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For what it’s worth, Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the US (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_billionaires#Forbes htt

For what it’s worth, Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the US (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_billionaires#Forbes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_...). It’s just harder to spot because there’s less contrast.

ObserverNeutral 5y ago
It's not about your own wealth, it's about the size of the company you are at the helm of. People understand the diminishing returns of wealth, they'd rather be at the helm of a Fortune 100 company and have a net wealth of 100m vs. being a billionaire who made his billion buying and selling real estate in Sweden. Sweden billionaires are all small potatos guys, they are way inferior to Trump if we are talking about turnover of the companies they own. The US has the real guys, people like Bezos, Gates, Buffett, Koch etc.
toxik 5y ago
Billionaires per capita I think is a pretty terrible way to describe the situation. 25% of all billionaires live in the US, same for China. 1.4% live in Sweden.
- blululu 5y ago
  Not sure I’m understanding this objection. The parameter in question is ability of a society to generate extreme outliers in achievement. In economic $billion net worth is a good proxy, though I’m sure we could look at things like publication citation rank or number of gold medals instead. We would certainly want to scale whatever number by the size of a country since that corresponds to the probability that a given individual in that society can achieve that level of success. Comparing the US to China, for example, in total magnitude will naturally bias to China since it has 4x the population. That means that although both societies have a similar number of billionaires the probability of being a billionaire in the US is ~4x greater.

3 ms·

For what it’s worth, Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the US (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_billionaires#Forbes htt

by blululu 5y ago

ObserverNeutral 5y ago
It's not about your own wealth, it's about the size of the company you are at the helm of. People understand the diminishing returns of wealth, they'd rather be at the helm of a Fortune 100 company and have a net wealth of 100m vs. being a billionaire who made his billion buying and selling real estate in Sweden. Sweden billionaires are all small potatos guys, they are way inferior to Trump if we are talking about turnover of the companies they own. The US has the real guys, people like Bezos, Gates, Buffett, Koch etc.
toxik 5y ago
Billionaires per capita I think is a pretty terrible way to describe the situation. 25% of all billionaires live in the US, same for China. 1.4% live in Sweden.
- blululu 5y ago
  Not sure I’m understanding this objection. The parameter in question is ability of a society to generate extreme outliers in achievement. In economic $billion net worth is a good proxy, though I’m sure we could look at things like publication citation rank or number of gold medals instead. We would certainly want to scale whatever number by the size of a country since that corresponds to the probability that a given individual in that society can achieve that level of success. Comparing the US to China, for example, in total magnitude will naturally bias to China since it has 4x the population. That means that although both societies have a similar number of billionaires the probability of being a billionaire in the US is ~4x greater.