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Comment by rejectedandsad | Hacker News Reader

America is exceptional. There’s a good reason why Jobs was Syrian-American and not Syrian-Japanese or even Syrian-French.

Japanese consumer growth stalled during their lost decade while Clintonomics gave us a boom. Americans are significantly wealthier than their Japanese or Western European counterparts, with the only exception maybe being Norway. A large, prosperous, and open society breeds innovation.

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Life expectancy in Japan is 5 years higher than in the U.S, which does not suggest the U.S. population is benefitting from this alleged prosperity.

But where do you actually see that prosperity? I don't think the average American has a better lifestyle than the average German or Swiss or French person.

> with the only exception maybe being Norway

As far as I'm aware, while the government of Norway has a lot of money, Norwegian people don't. But the Swiss do.

> There’s a good reason why Jobs was Syrian-American

Wasnt his birth father Syrian and then he got adopted by "American" parents so I dont know why the Syrian heritage is relevant here?

>Americans are significantly wealthier

Mean or average?

If you mean median or average, both actually. You have to quite poor to be worse off (on average) in the US than in Europe (don't know about Japan); last time I checked it was something like the 10-20th percentile. FWIW, I am European, so no bias.

The GP specified Western Europe, so I doubt the 10th-20th percentile statistic is accurate since most Western European countries are not that far off from the US median[0].

If one takes into account the social services (education, healthcare, etc.) and general worker protections (mandatory PTO, parental leave, etc.) I think it’s clear the median earner in Western Europe is doing better than the median US worker in quality of life terms.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_...

The median net worth seems to be higher in Western/Northern Europe than the US though. Eastern Europe pulls down the statistics quite a bit. Canada also has a higher median.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_map_of_median_wea...

In aggregate. Our middle-class can't get enough of expensive consumer tech, to the point where you can be in debt and still sign up for a payment plan on the latest $1500 iphone.

(on second thought, maybe our wealth comes from our credit-worthiness, aka our willingness to owe each other money)

I think you meant to ask mean or median? (To me 'average' means mean, median OR mode. Although in general usage often specifically refers to mean).

Mean and median are higher by most accounts, mean significantly moreso.

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