It's an excellent measure of the typical societal well-being in fact. On average there is a strong correlation between the two globally and there has been duri

It's an excellent measure of the typical societal well-being in fact. On average there is a strong correlation between the two globally and there has been during the entire post WW2 era at the least. It is the rare outlier that doesn't see a correlation between societal well-being and GDP per capita. Shall we stroll down the list of high GDP nations? Surely it's unnecessary, as we all know the names. Oh ok let's do it anyway. Ireland $101k | Norway $99k | Switzerland $96k | Qatar $84k | Brunei $80k | Singapore $79k | US $76k | Iceland $74k | Denmark $68k | Australia $67k | Sweden $58k | Netherlands $57k | Canada $57k | Israel $54k | Finland $53k | Austria $53k | Belgium $52k | Germany $51k | New Zealand $50k | UAE $50k | UK $50k | France $44k | Japan $39k | Kuwait $39k | Taiwan $36k | South Korea $35k | and so on And everyone also knows what the bottom 1/4 or 1/3 of GDP per capita nations look like and how horrible their societal well-being is. The correlation is blatant. It's not perfect of course, it is however very high. There are no great societal paradises where the GDP per capita is ~$500-$5,000. And there are no countries that are like Zimbabwe, Somalia or North Korea but have $30k+ GDP per capita figures. The only serious weak spots in the correlation, primarily, are the US being ranked so highly on GDP per capita (but being below eg Finland on societal well-being), and the couple of smaller resource rich nations like Qatar where human rights are weak. For the vast majority of nations the correlation is quite sound and consistently so.