@Ogion, ain't Lviv in Ukraine?

Apparently my phone thinks it's in Germany.

"It's not the same rate because the prices of goods and services in the countries differ, thus the need for the PPP."

I understand the confusion, but IIRC, the person who wrote about those 'hourly wages' took your PPP data and divided it by the amount of hours worked in each country. So PPP is taken into account. Of course, one could debate whether he should be looking at average hours or median hours.

I'm Australian and happy to be. I give no fucks about your rankings, aint nowhere on earth better to live than Australia - fuck Switzerland - its too cold.

@Wusti, can you imagine a place (which doesn't necessarily exist currently) which is better than australia?

Voltaire would be pleased

Voltaire? Care to elaborate?

Width is a veritable Professor Pangloss, telling a young Candide that australia is the best of all possible worlds. And I use "pleased" sarcastically.

$1300 per household for healthcare in 2004 is ridiculously outdated (and incorrect). According to this source, it was closer to $6300 per person in 2004: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.PCAP?locations=US. Where did you get that magical $1300 number? In addition you can't use that 2004 costs for 2017 - healthcare costs have been increasing dramatically in that timeframe.

I still think those wage rate calculations are fair: "Americans get $14.90/hour and Germans $14.83/hour." Those numbers are based on the PPP stats you gave. The only addition is the average hours worked per year, which is likely a Gaussian distribution among the populace, so it's reasonable to divide median PPP by average hours to get a "median wage rate." And since that is before considering the significant disparity in health care costs, that shows Germans are better off using your own PPP numbers. If you stop trying to distort the numbers to prove your position, it's clear that Germans are better off on average. That's not surprising though given the large number of poor immigrants that have joined the US population in many of the past years - I'm guessing this is a larger number as a percentage of US population than in Germany, and that brings down the US PPP. Still, it's not like you can ignore this by saying those people don't count.

Actually, Germany has taken in a ton of people for Yugoslavia, Africa and the Middle East, so the foreign born population of the US came in at 13.7% in 2015, and Germany's was 12.6% in 2016. So, that doesn't even explain it. (Also a lot of America's poor are native. ).

And of course, we would be spared the massive death toll from polkutions and guns that Americans volunteer. Just look, today Clownie McClownface is tweeting that he wishes the terrorists had guns so they could have killed dozens on people in London and not just seven. Typical American attitude

"Pollution", and "volunteer for."

The Germans have a German Chancellor Angela Merkel (pardon the spelling if it's incorrect) who is what a true Diplomat in a democracy should be. She doesn't need to use Twitter to become a reputable politician. Merkel helped Germany s economy improve and stay good since the tear down of the Berlin Wall.

In Germany s history at the end of world War one and two (pre and post Hitler) they were a country that had a struggling economy... however today they have bailed at least 3 countries out of bankruptcy... one was greece where they were bailed out by Germany 3 times.

America can become "Great Again" if they pay off their National Debt and incorporate social welfare programs that give people access to affordable health care and a fair cost for people who want to obtain a post secondary education.

In a political street fight Donald Trump would get wrecked by Angela Merkel.

Well I'm glad I am Australian but as a hypothetical, if i had to make a choice between Germany and the USA the only advantage the USA offers is that it's easier to flee to Canada from the USA than it is from Germany. Germany wins easily, in a USA or Germany choice.

Commander Thomas mentions Germany's post ww2 parlous state and it's modern economic strength, the "self interested" philanthropy of the USA's Marshall program deserves a mention, even if it was a long time ago now, at least as a kick starter..but the credit for where the German nation is now rests with the German people.

Ironically, the hugely successful Marshall plan is something there is no way the US would do today. It'd be "America First" and a recipe for another big war in Europe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_aid

And...

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/08/foreign-aid-these-countries-are-the-most-generous/

Never mind the hard power we project with military installations overseas.

Yep. The US isn't anywhere to be seen at a paltry 0.16% of GNI. Sweden hits nearly ten times that