Apologies for the previous fuckup. This time the link should be correct.
TLDW: GDP is not a good metric on its own for comparing wealth, you need to account for purchasing power of the currency (PPP).
getting poorer… and happier.
No, they’re getting richer at slower peace. Fucking clickbait title
Yeah, we also don’t pay $14,000 a year on healthcare, we don’t pay that much for other things that are funded collectively here. So I’d say you generally just need more money in the USA to get the same things. And I believe the gap between rich and poor isn’t yet as wide as in the USA. So it’s more money that the regular person has and it’s not just in some bank account of a billionaire.
That depends on the EU country. Contrary to public perception the gap between rich and poor in Germany is about as bad as in the US. Most other EU countries are better on that metric though.
Hi, yeah, been to both to keep it short.
I’m Germany, if you break your leg, you’ll be mostly fine financially.
In USA, you could be in debt for years.
The gap isn’t that close.
Heck, let’s just look at ambulance cost.
In non-life-threatening situations, Germans pay 10% of transport costs, from €5 to €10.
In the USA, in one of the cheaper states, you’re looking at least at 2,000$ without insurance. Average is 5-10,000$.
With insurance isn’t much better, with a good rate being 500$ still just for the ride.
And well, you’ve seen the meme on eggs I’m the USA. Strangely enough, even something like McDonald’s meals can more expensive sometimes in the USA then Germany.
I suppose your internet and cell data prices are similar at least.
Housing (in cities) though, is cheaper in Germany.
I haven’t even gotten into education, because I don’t know much about it, but I don’t think Germans are paying hundreds of Euros for a book, digital or physical.
Again, The gap isn’t that close.
That’s the poverty risk and I agree that this is lower in Germany, but it says very little about the direct wealth inequality.
Poverty risk is part of the direct wealth inequality. If you’re much more likely to fall into poverty, you’re going to have higher levels of poverty, and thus a wider gap
Not directly, but yes if it happens to enough people over time it can have an effect. But please see my other post further up where I looked up the actual numbers and Germany even surpassed the US in the Gini coefficient not that long ago and while the US has recently overtaken again the difference really isn’t that big.
I don’t know if others have mentioned this already, but the Gini coefficient has flaws, especially when comparing very different economic models (which the USA and Germany have). It would work better for comparing Kentucky to California for example, or Hesse to Bavaria. Not only that, but the Gini coefficient is more sensitive to changes in the middle of the income distribution than at the extremes. This means that significant changes in the income of the middle class may not significantly affect the Gini coefficient, while changes among the very rich or very poor might. It also focuses solely on relative income distribution and does not account for the absolute levels of income. Two countries could have the same Gini coefficient but vastly different average incomes, leading to different living standards.
The accuracy of the Gini coefficient also depends on the quality and comprehensiveness of the data used. In many countries, like the USA especially with its tax loopholes, income data may be incomplete or unreliable (and it’ll only get more unreliable with Musk in charge). And we already covered how it doesn’t cover issues like access to healthcare, education, etc that all cause and help perpetuate a wealth gap.
Yes I agree that it needs to be questioned, but I think you are also overlooking a lot of poverty issues in Germany. First of all the rich in Germany really like to hide their riches both practically and also in regards to taxation and secondly the majority of the people in Germany do not own the flat or house they live in, resulting in huge wealth gap and constant wealth transfer via rent payments.
I think I would agree that in terms of absolute poverty at the fringes and extreme (display) of wealth the US is much worse than Germany, but when it comes to structural inequality and near inescapable dependency of the poor in relationships that can be described as wage-slavery Germany is actually not looking good at all.
Germany is high for Europe, but the US is crazy high for democratic and supposedly developed nations. Next year’s score is going to jump after the current administration destroys the public institutions and gives them to the oligarchy.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gini-coefficient-by-country
That website has some slightly odd figures (from the CIA 🤔), need to look up a better source some time when I have more time.
I’d like to see some numbers, too. I’m not really up to date, but in my understanding Germany isn’t great. But nowhere close to the situation in the US. And if I look at the list of the richest Germans, looks like it takes at least our top 10 combined together make one Elon Musk. And there’s still some Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Zuckerbergs and Larry Pages etc left and a whole Silicon Valley with the richest companies in the world.
And just from a quick googling I also find the Gini index to be different and pages like that one also say it’s a significant difference: https://wid.world/world/ especially if you look at things like the top 1%
For a quick overview on the wealth inequality in Europe, this article is good.
I looked up their source, which is the UBS’s Global Wealth Report 2023.
On page 33 there is this table that compares Gini coefficient between major economies over the last 20 years including the US and Germany:
As you can see Germany even surpassed the US in the early 2000, but since then the US overtook, but the difference isn’t huge.
I have honestly no idea where the CIA gets their data from, but I don’t think they are a very trustworthy source.
Thanks! Seems I’d need a degree in economics to really understand this. My field is more computer science. And you oftend tend to get definite answers with that, not 10 studies with wildly different numbers, disagreeing on everything… 😒
The idea of the Gini coefficient itself is relatively simple. What I suspect is happening here is that different studies are using or weighting wealth numbers differently, most likely in regards to asset ownership (mostly housing) and thus come to different conclusions.
This is more obvious in the Europe comparison article where all the EU countries that have high rental housing rates or other severe restrictions on home ownership like Sweden are rated especially poorly.
In the US in comparison the home ownership rate is relatively high, but the quality of the housing stock is low (despite still inflated prices for them). So as others have said it is a bit of an apples and oranges comparison sadly.
I sure don’t feel happier
I don’t appreciate advertisement.
I share your distaste for these semi-native ads within the videos. However, I am not going to take down the post just based on that.
SponsorBlock is a really good addon for skipping embedded ads and sponsors in youtube videos. I avoided it for a long time, but now after using it for 9 months or so, I couldn’t live without it.
Sadly that seems to be the norm now, but I agree. Thankfully he keeps it at the end so you can just turn it off by then.
