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Comment by JamesBarney | Hacker News Reader

While I agree with many of the sentiments in the article, I don't think a comparison of wages is entirely fair. Some small nations have an out-sized GDP per capita such as Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Singapore because of their large financial industries. These industries are possible because the countries attract wealth and the wealthy through very low taxes(like Singapore) or very strong banking secrecy laws. And while bringing in a large amount of wealth can lead to a GDP per capita for boost small countries its not reproducible when a country is the size of the United States.[0]

[0] - Because if every billionaire in the world moved to the U.S. it would barely move the needle on wealth per capita unlike Singapore, Switzerland, and Luxembourg.

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Swiss banking secrecy (or privacy, if you want a better sounding name) is pretty much over these days. The Americans killed it as part of their worldwide citizen taxation program (FATCA). The Swiss send all your banking data to the IRS directly now and have done for several years.

The financial industry is large but not outsized, relative to GDP. For instance it is a smaller component of the economy than in Ireland.

Switzerland actually has quite a diverse economy, and depends a lot on the export market to the rest of Europe and tourism. That's why the strength of the Swiss Franc is always a problem for the economy here.

One downside of living here though is that the housing density is fairly high, or at least it is in Zürich. Most people live in flats and getting a bigger place with a garden for the average person is not very feasible.

The US also has a skewed GDP per capita. Large financial industry, various economic bubbles (housing, stock market, ...), printing money, huge debt financed consumption, huge military expenses. The trillion dollar Iraq war costs are increasing the GDP.

The trillion dollar iraq war cost harmed US economic performance massively in fact.

It stole productive capital and put it toward destruction. The debt cost then goes on perpetually in the form of interest (currently at $430 billion per year), making it even worse over time. Instead of investing into factory production, business expansion, R&D, science, healthcare, infrastructure, long-term economic growth in general, you accumulate a trillion dollars in long-term veteran care costs, and perhaps destroy hundreds of billions worth of equipment, and run up the price of oil, gasoline and commodities in general by devaluing the dollar and destabilizing the middle east - for absolutely zero real benefit.

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