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by ObscureScience 903 days ago
It would be interesting to see this using median income or similar meassure rather than GDP per capita. Inequality by itself doesn't have to be a problem (depending on economic ideology) but if all purchasing power is restricted to a few ultra rich that should be relevant to the discussion of whether a country is rich.
2 comments
beefield 903 days ago
This. And also adjusted on what you get for your tax money. (Say, median income after taxes, health care, student loans and pension savings.) And adjusted for the amount of holidays you have.
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thatwasunusual 903 days ago
All this data is available on the interwebz. I'm a Norwegian, but has worked in several countries around the world, among them the US.

According to this site,[0] the median income in US and Norway was $24K-ish in 2021 (2019 numbers for Norway), while this Wikipedia article[1] lists countries based on average annual working hours (OECD, 2022).

Based on this, we can deduce that:

* Americans are paid $13.3/hour

* Norwegians are paid $16.9/hour

It's worth noting that even though Norway doesn't have a "general" minimum wage, except for some jobs, it's considered to be $21/hour.

[0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...

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

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e12e 903 days ago
Fwiw those numbers look sensible for Norway - but note that median household income after tax is about double (590k nok):

https://www.ssb.no/statbank/sq/10090867

Not sure how that compares to the us numbers.

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thatwasunusual 903 days ago
> but note that median household income after tax is about double (590k nok)

I think most people understand that if you add two people's median income, you'll end up with approx. the double. :)

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e12e 903 days ago
That's true, but that's not quite the same as eg: single household median income vs median of all household incomes.

Let's say 90% of men in the US and Norway worked full-time and 80% of women in Norway and 60% in the US worked full-time (or vice-versa) - the various subsets of medians (individual vs families) might not be sensible to compare.

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