[addicted]

The quoted statement in no ways tells you anything about the relative salaries of Swedish vs “American” employees, because it’s comparing public salaries vs GDP/Capita. The “American” numbers could be twice as good, but if the “American” GDP per capita is 1/4th that would mean the Swedish public employees are still paid twice as much in absolute terms.

Anyways, my usage of the word “American” is in quotes for a good reason. American is almost certainly a typo there and was likely supposed to be Austrian, Austria being the country right below Belgium on that chart.

None of the charts reference the US, and nowhere else is the US mentioned. This is data about European countries.

[spectramax]

Now that I think of it, we should not be comparing US vs EU salaries. We should comparing salaries of public vs private sector. That’s the whole reason for the argument of under paid government employees. Underpaid in relation to the private job market in that specific country. The article I linked looks at this.