My main takeaway from this article and these comments is that it's devilishly difficult to make international economic comparisons. As one commenter mentioned

My main takeaway from this article and these comments is that it's devilishly difficult to make international economic comparisons. As one commenter mentioned such activities quickly disintegrate into highly subjective "meaning of life" debates. This is incredibly important because a lot of policy analysis depends on making international comparisons. If such comparisons are really intractable problems then what does that say about the potential for effective policy making?