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Daniel_Burfoot comments on Open thread, June 20 - June 26, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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File under "we're not as rich as we think we are", this Wiki page shows that economic-basket-case Greece has higher median net worth than the US. Australia is astoundingly rich, +$60k higher than the US average (which includes the megawealthy) and $175k higher than the US median. Even econo-sluggard Italy has $100k higher median than the US.
You're reading the data wrong. Australian median = $225K, US average = $244K.
Overall, I have doubts about their methodology. The source publication is here and there are some... non-intuitive numbers in there. For example, page 92 shows changes in household wealth between 2012 and 2013. According to their estimates, the Swedes became richer by 15.5% and the Japanese poorer by over 20% in a single year. That looks fishy to me.
But yeah. Australians made out like bandits (ahem) selling ore to China.
Fixed. I was using the mean wealth instead of net mean wealth. It's still amazing to me that the Aussie average exceeds the US average, given that the averages include megawealthy tech and finance billionaires. And amazing that Greece and Italy have higher median wealth than the US.
US culture is extraordinarily spendy, which arguably is good for GDP but bad for individual wealth except for those whose individual wealth benefits from corporate gain (who are mostly well above the median and therefore don't affect the median wealth).
I think apples-to-apples comparison is tricky here. Things like the age structure of the population can matter a lot here. A country with an average age of 50 should have a higher level of net worth than one with an average age of 30.
In any case I'm not sure net worth is the valid way to think about "how rich we are" compared to income or consumption or quality of life or whatever.