Saturday, January 16, 2010

Hoisted from the Comments

Ted said...

Psh, every good conservative economist knows that per capita GDP (PPP) is not a good measure of economic prosperity. The proper measure clearly demonstrates America's supremacy:

Number of Billionaires:

Luxembourg = 0
Norway = 4
Singapore = 2
Switzerland = 9
Ireland = 5
Netherlands = 5

UNITES STATES = 359!!!!!!

America is still #1.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_number_of_billionaires

4 comments:

  1. No billionaires in Luxembourg? Maybe.

    Perhaps U.S. billionaires are arrogant blowhards that live conspicuously enough to come to the notice of Forbes and the other sycophants of wealth.

    Yes, that's probably right.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Luxembourg is where the billionaires stash their ill gotten gains.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The aggregate population of the countries you listed is 40 million. So 25 billionaires for 40 million people means 1 billionaire per 1.6 million people.

    The US has 359 billionaires per 308.5 million people, so one billionaire for every 860,000 people. Not so outrageous, especially considering the amount of global innovation that has its roots in the US.

    ReplyDelete
  4. RE: Anonymous from jan 17, 11:58AM. Switzerland is about the same as the US, take out switzerland, and the US has about 3X more billionaires per person as the other countries listed... BTW, what's your point? That the US isn't more unequal than other rich countries? We all know that just isn't true... US executives make some 500X the median employee, whereas in japan the number is like 8X.

    ReplyDelete