[throwaway2037]

Your post was very good. I take issue with one part:

    I can't think of a single manufactured product out of Greece, Hungary, Austria and few from Italy to the US.

I would strongly disagree with Austria, and modestly disagree with Italy. Austria is a low population manufacturing powerhouse. They are not making consumer goods. They are making "widgets" that other manufactures use to create finished products. B2B vs B2C, if you like. The northern half of Italy is similar, but less extreme. I also struggle to name more than a few consumer or high value products from Austria, but I recommend to look at their median income or GDP per capita and you will say "Wow, that is a rich country".

[mapgrep]

That’s interesting about Austria, thanks for that! I may have underestimated them. (I did check their growth rate and for whatever reason not as strong as S Korea…)

[throwaway2037]

About growth rates: The higher your median income, the harder it is to have high growth rates. Think about it from the perspective of economic competition: You need to find new markets (hard at this point) or outcompete existing competitors in other countries to grow. It is crazy hard to grow once you are fully developed and rich, like Austria. It does not surprise me that Korea has a higher growth rate than Austria -- they are less developed.

Edit: To be clear: Please do not read this post as bashing Korea. I think they are doing an amazing job in the last 50 years growing themselves out of poverty. It is a crazy and amazing story.