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Comment by laputan_machine | Hacker News Reader

> In the UK, the preoccupations of the “elite” – by which I mean the people, left and right, in politics, government and media whose views shape those of the country – are with things like Net Zero (above all), inequality, obesity, delivering Brexit, regulating Big Tech, data ethics and privacy, cutting immigration, gender and racial pay gaps, and other priorities that are either unrelated to, or diametrically opposed to, making the country richer.

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Fixing inequality obviously makes the country richer since wealth is concentrate amongst so few, redistricte that wealth to those who can't participate.

All of these things make people better off somehow.

The uk has less inequality than the US but middle class (and somewhat poor) Americans can still have better living standards in many ways just by being richer. Reducing inequality may improve median incomes a bit, but growing the economy could have a bigger impact (ideally the growth would benefit people at least reasonably equally in relative terms). Achieving net zero is much easier if you are richer and can therefore spend more on new energy generation, batteries, interconnects, car fleets, etc.

I was thinking that exactly these points were what makes a country rich(er) - citizen well-being, delivering on the promises, and such. What are your criteria for a richer country then?

> What are your criteria for a richer country then?

Uh... Having more money?

Country A is richer than Country B if and only if Country A has more money. Country B may have a great QOL, low obesity, low inequality, etc etc. But its not richer unless it has more money. That's kinda what the word means.

A "country" cannot have money, it's not a real thing. People can have money, companies can have money, government can have money, banks can have money... you need to be more precise here. My expectation is when the people (I mean regular people) have more money at their disposal, thus more access to healthcare and education and mobility and beer and such, then the country is happier and better off thus richer. Reducing the word "rich" to "money" might be the cause of your confusion, but the dictionary explains it just as well by "having high value or quality".

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