Item — HN Reader

Consider the fact that if you intersect the US's population with its per capita income

you get #10: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...

If you sample 100 households and take median income, it falls further.

If you factor in health care and university costs, it drops further. You're making an emotional response to a fairly clinical fact.

I won't bring up current account and debt. You get the idea. You're making my original point for me.

1 comments

Those Wikipedia numbers are improper to use as an argument. Real GDP per Capita should be used, not nominal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP...

PPP says essentially to "divide by the cost of a BigMac." A BigMac might cost more in Europe, but they don't eat them. It's silly.

The result of PPP is that it makes the poorest states in the US appear to be richer than places like Switzerland. Go visit Switzerland, then Louisiana, and come back here and we'll talk.

PPP is indeed a silly measure as practiced. McDonalds has almost no competitors in Switzerland (no In&Out, Jack, TacoBell or Subway across the street) - therefore a BigMac costs at least 5 times more than in the US. There are other measures that suck as well - e.g. external debt. OMG, Switzerland, Monaco and Luxembourg are completely screwed ... or are these popular banking places, that own foreign investors money that they actually are hording and did not spent it in the Looney-Tunes store at the local mall?