Comment by danans | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danans | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The total US GDP is higher because the US population is gigantic compared to typical European countries.

The US GDP-per-capita (adjusted for purchasing power) [1] is only somewhat higher than highly developed European countries.

Given the relatively small GDP gap, the differences you are seeing have to with different cultural and therefore political priorities around spending on public infrastructure and social goods like education and job training. Different as in less.

Also, a lot of the US pattern of production and consumption is based on premise of disposability (with the notable exception of some infrastructure built leading up to WWII).

That has an effect on the durability and perceived quality of the things you see and experience in the US.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

Even by your source, US GDP PPP per capita is quite significantly higher than most European countries. Most larger European countries are ~75% of the US as a rule of thumb.

Oil and finance distort things quite a lot. Therefore Norway and Ireland.

Fair enough, and I suppose that strengthens my explanation of the OP's observation, that the differences in quality are a result of different national priorities, not lower means.

Still, the American GDP per capita is by far the highest in large countries with more than 20 million people. Countries with a higher value either have a small and easily manageable population, like Norway, an extremely large number of non-citizens as workforce, like Qatar, or a population so small that it's possible to create a generous welfare state from funds by tax evaders, like San Marino.

The two closest countries to America in this category are Australia and Germany, and a trip through Berlin or Melbourne won't make you particularly excited for the countries' infrastructure.

Norway is because of oil and gas not small population. Qatar again.

The US is an extremely natural resource rich country as is Australia which explains a lot of the difference in GDP per capita.

Germany is quite a bit behind the US in GPD per capita, much closer to the UK and France than the US.

One thing to remember though is that the way GDP is calculated means that selling the same service for a higher price leads to more GDP so it's a very imperfect measure.

Berlin is the worst example, though – if you’d remove Berlin from Germany, the GDP per capita would actually increase.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com