[1123581321]

The US is #6 worldwide measured by median income. Luxembourg, three Nordic states and Australia outrank it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

[mhandley]

If you also factored in healthcare and education costs (including university), I suspect the US would rank lower than that.

[TMWNN]

YOu would be wrong in your suspicion. At $45,284 the US has the highest household net disposable income per capita in the OECD (http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/), where "disposable income" (http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=46) accounts for healthcare and government benefits.

[mhandley]

That number is for mean, not median, so it rather misses the point.

[mdorazio]

Median available at [1]. US ranks #3, behind Switzerland and Norway.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...

[TMWNN]

As mentioned elsewhere, the US still does quite well in median income rankings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income).

[pbhjpbhj]

$3.8k per month disposable income per person?!

Wow.

What's the median gross income, and level of tax, that is based on?

[jandrewrogers]

The median household income in the US is ~$64k currently. Since disposable income is net various income and social taxes, it implies an effective tax rate of 30% at the median income.

This number is deceptive in that the US is geographically massive and the economies, State governments (taxes), and cultures vary widely across thousands of kilometers. The difference between the median income of the highest and lowest States is almost 2x, so your experience will be very different depending on which State you live. Also, in terms of discretionary income, cost of living varies a lot so disposable income isn't the entire story.

Note that the average discretionary income (money left over after all ordinary expenses) in the US is ~$2k/month whereas the median discretionary income is $1k/month. This implies that high income earners (think $100k, not FAANG) have a few thousand dollars left over each month after expenses.

I've worked in Europe for several years and the differences in discretionary income are stark, both due to income levels and taxation. Americans are kind of oblivious to just how freely they spend money due to having so much discretionary income; we tend to assume the rest of the developed world is similar when that really isn't the case.

[sushshshsh]

How does this account for things like taxes and shifting of expenses?

It is common knowledge that in the USA, they will pay you extra in the corporate world, but that extra money goes to family health care, education, transport, and other things that are covered by European taxation schemes.

If you look at discretionary income, the median corporate employees are making similar incomes.

And of course, SWEs are outperforming in USA, and manual laborers are outperforming in EU

[1123581321]

I have not researched that until now but it appears the US is #3 for median disposable income behind Switzerland and Norway. If there’s a better metric I’m interested. However, I think it’s safe to say the typical US resident is not relatively impoverished. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per...