The numbers, they mean something... or We're #27! Woohoo!

I notice Australia is the #1 country for middle class wealth creation and it is also the country with the highest minimum wage as well as universal health care and government paid, free to the student, higher education. It seems to be working for them.

Maybe Bailey can weigh in on this as our resident Aussie, but there's also a high price on just about all their goods. A pack of 8 AA batteries ran me 20 dollars while I visited there two years ago, and most of the crew who grew up in NYC said Sydney was ridiculously expensive even when compared to Manhattan.

And Japan? Let's just say they have 100 year mortgages for a good reason.

Mean, median, and mode people. Come on.

A couple of comments:

- The source for this is Credit Suisse who are in the Private Banking business (so obviously have an interest in making HNWIs look good). Overall it's a good report though.
- Income and wealth distribution analysis is a pain in the ass. Read the intro to the report, Credit Suisse says as much themselves.
- A big question mark has to revolve around PPP. If we're looking at the composition of median wealth, a big part will go to home ownership where price differs markedly between countries. Think about owning a 100k$ house in the US vs owning a 400k$ house in Switzerland - it's possible that they are quite similar in terms of the utility the owner derives from them but would show up with significantly different values in the statistics. The same would be true for many other assets (the US is just a significantly cheaper place for many, many things).
- No idea about how pensions are treated. Always a pain as well.
- Another interesting nugget on the whole income inequality angle: p120 quotes Forbes' 400 List where, in 2012, 69% of billionaires were self-made.

I object to this phrasing. Nobody needs your permission to ship your fucking job anywhere. They're in business to make money, not keep you employed, and nobody owes you a fucking job.

1.) I'm doing very well for myself thank you.
2.) If you want to ship american jobs overseas fine. But move your sorry ass to that country and cease being an american citizen. Don't be fucking the country in the ass while enjoying it's benefits.

The nums mean a lot. But demiurge's selection of nums is driven by an obvious (& flawed) agenda.

Per capita GDP's been a fine metric for decades. Demi's report of huff's report of credit suisse's report is more like a gini coefficient metric that's pretty useless to provide insight into who's better at creation of the greater well being for the greatest number of people, since it sacrifices growth in exchange for a smaller income gap.

Plus what Pally mentioned about how disproportionate home value is to 'wealth' of individuals, and Pylades' points.

Actually, I think the point is that per capita GDP is not a fine metric, because it can be distorted by large accumulations of income at the outlier. Per capita GDP (especially if adjusted for ppp) does a fine job of comparing national scion did on an apples to apples basis. But it doesn't at all account for how the pie is divided within each national economy.

^The point is to design policies to lift everyone's ship; to even out chances of getting a better ship or higher water level.

Name a policy designed to even out the relative level of individual's ships and you'll find a policy that destroys a bit (or a lot) of wealth. Shoot enough of those cannon balls and don't be surprised when the whole fleet falters or sinks.

When you start cherry picking data metrics to prove a point you've obscured something. Always something; question is what? In this case, if you drill into the credit suisse report, you'll find the nuances and details that might support or undermine the point, but it's never what it was presented as, and I know you're not one to take something automatically at face value. Like more bureaucracy, as you have additional layers, you have another veil that obscures our view (or the investigative journalists', whatever), sorta like like piles of telecom and cable taxes and fees and passalongs that aren't part of the 'list price.'

A policy that lifts all ships, that sounds great! And indeed, I've heard such descriptions used to justify past policies. The only problem is that they only raised the yachts, but left the row boats behind. Fool me once...

A large population crammed into a small set of islands tends to do that to you.