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Comment by croes | Hacker News Reader

>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.

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...

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

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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