I’m not a big fan of international bureaucracies, particularly the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD, funded by American tax dollars, has become infamous for its support of statist pro-Obama policies.
- The OECD has allied itself with the nutjobs from the so-called Occupy movement to push for bigger government and higher taxes.
- The OECD, in an effort to promote redistributionism, has concocted absurdly misleading statistics claiming that there is more poverty in the US than in Greece, Hungary, Portugal, or Turkey.
- The OECD is pushing a “Multilateral Convention” that is designed to become something akin to a World Tax Organization, with the power to persecute nations with free-market tax policy.
- The OECD supports Obama’s class-warfare agenda, publishing documents endorsing “higher marginal tax rates” so that the so-called rich “contribute their fair share.”
But I’m a policy wonk, so I’ll admit that I often utilize certain OECD’s statistics. After all, if numbers from a left-wing organization help to advance the cause of liberty, that makes it harder for opponents to counter our arguments.
With that being said, let’s look at some truly remarkable statistics from the OECD website on comparative living standards in industrialized nations. This chart shows average levels of individual consumption (AIC) for 31 OECD countries. There are several possible measures of prosperity, including per-capita GDP. All are useful, but AIC is thought to best capture the well-being of a people.
As you can see from this chart, the United States ranks far ahead of other nations. The only countries that are even close are Luxembourg, which is a tiny nation that also serves as a tax haven (a very admirable policy, to be sure), and Norway, which is a special case because of oil wealth.
At the risk of making an understatement, this data screams, “THE U.S. SHOULD NOT BECOME MORE LIKE EUROPE.”
For all intents and purposes, Americans are about 40 percent better off than their European counterparts, in part because we have less government and more economic freedom.
Yet Obama, with his plans to exacerbate class-warfare taxation and further expand the burden of government spending, wants America to be more like nations that have lower living standards.
And don’t forget European living standards will presumably fall even further – relative to the U.S. – as the fiscal crisis in nations such as Greece, Spain, and Italy spreads to other welfare states such as France and Belgium
Here’s another chart that looks at the G-7 nations. Once again, the gap between the U.S. and the rest of the world is remarkable.
Maybe, just maybe, the United States should try to copy nations that are doing better, not ones that are doing worse. Hong Kong and Singapore come to mind.
Getting there is simple. Just reduce the size and scope of government.
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Dan, this cannot be accurate data. Europeans are better educated and have a much higher standard of living than people in the U.S. We know this. It’s “settled science.”
Either the numbers are simply wrong or your interpretation is misleading, as one would expect from a person like you who doesn’t care about the poor and disadvantaged, whose only hope in life is to be given everything they need and want by B.O.
@Paul Hmmm and what is B.O. ?
B.O. is Barack Obama.
Mr. Mitchell, I haven’t snipped at you in weeks and weeks…I think your sixth word was meant to be “of” and not “on”; so considered that chore done.
I recently spent time reading a history of the modern world which devoted all of ten pages to the American Revolution and twenty-six pages to the notion of African Socialism. The authors were baffled and frustrated that this golden ideal never produced prosperity but rather misery and poverty. They were forced, with the utmost reluctance, to conclude that people work less hard for the collective than they will for their own personal gain.
Who could have possibly foreseen that?
I may be a member of a self-selecting group of people, since I voluntarily made the westward emigration journey across the Atlantic, in pursuit of the higher living standards associated with more individual freedom — and thus less collectivism — (boy have I been disappointed in the past few years by the American electorate’s suicidal lemming trajectory towards European convergence!).
Certainly the American standard of living feels a lot higher to me compared to Western Europe, even without any OECD statistics. But I do wonder, ….
Does the OECD metric even count for subjective freedom factors, such as, for example, single family vs. mandated apartment living? In other words, the American liberty to live in the relative abundance and relative building freedom of single family housing, as opposed to Europe where a concerted and institutionalized collective societal effort has managed to confine most families in 900-1500 sqf apartments – who now, having lost all hope of ever being able to afford a single family house are supporting the further stuffing of the population into more and more apartments, largely out of misanthropic envy, wrapped perhaps in a veneer of environmentalism?
P.S. Norway’s per capita income due to its serendipitous geologic oil-wealth endowment, amounts to something like $30,000 per capita per year – on par with Saudi Arabia on a per capita basis – the equivalent per capita oil wealth for the US is less than $1000 per person. In other words, every Norwegian starts out with $30k in his/her pocket every year without even doing anything. That alone should put Norway out of any international comparison statistics. Pointing to Norway’s standard of living and deriving correlations with its politico-economic choices is tantamount to looking at Saudi Arabia and concluding that middle eastern authoritarianism leads to prosperity.
Excuse me for being mildly skeptical.
It’s not that I want the US to be more like Europe: quite the contrary!
(Except that the US has been more Keynesian than Europe, recently; but let’s leave that aside.)
My first problem is theoretical: putting a premium on consumption is fine, but only if this consumption is sustainable, as opposed to being financed by losers’ mortgages, student loans, or deficit government spending. I have no reason to believe that the US is worse than the EU in this, but it does make the AIC questionable.
My second problem is empirical: in my experience, quality of life is higher in the Netherlands than in the UK, and if the UK has a higher “actual individual consumption”, that suggests to me that this consumption is largely wasted.
(My experience of the US is mostly limited to an Ivy League college town, so it is not comparable.)
Katherine asked…”Who could have possibly foreseen that?”
um….Adam Smith?
(I know you were being sarcastic)
[...] week, I shared some numbers from the left-wing OECD which showed that living standards are much higher in the United States than they are in Europe’s welfare states. That is what this fight is all about. Rate this:Share [...]
[...] So when I read a column suggesting that the United States should become more like Italy, I thought this must be some sort of practical joke. After all, Italy is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, kept afloat by bailouts and subsidies. It’s economy is in the toilet, with pervasively high unemployment, almost no growth for a decade, and living standards that are only about two-thirds of U.S. levels. [...]
[...] So when I read a column suggesting that the United States should become more like Italy, I thought this must be some sort of practical joke. After all, Italy is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, kept afloat by bailouts and subsidies. Its economy is in the toilet, with pervasively high unemployment, almost no growth for a decade, and living standards that are only about two-thirds of U.S. levels. [...]
[...] sometimes you have to use blunt comparisons, which is why this data on living standards is powerful evidence that Europe is paying a high price for excessive [...]
[...] sometimes you have to use blunt comparisons, which is why this data on living standards is powerful evidence that Europe is paying a high price for excessive [...]
[...] sometimes you have to use blunt comparisons, which is why this data on living standards is powerful evidence that Europe is paying a high price for excessive [...]
Anyone familiar with Europe can tell you the list/ranking is completely unreliable. I am a Swedish person living in the UK and I have never heard anyone claim that living standards are higher in the UK than in Sweden.
Just a few examples:
1. Infrastructure is a lot better in Sweden. Rail transport, airports, roads, metro/undergound, buses, they are all of higher standard and better maintained than in the UK.
2. Day care is heavily subsidized in Sweden. The average two children family in the UK spends a fortune on nurseries, which might count as consumption in your stats but it hardly makes UK a better place to live.
3. Rents are regulated and housing more regulated in Sweden. This makes the housing market less flexible than in the UK but it also means Swedes live in far better apartments than the Brits. More space, higher build quality, better design, better insulation. Still the Brits pay more. Again, higher consumption but not higher living standards.
[...] sometimes you have to use blunt comparisons, which is why this data on living standards is powerful evidence that Europe is paying a high price for excessive [...]
If you measure quality of life by the ability to consume (often through borrowing, btw), then, yes, clearly the United States is the place to live. Conversely, if you measure quality of life by having meaningful time to spend with family, access to nature, a clean environment, and well functioning public transportation, as well as a social system that provides insurance for all who are struck by illness, then a place like Sweden might be the place to live. This is especially true if you enjoy a high income, a robust economy without significant public debt, but don’t need to be the highest spender in the world.
Christian, to respond to your three points:
1: Infrastructure is better in Sweden, including public transit. Who uses public transit and who pays for it? Are they one and the same? I think not. Therefore, you might find the standard of living higher for USERS of public transport, not necessarily “supporters” who support it through the confiscation of their hard-earned capital by the government.
2: Subsidized Daycare. See point 1.
3: Rents are regulated. Again, cui bono- who benefits? Surely not the property owner, who is told how much profit he is allowed to make.
In every country I’ve ever visited, most of the citizens I’ve encountered have been striving for more: A private vehicle so they can get off the crowded, hot, noisy public transport, a good job that pays well so their partner can stay home and raise the kids and a nice house with a bit of land where they can plant a garden.
I guess the standard of living ideal most of us ascribe to is seen through a capitalist lens. The socialist ideal is apparently much different, and I confess entirely foreign to my way of thinking.
Thanks for your reply! I agree we see the world through very different lenses and we also have different opinions to what constitutes standard of living.
For me, vital factors of standard of living are actually the standard of living of others. I prefer to live in a country where rich people subsidise the poor, where there is little child poverty, low infant mortality, where public spaces are pretty and well maintained etc etc.
Another factor of living standard is comfort of mind. Swedes do worry about unemployment and illness but it affects them far less than Americans. A Swede does not worry about ending up on the street (or in some camping or trailer park) or about losing health insurance. Nor does he worry his friends or relatives will.
High government spending also meant I was well off as a child, teenager and student when I did not have any income, High taxes don’t only mean people with income subsidise the unemployed, it also means you can enjoy a good life before you start making money and after you stopped making money. A bit like a loan but without the financial stress of a loan.
All these things are worth far more to me than a high disposable income. Having said that, I think the Swedish state should still cut down on its expenditures and focus on core needs like education, infrastructure and health care.
As for regulated rents, I don’t like them as they encourage overconsumption of housing and make it difficult for people to move. I just mentioned them as an example to how difficult it is to compare apple and pears (or Sweden and UK for that matter).
Christian: I’m sure happy to have this conversation, but I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. I have dual US/French citizenship, and have spent much of my life in France, so I certainly appreciate the benefits enjoyed under the European model. That said, I choose to live in Seattle, Washington, where I enjoy, as CK, above mentions, “…meaningful time to spend with family, access to nature, a clean environment, and well functioning public transportation, as well as a social system that provides insurance for all who are struck by illness…”
Most of us have happy lives with heat in the winter, food on the table, cell phones, computers and internet access. The poorest of the poor in the US are still better off than the poor in the third world- that’s not to say it can’t get better- it certainly can. We have government and private charitable programs to help those who need (and seek) it, and are willing to put forth minimal effort to clean up, find a job, etc.
Chronic homelessness in the US is more a factor of substance abuse than anything else, and our “individual liberties” preclude the government from forcibly institutionalizing people who aren’t a threat to themselves or others- these are the people we see on the side of the road with cardboard signs, living in encampments under the freeway and occupying Zucotti Park, in New York.
As for health “insurance,” it is illegal to turn anyone away who seeks medical treatment, so the idea that we have hordes of people who are outside the health-care system is false- it is a canard made up by those who would change our current system to the model that exists in much of Europe and the UK as well as Canada. This is one of the reasons why so many people (1 million-plus) risk their lives to steal across the border every year- once they present themselves at the Emergency room door, their medical problems become the hospital’s responsibility. The downside to this, of course, is that Emergency room care is MUCH more expensive than preventative care, and this raises the costs to those of us who ARE insured, which is more than 90 percent of the country. I’m not saying our system is perfect, but it certainly doesn’t leave anyone unprotected.
All that said, California outlawed foie gras this year, and as goes California, so goes the rest of the country, so I’m keeping my French passport current!
Cheers-
I’m just curious, Christian. Please describe the diversity of Sweden for me, if you would. My image of Sweden is of a fairly homogenous country, and I understand that homogeneity diminishes the problem of the “free rider,” particularly in Germanic cultures.
14.3% of Swedish residents were born outside Sweden. Add to that all the children of immigrants who grow up in a home with two foreign parents. The 14.3% come from:
Finland (166,723)
Former Yugoslavia (155,166)
Iraq (125,499)
Poland (72,865)
Iran (63,828)
Germany (48,442)
Denmark (44,951)
Turkey (43,909)
Norway (43,058)
Somalia (40,165)
Of course, integrating Finns, Poles and Norwegians is not exactly difficult. Successfully introducing Somalis to the work force is of course a lot harder whereas Iraqis, Iranians and Turks are quite heterogenous in terms of education and means of contribution.
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EU vs. USA…maybe comparable. But time and time again I have to correct people for trying to compare “the well off nations” in Europe to the US. They are not comparable. US has way more issues to deal with than just about every individual country in the EU. Yes places like Luxembourg are “nice”; but how about comparing it to another location with slightly under a million people like San Jose. So much European fetishism here in the US.
Every american citizen who buys this, only proves how ignorant he/she really is. I live in Belgium, small country, about 11mil inhabitants and i have to say a few things about this;
one of the reasons americans feel they have a higher (superior) living standard is that there is much more space in the us than in Europe. In terms of size the us is about 3 times larger than europe. The US has about 330 mil inhabitants, in Europe we’ll be going towards nearly 600mil in the next 1 or 2 decade(s) (for sure if Turkey ever manages to join the European Union) (and rest assured, what Islam is doing to Europe, will come to the US afterward). On our “small” continent we have quite some mountains situated in the center of the union. Therefore, civilization/population is much, much more concentrated than in the US.
Another reason is; the rest of the world knows (for a really long time) the US practically steals all the wealth from other countries, and they have several tactics in doing this. The US steals foreign high-educated people because the US does not have ANY education system, so competing is just out of the question (and my dear American fellow-men, this is done BY DESIGN, by your government, the federal reserve and your multinationals. I hope you reckon this and realise this is a very dangerous situation to be in). I swear, the average third-world civilian is more intelligent than the average (civilized and “educated”) American I’m not saying Americans are inferior, coz we’re all equal in my mind, don’t matter where you originated). And it’s a funny thing, coz every single time i talk to American tourists, they always agree when i say it’s far better to live here than in the states. (and i have to say, i don’t love my country, i don’t even like Europe, but the truth is the truth). We have state of the art insurance and healthcare system. If i would get seriously hurt in an accident, i know the state (the system) wil take care of me… If you don’t have any savings in the US and the same thing happens to you there, you know you’re pretty much screwed,…big time. Doctors, in the US give prescriptions coz they earn a percent on it, the more they write, the more they get paid… Here doctors just want to heal and help people. My country is LOADED with drugstores, even in a small town of let’s say 10.000 inhabitants, you can find aloads of them!
Now, our education; i always have to laugh when i watch an American movie… adolescents want to go to yale or harvard or princeton, because those schools offer the best education. Tell you what, you should try university right here in Antwerp… Harvard or Yale students won’t make it here, our schools and education are in many fields TOP of the world (also, Japan has a very high education level).
I could go on for a long time, but i’m getting bored ;p
Bottom line, i believe American should embrace a more humble attitude (never hurts) because the rest of the world, well doesn’t really like (to put it easy) the US. Especially for running the world (or at least the illusion they believe they’re in control) while they can’t even control what’s going on in their very own country… that’s just sad you know.
It’s blatantly obvious where the priorities of the US lies, in military-industrial complex, and that’s even more sad…. You can aslo (partially) measure the living standard of a country or civilization just by their investments in a specific field. And if there is one thing the entire world knows, it is that Americans really, really like to play with guns and love to blow things up. Very civilized,… must be the result of a good education and a sky-high living standard…
I call it a day here, otherwise imma get myself depressed i think.
Take care peepz, x
So let me get this straight: we stupid, uneducated Americans steal “all the wealth from other countries” and we steal “foreign high-educated people” from the brilliant, wise, and well-educated European countries.
In my study of satire, particularly neo-Classical satire, I learned that good satire always has some sort of give-away, something that makes it clear to the observant reader. Maybe my reading skills are getting rusty, but I didn’t see the give-away because, really, this has to be satire. Right? You’re not really serious, are you?
BTW, which part of Belgium are you from? The Flemish part, that would like to be independent from the rest of the country because they are the producers? Or Wallonia, which is the moocher part of the country?
[...] nation, simply because we don’t tax as much as Europe. But, given the economic stagnation and lower living standards on the other side of the Atlantic, why would anybody want to mimic those failed welfare [...]
[...] So when I read a column suggesting that the United States should become more like Italy, I thought this must be some sort of practical joke. After all, Italy is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, kept afloat by bailouts and subsidies. Its economy is in the toilet, with pervasively high unemployment, almost no growth for a decade, and living standards that are only about two-thirds of U.S. levels. [...]
[...] week, I shared some numbers from the left-wing OECD which showed that living standards are much higher in the United States than they are in Europe’s welfare states. That is what this fight is all [...]
[...] So when I read a column suggesting that the United States should become more like Italy, I thought this must be some sort of practical joke. After all, Italy is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, kept afloat by bailouts and subsidies. Its economy is in the toilet, with pervasively high unemployment, almost no growth for a decade, and living standards that are only about two-thirds of U.S. levels. [...]
[...] The United States is in much better shape than most other developed nations, particularly if you look at broad measures of prosperity and living standards. [...]
ki
I will just continue to live on my 100 acre farm where I grow my own food, and have zero debt because obviously I stole it from Europeans.
[...] whether we’re looking at North Korea vs South Korea, Chile vs. Venezuela, or the U.S. vs. Europe, the world is a laboratory and the evidence gets stronger with each passing year that markets are [...]
[...] this isn’t a laughing matter. As shown in this remarkable graph on global living standards, Americans enjoy significantly more consumption than their European [...]
[...] Kong and Singapore, which have relatively low burdens of government, with slow-growth economies such as France and Italy, where politicians ostensibly seek to “help” people with various forms of [...]
[...] Kong and Singapore, which have relatively low burdens of government, with slow-growth economies such as France and Italy, where politicians ostensibly seek to “help” people with various forms of [...]
[...] again, the United States is more prosperous than most European nations, though that may be an example of damning with faint [...]
[...] again, the United States is more prosperous than most European nations, though that may be an example of damning with faint [...]