
US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland - baazaar
https://www.thelocal.ch/20190919/us-takes-richest-nation-on-earth-crown-from-switzerland
======
brownbat
> But debts in the Alpine country are far higher than in the US...

Debts make this comparison difficult to make meaningful.

A few cases:

\- Minimum wage earner barely scrapes by but does not seek any credit.

\- Someone in a high cost of living area takes out a mortgage.

\- A young neurosurgeon with fresh educational debt takes on a very high
paying job.

\- A billionaire borrows to finance a major real estate project

The net worth of these cases goes from highest to lowest. The "means" run in
the opposite direction.

Sometimes indebtedness is poverty. Sometimes it's consumption smoothing.
Sometimes it's a reasonable investment in a home or earning potential.
Sometimes it's a dangerous source of leverage on a foolish bet.

I don't know how we disentangle all those when trying to measure or compare
human welfare.

> the strength of the US dollar [also contributed]

If high Swiss property values and a strong US dollar conspire to to flip the
#1 and #2 countries on this specific metric, I'm worried we're drifting into
Spaceballs territory. What's all this mean? Possibly... absolutely nothing.

~~~
jcheng
When you take out a loan, it doesn't decrease your net worth, right? If I'm
worth $X, then I take out a $1MM loan, at that moment I'm still worth
approximately $X (because the $1MM the bank gave me and $1MM I owe the bank
cancel each other out).

So I'd rank them as:

\- Billionaire

\- Home owner

\- Minimum wage earner

\- Neurosurgeon

~~~
lonelappde
Why is a house an asset but an education isn't? Do you think a potential
spouse would pass over the neurosurgeon?

~~~
indecisive_user
A house is a nearly guaranteed asset. The value will likely steadily rise
throughout the years, and with good homeowners insurance you'll get paid even
if the house is destroyed.

An education guarantees nothing. The neurosurgeon could die, or suffer an
injury preventing them from performing surgery, or just plain quit and decide
to pursue art instead.

Of course the neurosurgeon has a significantly higher potential _future_
value, but it's an unrealized asset.

Also, it's possible to discharge a mortgage through bankruptcy, while student
loans are much more difficult to discharge, so you're effectively stuck with
that debt forever regardless of your career choice.

~~~
collyw
So without the insurance, then the house would be similar to the neurosurgeon?
A natural disaster could wipe it out.

And can't a Neurosurgeon take out equivalent insurance to cover the worst case
scenarios that you described? I am sure I have heard of famous singers
insuring their voices.

~~~
melcor
Almost.

A house can be liquidated and potential profit realized rather quickly.
Education, not so much. You can insure yourself (and should, if you could lose
your work by getting in an accident), so that you get a set amount paid out
each month in case you end up in a wheelchair or similar state that would keep
you from working.

------
nabla9
US has high average net wealth per capita but is not close to top in median
net wealth. Switzerland is close to top in both measures.

Median tells how rich the typical person is.

United States ranks #22 in median wealth
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult#List_of_countries_by_median_and_mean_wealth_per_adult_\(USD\))

~~~
trymas
> United States ranks #22 in median wealth
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult#List_of_countries_by_median_and_mean_wealth_per_adult_\(USD\))

It's off-topic, but could someone explain how is Ukraine last on that list?
40$ for median wealth and ~1.5k$ for mean wealth sounds incredibly low.

I knew Ukraine is in not great economic shape, but completely last sounds
insane.

~~~
gridlockd
This measures "wealth", not income. You can be in the top 1% of earners, but
if you save nothing, you can still have a net worth of $0.

Apparently, the median Ukrainian has only $40 to their name, by whatever means
they measure wealth. However, Ukraine has compulsory socialized retirement
funds. Minimum wage is $160/month.

The median US-American supposedly has 60,000$ to their name, which must be
mostly due to IRAs.

~~~
trymas
Yes, I understand that wealth is not income, but in Ukraine there are plenty
of oligarchs worth multi-billion sums. Dividing that wealth over whole Ukraine
population is definitely more than 40$ per person.

Though probably that's where rampant corruptions comes in and I will just
guess that rich oligarchs "on paper" have little to no official wealth in
Ukraine (have no clue how wealth is calculated country-wise if it's
international)?

~~~
gridlockd
> Yes, I understand that wealth is not income, but in Ukraine there are plenty
> of oligarchs worth multi-billion sums. Dividing that wealth over whole
> Ukraine population is definitely more than 40$ per person.

That's the arithmetic mean, not the median. The median is computed by sorting
all the values from low to high and then picking the middle one. That's why
it's a better measure for ordinary people. The few outliers at the top are not
factored in.

~~~
trymas
Ah. Indeed. My error and feeling dumb for this mistake. Dunno why I always mix
mean and median.. (clearly English is not my first language).

------
anxrn
I suspect using the median net assets instead of the average would lead to
vastly different results.

~~~
hartator
Actually the 20% poorest in the US has it better than the average EU middle
class. Ref: [https://www.google.com/amp/s/fee.org/articles/the-
poorest-20...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/fee.org/articles/the-
poorest-20-of-americans-are-richer-than-most-nations-of-europe//amp)

~~~
soperj
And you still have plenty of homesless and destitute. Pretty sad that you
can't look after the most vunerable.

~~~
rayiner
Homelessness rates in the US are lower than many big European countries:
[https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC3-1-Homeless-
population.pd...](https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC3-1-Homeless-
population.pdf)

Lower than France, Germany, and the UK, Sweden, Canada, and Australia. Equal
to the Netherlands.

~~~
_zamorano_
I'm European and I've been to several major cities in the US. I've also
visited most european capital cities.

In both cases, as a tourist, I never go too far away from the popular places
and never been there for most than 3 or 4 days.

Don't know the reasons (honestly) but the homelessness and poverty I've seen
in the US is nowhere to be seen in Europe. I repeat, in "popular" places and
vicinity.

How do they come out with such numbers? Is the impression of a tourist wrong?
Where are the poor and destitute in Europe compared to the US?

~~~
DanBC
> How do they come out with such numbers?

Different countries define and count "homeless" in different ways.

Some places will only count rough sleepers, and they'll do that by once a year
sending people out to count people who are sleeping on the streets. This
obviously severely undercounts those who are homeless.

Other places will have a definition for "statutorily homeless" which will
include people living in bread-and-breakfast style accommodation - emergency
short term lodgings funded by the state.

------
RichardHeart
Misleading stat is misleading. Page 47 of the source
([https://www.allianz.com/content/dam/onemarketing/azcom/Allia...](https://www.allianz.com/content/dam/onemarketing/azcom/Allianz_com/economic-
research/publications/specials/en/2019/AGWR_2019.pdf)) : "By average net
financial assets, the USA are the richest country in the world, not least
thanks to the strong dollar. But if we drew up our rankings of the world’s
richest countries based on median values, they would look different. The US
would slide by a whopping 12 ranks from the top spot to 13th place. Also
Singapore (from third to sixth place), Sweden (from seventh to 12th place),
Denmark (from tenth to 22nd place) and UK (from 12th to 16th place) would drop
significantly. In all these countries the difference between median and
average values tend to be bigger than in most other countries. For all
countries analyzed, the (unweighted) average for the median value expressed as
percentage of the average value is 44%. In the US, in contrast, this number is
just 15%; in the UK and Sweden it comes to around 30%"

~~~
Hitton
I haven't checked the data, it really shows the difference between countries
who have wealthy elite and countries which have wealthy citizens.

By median:

1\. Switzerland

2\. Japan

3\. Netherlands

4\. Belgium

5\. Taiwan

6\. Singapore

7\. New Zealand

8\. Australia

9\. Canada

10\. Italy

11\. Israel

12\. Sweden

13\. USA

14\. France

15\. Ireland

16\. UK

17\. Austria

18\. South Korea

19\. Spain

20\. Germany

------
ic4l
Are they including the billionaires in their statistics, and dividing the
total sum by the population!?

~~~
refurb
As much as I hate the anti-US tone on HN, this article is kind of crap.

Fact is, getting good wealth data is really hard. Income is much easier as the
govt collects that data.

~~~
sanxiyn
It's really hard, but Global Wealth Report does really try. This news is crap,
the report referenced is not. If you are interested do read the report.

------
titanomachy
If I have a billion dollars, and start a country that consists of me in my
palace and 2000 other people living in abject poverty, we are now the "richest
nation on earth" by this definition. Big whoop.

~~~
racino84
Except your country would be very poor, because you'd have either another
country's currency, or you would have a $1bn trade deficit and little actual
wealth - thats after you somehow get yourself some UN recognized sovereign
territory

~~~
baroffoos
Just have $1b worth of gold

------
amelius
Can we talk about medians, not averages, please?

This page provides some nice insights:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult)

For example: The US has a median/mean ratio of 15%, which is very low (ranked
with the bottom 10 of countries), where Egypt, Kazakhstan and Ukraine are at
the bottom.

------
tempsy
One of the more baffling statistics I’ve seen lately is that consumer debt
continues to increase and credit card interest rates are at multi year highs
despite the fed funds rate being at historical lows. Things don’t add up.

~~~
DuskStar
Sounds like the credit card companies are expecting a vanishing fraction of
the people for whom credit card interest is relevant to actually pay them
back...

(At least among my family, common knowledge is to treat credit cards like
debit cards or charge cards - make the full payment, every time, and if you
can't make the full payment you shouldn't have made the purchase)

~~~
ferdek
Same here - I'm using credit card only for extra protection (chargeback and so
on) always making the full payment at the end of the period.

------
glup
How does this reconcile with the data listed at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult)
? That shows $530,244 for Switzerland and $403,974 for US. Difference in
sampling or does the wiki one not reflect net wealth?

~~~
sanxiyn
Wikipedia uses Credit Suisse and this news uses Allianz.

~~~
AstralStorm
That's much less important than the date, which is 8 years apart.

------
vondur
That may be true, but what about the chocolate deficit compared to
Switzerland?

------
irrational
TIL Switzerland is the richest nation on earth. If I was going to guess, I
probably would've guessed Saudi Arabia or Luxembourg.

~~~
m0zg
Visit Zurich. Prices are ~2x what they are in my (fairly pricy already) area
in the US. That's the direct consequence of high median income: businesses
charge what the market will bear.

~~~
paganel
The high price of the CHF also has something to do with it. I visited the
French-speaking part of Switzerland a couple of summers ago (Geneva and
Lausanne) and at some point during that visit I realized that those two cities
(and the rest of the Swiss cities, of course) were among a very short list of
European cities not directly affected by war in the last 200 years or so.
Under these circumstances of course that everyone will be busy giving the
Swiss their money and valuables for "safe keeping", which among other things
translates into said high price for the CHF.

------
eutectic
It seems like if you are slightly more business-friendly than competing
countries then you have a big advantage (not to mention network effects), but
if everyone tried to be more like America then the world would be worse-off.

Just like a classic coordination game.

------
dr_dshiv
Hmm, US does not look or feel like the richest nation on earth. Is that just
me?

~~~
collyw
Probably because the income inequality is higher. If you think of some famous
super rich people I am sure most of the names you think of will be from the
US.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#/media/File:2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#/media/File:2014_Gini_Index_World_Map,_income_inequality_distribution_by_country_per_World_Bank.svg)

------
kwhitefoot
Mean wealth is not very meaningful. What is the median in the two countries?
Better still what does the distribution look like and how does it compare to
other countries?

------
archeantus
Going to that link I was punched in the face by about 20 ads and saw one
sentence of content that basically just restated what was in the title... did
I miss something?

------
ineedasername
I'd be curious to see the proportional gap between the top 10% and bottom 10%
compared. My guess is a much larger gap in the US, but I wonder by how much.

~~~
sanxiyn
The report linked in fact does such gap analysis.

~~~
ineedasername
I guess I should have dug further than the introduction, thanks for point me
further in.

------
agoodthrowaway
I am as American as they come but wealth as reported by this article is a
false metric. The Swiss have an amazingly high quality of life and standard of
living. For most Americans, I don’t think our quality of life is anywhere near
what it is in Switzerland.

------
drtz
Too bad money can't buy happiness [0]

[0] [https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-happiest-
countries...](https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-happiest-countries-
united-nations-2019/index.html)

~~~
collyw
Too little money does cause misery though.

------
baron816
Couldn’t find any content here. Just a full page of ads.

------
coldtea
When you get to compare the average lifestyle though, this is a joke...

------
unicornmama
What is the point of this article other than to make the internet more dumb?

Say Bill Gates moves into a town of 10,000 people. Congrats! The average
wealth of that town per person is now over 10 million. Everyone is a multi
millionaire.

