For the vast majority of people, living in a wealthy country, where that wealth is more equally distributed, will be much more attractive than living in country with just a high GDP.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_...
> A Gini coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality, where all values are the same (for example, where everyone has the same income). A Gini coefficient of one (or 100%) expresses maximal inequality among values
Was easy to spot, US and Russia are definitely not at the top when it comes to income equality as both are controlled by oligarchy
Generally you have a lower limit to how poor a person can be, in Scandinavia that limit is reasonably high (I sure it doesn't feel that way if you're actually poor), so I would have assumed that would level out the inequality somewhat.
Denmark in particular have also always excluded students from statistics on who's poor, because it's seen a temporary thing. So we don't see them as truly poor, even if they often are, but I suspect that they have to be included in the Gini coefficients calculation.
Looking at the median wealth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...), a median person in Spain is 3 times as "rich" then someone in Sweden and Germans or the Dutch are more "poor" than Slovaks or Greeks etc. But this is largely a result of relatively low home ownership rate in most North European countries.
However if we disregard average people and look just at the top 10% or even 1% Sweden is still Remarkably similar to the US:
Wealth Share of the top 10%/1% *
United States: 75.9% / 35.4% Sweden: 75.3% / 37.4% Netherlands: 68% / 26.6% Denmark: 66.6% / 29.3% Germany: 65.1% / 30.2% Norway: 65% / 32% United Kingdom: 59.3% / 24.5% Spain: 55% / 23.8% France: 54.6% / 22.2% ...
* according to https://www.credit-suisse.com/about-us/en/reports-research/g..., see page 168 in "Global wealth databook 2019" fro the full table
The reason is, higher income tax means it is more difficult to become wealthy. So in countries with high income tax, the majority of wealthy people is those that inherited their wealth. Over time some wealthy people become poor, but with high income tax, even fewer become rich. This means that wealth becomes more and more concentrated among the few, which is somewhat counter-intuitive.
So in the US, wealth-mobility is greater than Denmark for example, resulting in the list on Wikipedia, where countries that are thought of as "unequal" actually are the most equal of all when it comes to wealth.
Article studying the effect: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
The reasoning is pretty much the opposite, the redistribution of health helps to move children out of their parents wealth/social-class. It might be that an individual adult in the US is able to move from poor to wealthy more easily, but I sort of doubt it.
Otherwise, I would rather be wealthy in the USA.
Meanwhile, the difference between the US and Europe in the article is around $10K per person--hundreds of times larger than the distortion created by the billionaires.
His income last year was around $60 billion, or $200 per person (of any age) in the United States. While last year was exceptional, all of his wealth ($600 per capita) was income in the last 20 or so years, most of it in the last 10. And his ex-wife Mackenzie Scott kept 25% of their combined wealth when they separated.
So it's simply not true that his contribution to GDP looks completely trivial even when compared to total US GDP.
Secondarily, capital gains is not really the same thing as income (at least, not in the tax code, and also not in GDP calculations), and most of his $60B "income" is increases in Amazon stock price. And even if it were actual cash income, the GDP difference between the US and Europe is still fifty times larger than that.
Look: I was an American by birth, but I moved to Europe as an adult. I get the attraction, and I'm not trying to bag on Europe. But it's simply false to suggest that America is not overall richer than Europe, or to say that America's extra riches are all concentrated at the top.
The GDP difference between the US and Europe is fifty times larger than one rich person's own income? This isn't actually a great argument dismissing the suggestion that US wealth is extremely concentrated.
Are you really counting the increase of Amazon stock price as his personal income? This is totally inaccurate. Most of that worth is extremely volatile and can quickly dissipate if the stock price falls for whatever reason. Would you count a falling stock price as spending?
Amazon aggressively reinvests its extremely large and stable earnings into the business which Bezos owns a large part of and controls actively. Both he and his ex-wife have realized extremely important liquid wealth by selling a significant part of their stakes. How would you measure his wealth?
Certainly Amazon revenue is not the best way.
1. The USA gifts itself > $6 trillion in imputed values. Or about the GDP of Japan;
2. If China measured their GDP using the formula used by India, its economy would be significantly larger;
3. Nigeria overtook South Africa literally overnight by changing (amongst other things) the value of unpaid child care.
Its largely are ruse to make public debt look sustainable.