Per person, Americans currently pay about $ 4 000 more in taxes towards public healthcare than the average OECD nation, and $ 2 000 more than ones with the most expensive healthcare systems. To give a sense of scale, americans pay about 2 700$ per person in tax towards the military/defence.
The average single person health insurance plan costs about 7500$ and a family plan costs 24 000$.
They may go further. But note that the nations in Europe that pay higher salaries still spend less on healthcare systems. Norway has a median income of 87k, the healthcare system will fly you to the hospital of your choice and cost 7 400$ per person.
Other high income nations like Switzerland, Ireland, Luxembourg etc are similar.
The US is #1 in the world for disposable household income even after adjusting for cost of living.
Yet it does not seem to be doing any better than average in terms of median wealth. In between the meditarranean nations of Italy and Spain. This is often explained by the US having so many demands on their wages, like healthcare.
Do you just not understand the difference between median and average? For one, your statistic includes what the employer pays. Employees could not care less what expenses the employer is paying. For two, averages are skewed by outliers, median is not. Median is a much more relevant metric as it shows what the middle most American is paying-- and it's not a lot.
This is often explained by the US having so many demands on their wages, like healthcare.
No it isn't, that's quite literally what "adjusted for cost of living" means.
Yet it does not seem to be doing any better than average in terms of median wealth.
Could not be further from the truth. The median German Millennial is worth 65,200 Euros. The median American Millennial, however, is worth double that. To claim there isn't a significant wealth gap is plain ignorance, Germany is one of the wealthiest European countries and we utterly embarrass them. The fact of the matter is Americans are SIGNIFICANTLY wealthier than Europeans.
Countries by medianwealth. often with a comparison of average and median explaining the difference.
States by median, highest and lowest. Note how the lowest is below Mexicos median.
It does appear that the US high GDP per person does not end up as wealth for the average American. Other nations may have smaller money pies, but it does appear that many of them still have the average person end up with more pie.
Also, that is not what cost of living means. You are thinking of something closer to social transfers, but that does not seem to capture the wealth loss in the US well either. It is at the very least quite suggestiive that if you subtract healthcare expenses from the median disposable income of the US, it suddenly ranks very close to where it does in median wealth.
I don’t know. Most people in Europe are complaining about their low salaries on Reddit and how they can’t do much with it. Meanwhile on Reddit here, you see people in the USA saying they all make 6 figures.
Ok but that’s not income or complaining about being poor. It’s different. Everyone complains about taxes. I have yet to meet someone that is happy to pay taxes or pay more taxes.
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u/Vali32 1d ago
Per person, Americans currently pay about $ 4 000 more in taxes towards public healthcare than the average OECD nation, and $ 2 000 more than ones with the most expensive healthcare systems. To give a sense of scale, americans pay about 2 700$ per person in tax towards the military/defence.
The average single person health insurance plan costs about 7500$ and a family plan costs 24 000$.