The trouble with comparisons like this is the lack of scale and perspective. Australia and Taiwan are roughly half the size of California. The United States has

The trouble with comparisons like this is the lack of scale and perspective. Australia and Taiwan are roughly half the size of California. The United States has a far larger size, and a far greater regional diversity. If you draw comparisons across similar population sizes and similar geographic regions, for example comparing the USA to all of Europe, the numbers look a lot more similar: Europe median: $26k Europe mean: $174k USA media: $82k USA mean: $505k Both regions have roughly a factor of 6 difference between median and mean wealth.