[CamMacFarlane]

>[USA] has the highest GDP per capita in the world

Not quite, it has the 18th highest. Below Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Ireland all who pay less for engineering.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

[doctorpangloss]

A more appropriate comparison might be GDP per OECD region, where the United States absolutely dominates.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_regions_by_GDP_...

[eric-hu]

That list was impressive until I read about what OECD is. It's a 35 country organization.

[xiphias]

This is not true... Google Switzerland pays more than in US (actually more, than anywhere else), especially if you take taxation and the pension system into account.

[TulliusCicero]

The US does have the highest GDP for any major country, though. The ones above it there are all quite small.

[sokoloff]

Switzerland, Singapore, Norway, Hong Kong and UAE don't match my definition of "quite small". Each of them has several million inhabitants.

[TulliusCicero]

IIRC none of them even breaks 10 million people, the US has 320 million. Small areas can specialize in ways that are impractical for large areas. E.g. the SF Bay area has a very high GDP per capita, but you couldn't have the whole USA specialize in tech the way that metro does with ~7 million.

[mtanski]

The U.S has ~ 320 million people. So 2 magnitudes difference compared to some others. Additionally the U.S is quite large with many regions and sub-regions. Some regions have quite high GDP while others lower. So given that it's quite impressive versus much smaller and less populous countries.

In any case it's a stretch to make an apples to apples comparison when you have 2 magnitudes of population difference.

[dx034]

That way you could say the US is a small country because it only has ~1/4 of the population of China.

Just because a country has a smaller population it doesn't make it unsuitable to live or to compare economic data.

[mtanski]

You're just being pedantic here.

There's a big difference between countries that above the US (top 18) on that list where there is a 10x to 100x difference. 1x (US) to 4x (China) does not a magnitude make.

Even given that I would concede that the U.S is a lot less populous country than China. Additionally, there's a lot of places where comparisons of stats are invalid because of that difference.

[dx034]

I wouldn't dismiss Switzerland. As we're discussing US vs Europe here, working in Switzerland is certainly an option.