I'll bite, even though I really shouldn't.
How do you define "average living standard", so that it would take a colossal disaster to have US reduced to that of Poland?
How do you define "average living standard", so that it would take a colossal disaster to have US reduced to that of Poland?
US median income is just over 19 k international dollars, Poland is just under 9 k. Still a big difference but just over a factor of 2 instead of over 3.5.
See https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...
In a more homogenous society, such as Poland’s in comparison to the United States, it also in my observation trends to be easier for wealth distribution to flatten.
Maybe the US has more kids per capita too which would also affect that value depending on how it is being measured. Not to say that anything is being hidden there, just something to think about that may make you interpret the data differently or think about it differently.