Some nations may have industries that perform particularly well as compared to the US, such as the French fashion industry, but the French have crushing taxes to support socialist spending schemes that may burden France far into the future even though its new president wants to cut them.
Sure HK has a higher level of economic freedom, but how much can you do on such little land area?
There is more venture capital activity in California, or even Texas for that matter than in the entirety of most European nations.
The US has the greatest rate of new business formation. For one of the reasons this isn’t going on in Germany, just try to fire a German worker and you will quickly find out why their unemployment rate is more than twice that in the US. (If things are so great in Germany, why is that rate so high?)
The personal tax burden heavily influences personal wealth. A country can have high earners who have high taxes. If government social spending is counted as personal spending (after all, it is the same, isn’t it??) then a country can appear to be “catching up” to the US on paper, yet by other metrics such as the size of the autos, the amount of living area, the type of foods consumed, the types of hobbies, the citizens could be substantially less prosperous on a personal level.
Also, there are limits to wealth, or shall I say that as people become more prosperous some will decide to divert their energies into activities that don’t bring in any extra income, and may cost a lot. I know a lot of people who make all they need to live on and devote their extra energy to charity. I know a nurse who spends a good fraction of her time working in a birthing clinic in a poor Caribbean country. When she runs low on money to support her there, she comes back to the midwest and picks up a nursing job for a few months. How much of this goes on in areas of the world that are “catching up” with the US? I know several doctors who do similarly. I know very wealthy auto dealers who spend more time managing their charities than they spend with their dealerships.
Not only is this living proof of US prosperity, and productivity, but it shows that keeping score by the “catching up” metric doesn’t tell the whole story about US prosperity. How many wealthy people from other countries take time for such work? At best, we see people acting like Bono- their “charity” is to lobby GSEs (Gov’t Sponsored Enterprises) like the UN and the World Bank to spend taxpayer money on the poor.
Wealthy Arab’s idea of charity is Hamas.
So, “catching up” to the US is a very nebulous concept, and subject to selective and biased definitions which conveniently support studies like this one.
The US is impressive in many ways and I don’t wish to be disrespectful, but the US is hardly the wealthiest country in the world per capita and it is far from being the most productive one.
I live in Sweden and I have been to the US (Fla more precisely and I went to a lot of the parts that were labeled as ‘rich’). I wasn’t overly impressed with what I saw, although some people undeniably seemed well off.
Admittedly, this was in the early 1990’s, but since then Sweden and the US have enjoyed more or less the same levels of GDP growth. I doubt most people in Florida presently drive around in Beamers, Mercedes’s, Audi’s, Volvos’s and Cadillac’s.
I plan on going to the US this year or in 2008, but until then I’ll trust statistics, my own judgement and what I hear from other Swedes to a larger degree than claims from Internet users.
No offense. I just happen to know some basic things like:
- How Swedish wages compare to American ones
- What the average American car is (a Toyota Camry, alternatively a cheaper SUV like some basic Ford F-series version/a comparable Chevrolet or some North Korean SUV). In Sweden, the average car is a Volvo V70 and the average SUV is more like a Volvo XC90 or BMW X5. In most other countries, these cars are viewed as (at least close to) luxury cars.
- Few American families have as much living space as average Swedish families (Average Swedish families own TWO houses, one house in the city/community where they work and one ‘summer house’ (which often is smaller and not as well furnished as their main dwelling, on the other hand these summer residences often come with a rather nice leisure boat tied to the landing stage as many are located adjacent to water. An example of an AVERAGE ‘summer house’, financially speaking well in reach for most Swedish families: http://www.svenskfast.se/Pages/ObjectViewPictures.aspx?objectid=3D8ROQ9M0N0CQS2F )
- Swedes work considerably less than US Americans, still our standard of living is a little higher (I’m not saying much higher). This means we are more productive.
Am I preaching Socialism?
No way. Sweden is the most CAPITALIST country on earth if one looks at development of large, successful Capitalist companies in relation to population. Ericsson, Volvo (Volvo Car division was bought by Ford, which naturally doesn’t alter the origin of this part of The Volvo Group), IKEA and Absolut Vodka are not exactly the creations of stupid Swedish PC politicians and Swedish MSM.
Neither am I saying the US should try and become like Sweden/Scandinavia. The North American culture is different from and less homogenous than the Scandinavian one and if you’d let the most Europhile Liberals take over your country I’m sure your economy would suffer instead of prosper.