American Exceptionalism? -- not in citizen wealth -- USA ranked 21st (2018)

[fiorello]

2. These numbers are screwy. America twice as rich as Germany?? Etc.

I’ve seen lots of statistics that show how median Americans are worse off compared to Europeans, even though the United States as a whole has more wealth (in the hands of its 1% - I’m sure everyone recognizes that median shows the condition of the person in the middle, whereas other measures are based on the sum of everyone from the poorest to the richest, never mind that most oUS wealth is locked up in the vaults of the 1%.)

But look at some of these numbers. Germany is the most extreme. It’s usually reads as one of the richest countries as a whole, and its level of inequality is typical for a European country, much lower then the United States. And yet its median wealth is only slightly more than half the US? And 1/3 the level of its EU neighbors, France, Belgium and the Netherlands? And half that of Italy and Ireland? And lower than Greece? The second lowest in the EU? Germany is the craziest, but others look weird as a whole.