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Wealth is very hard to accurately measure and is impacted a lot by demographics (e.g. age distribution). Consumption is a better measure of how people actually

Wealth is very hard to accurately measure and is impacted a lot by demographics (e.g. age distribution). Consumption is a better measure of how people actually live. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household_final_consumption_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household...

AnotherGoodName 6y ago
I disagree simply because expenditures are completely different for more socialist countries. Eg. Total healthcare expenditure per capita is well below the USA in Australia. Less than half in fact. https://onthewards.org/the-inside-scoop-part-one-a-comparison-of-the-us-and-australian-healthcare-systems/ https://onthewards.org/the-inside-scoop-part-one-a-compariso... So that's $4500 a year more the average US citizen has in total expenditure that isn't some type of luxury good or indicator of a better life. It's just survival. I mean Australia beats the USA by any quality of life index out there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index
- grandmczeb 6y ago
  If you add American's median household healthcare expenditure (~$8,200) to Australia's consumption, America's consumption is still 20% higher. > I mean Australia beats the USA by any quality of life index out there. I don't think it's worth it to get into an argument about which country is "better", except to say a lot of indexes are designed to advocate for the creator's goals rather than as a useful comparison. E.g. your linked ranking uses "the share of women holding seats in national Houses of Assembly". Is that really a useful comparison point for quality of life?
  - AnotherGoodName 6y ago
    >If you add American's median household healthcare expenditure (~$8,200) to Australia's consumption, America's consumption is still 20% higher. Yes but the point is that's one example. I'm not going to got through the full list but i can't think of one USA government provided service that's better quality or requires less private intervention compared to social democracies like Australia and it shows up in so many intangible ways. eg. little things like the Australian government provided online tax filing. In the USA people need to pay to file taxes online (sure paper is free but ugh what a hassle). More private toll roads in the USA. Public housing is more common per capita in Australia. Australias national broadband network (i still can't get fibre here in the USA but i had it in regional Australia), etc. Again i'm not going to keep going except to say that i've lived in both nations and it's really obvious. In more socialist countries per capita spending can be seen as lower but the services are better despite no spending from consumers going to them. The spending comes from the government. You can't compare spending between the USA and Australia for this reason.
    - modeless 6y ago
      Online tax filing is free for everyone under the median income. Private toll roads may or may not be "more" common but they are certainly rare. Average internet speeds are twice Australia's. https://www.fastmetrics.com/internet-connection-speed-by-country.php https://www.fastmetrics.com/internet-connection-speed-by-cou...
    - qeternity 6y ago
      Very odd to hear from someone who lived in both. I’ve lived in both as well. > More private toll roads in the USA. And more public. More roads period. The interstate highway system is one of the modern wonders of the world. > Public housing is more common per capita in Australia. I’m not sure if this is true, but I’d argue it’s not a good thing. > Australias national broadband network (i still can't get fibre here in the USA but i had it in regional Australia), etc. Again i'm not going to keep going except to say that i've lived in both nations and it's really obvious. This is an extremely strange one. Internet in Australia is so bad it’s painful. The national network is a joke.
mdoms 6y ago
Yikes. Measuring wellbeing by consumption is a VERY American perspective.
- cynicalkane 6y ago
  Consumption is the income and wealth that you end up using. Measuring wellbeing by consumption is the standard economic perspective, since it describes how much of society's goods and services one ends up using. More simply, if you save then spend, wealth-based measures will rate you as better off than a person with higher income who just spends. That doesn't make sense.
  - mdoms 6y ago
    A wealth measure will give a higher rating to someone who spends on assets than someone who spends on Fortnite skins. What it doesn't do is arbitrarily favor someone who lives in a HCOL area or in a country (sorry, the country) that forces individuals to spend their own money on things like health care.
    - HPsquared 6y ago
      Someone living in a HCOL area who happens to have bought their house before the price inflation era, would have a high wealth figure but unable to do anything with said wealth. Australia has high house prices.
  - kennywinker 6y ago
    This is confusing. If you save, you have more wealth. If you have more wealth, you are more resilient to hardships (economic, health, etc.) - a population of people with large savings accounts and low debt seems obviously better than a population that makes a ton of money but lives close to the wire or carries large debts
    - jldugger 6y ago
      The problem though is that personal savings grows over time -- a nation full of young people with high incomes will eventually become a nation full of weathly old people, but if you were to compare the two nations, the yard stick matters. edit: if you want to cook up some evidence, look at a scatter plot of some indicator of age (national average age?) vs national average wealth. I suspect, given the countries at the top of the list, you'll end up with a pretty good r.
markmark 6y ago
We would need to see median consumption, rather than per capita, to compare to the wealth figures above. The US rates very highly in wealth per capita as well.
- grandmczeb 6y ago
  The consumption distribution is a lot more flat than income or wealth (~5x difference in consumption for bottom quintile vs top quintile compared to ~20x in income). You can see consumption broken down by income here[1]. One thing I’d point out is that the bottom quintile in the US has a higher consumption than the Australian average, although the Wikipedia numbers don’t quite measure the same thing so it’s not perfectly comparable. Also note this uses 2018 dollars rather than 2011 dollars. [1] https://www.bls.gov/cex/2018/combined/decile.pdf https://www.bls.gov/cex/2018/combined/decile.pdf

AnotherGoodName 6y ago

I disagree simply because expenditures are completely different for more socialist countries. Eg. Total healthcare expenditure per capita is well below the USA in Australia. Less than half in fact. https://onthewards.org/the-inside-scoop-part-one-a-comparison-of-the-us-and-australian-healthcare-systems/ https://onthewards.org/the-inside-scoop-part-one-a-compariso... So that's $4500 a year more the average US citizen has in total expenditure that isn't some type of luxury good or indicator of a better life. It's just survival. I mean Australia beats the USA by any quality of life index out there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index

grandmczeb 6y ago
If you add American's median household healthcare expenditure (~$8,200) to Australia's consumption, America's consumption is still 20% higher. > I mean Australia beats the USA by any quality of life index out there. I don't think it's worth it to get into an argument about which country is "better", except to say a lot of indexes are designed to advocate for the creator's goals rather than as a useful comparison. E.g. your linked ranking uses "the share of women holding seats in national Houses of Assembly". Is that really a useful comparison point for quality of life?
- AnotherGoodName 6y ago
  >If you add American's median household healthcare expenditure (~$8,200) to Australia's consumption, America's consumption is still 20% higher. Yes but the point is that's one example. I'm not going to got through the full list but i can't think of one USA government provided service that's better quality or requires less private intervention compared to social democracies like Australia and it shows up in so many intangible ways. eg. little things like the Australian government provided online tax filing. In the USA people need to pay to file taxes online (sure paper is free but ugh what a hassle). More private toll roads in the USA. Public housing is more common per capita in Australia. Australias national broadband network (i still can't get fibre here in the USA but i had it in regional Australia), etc. Again i'm not going to keep going except to say that i've lived in both nations and it's really obvious. In more socialist countries per capita spending can be seen as lower but the services are better despite no spending from consumers going to them. The spending comes from the government. You can't compare spending between the USA and Australia for this reason.
  - modeless 6y ago
    Online tax filing is free for everyone under the median income. Private toll roads may or may not be "more" common but they are certainly rare. Average internet speeds are twice Australia's. https://www.fastmetrics.com/internet-connection-speed-by-country.php https://www.fastmetrics.com/internet-connection-speed-by-cou...
  - qeternity 6y ago
    Very odd to hear from someone who lived in both. I’ve lived in both as well. > More private toll roads in the USA. And more public. More roads period. The interstate highway system is one of the modern wonders of the world. > Public housing is more common per capita in Australia. I’m not sure if this is true, but I’d argue it’s not a good thing. > Australias national broadband network (i still can't get fibre here in the USA but i had it in regional Australia), etc. Again i'm not going to keep going except to say that i've lived in both nations and it's really obvious. This is an extremely strange one. Internet in Australia is so bad it’s painful. The national network is a joke.

mdoms 6y ago

Yikes. Measuring wellbeing by consumption is a VERY American perspective.

cynicalkane 6y ago
Consumption is the income and wealth that you end up using. Measuring wellbeing by consumption is the standard economic perspective, since it describes how much of society's goods and services one ends up using. More simply, if you save then spend, wealth-based measures will rate you as better off than a person with higher income who just spends. That doesn't make sense.
- mdoms 6y ago
  A wealth measure will give a higher rating to someone who spends on assets than someone who spends on Fortnite skins. What it doesn't do is arbitrarily favor someone who lives in a HCOL area or in a country (sorry, the country) that forces individuals to spend their own money on things like health care.
  - HPsquared 6y ago
    Someone living in a HCOL area who happens to have bought their house before the price inflation era, would have a high wealth figure but unable to do anything with said wealth. Australia has high house prices.
- kennywinker 6y ago
  This is confusing. If you save, you have more wealth. If you have more wealth, you are more resilient to hardships (economic, health, etc.) - a population of people with large savings accounts and low debt seems obviously better than a population that makes a ton of money but lives close to the wire or carries large debts
  - jldugger 6y ago
    The problem though is that personal savings grows over time -- a nation full of young people with high incomes will eventually become a nation full of weathly old people, but if you were to compare the two nations, the yard stick matters. edit: if you want to cook up some evidence, look at a scatter plot of some indicator of age (national average age?) vs national average wealth. I suspect, given the countries at the top of the list, you'll end up with a pretty good r.

markmark 6y ago

We would need to see median consumption, rather than per capita, to compare to the wealth figures above. The US rates very highly in wealth per capita as well.

grandmczeb 6y ago
The consumption distribution is a lot more flat than income or wealth (~5x difference in consumption for bottom quintile vs top quintile compared to ~20x in income). You can see consumption broken down by income here[1]. One thing I’d point out is that the bottom quintile in the US has a higher consumption than the Australian average, although the Wikipedia numbers don’t quite measure the same thing so it’s not perfectly comparable. Also note this uses 2018 dollars rather than 2011 dollars. [1] https://www.bls.gov/cex/2018/combined/decile.pdf https://www.bls.gov/cex/2018/combined/decile.pdf