with thousands of different insurance providers, and each insurance provider needs a glut of administrators because each hospital wants to negotiate its own rates.