A Journalist Compares US and European Incomes

Reading this article by Remi Adekoya of the Guardian newspaper reminds me of two things that many people take for granted about comparing income across countries. The author is right that notwithstanding the focus on its problems and the unyielding crisis, the European continent still provides the highest standards to living that can be found on the planet today. To be clear, I am less convinced that this is proof that the welfare state as understood in the continent is the only reason for this. Instead, it is more defensible for me to state that this high standard of life for its citizens is underpinned by the fact that by a correspondingly large number of businesses and productive workers. Indeed, the allusion to competitiveness shows that European countries provide opportunity for enterprises to grow and their ranking in the various leagues confirms that.   

In comparing the income of Europeans to that of the United States, it is clear that the United States has chosen a different way of organizing economic activity and its government is less directly involved in large welfare programmes comparable to those in Europe. Comparing incomes by alluding to the average is troublesome but it is not right to therefore dismiss higher incomes in the United States by alluding to the fact that extremely wealthy people such as Warren Buffet raise the average substantially. This article shows the difficulty of comparing incomes across nations with different economic and political structures but does not erase the fact that on the whole, total income is a very potent measure of human well being. In that respect, the United States is still a special nation.