Per Capita GDP

The economic pundits would like for us to believe the recession is over. After all the corporations are making record-breaking profits and Wall Street is passing out huge bonuses again and the stock market is at levels above where it was pre-recession. And the prime indicator, GDP, is once again growing. But that wonderous wealth, as usual, hasn't trickled down to most Americans. Here is the per capita (per person) Gross Domestic Product of the top 20 richest nations (in U.S. dollars):

1. Luxembourg...............$115,038
2. Qatar...............$92,501
3. Kuwait...............$62,664
4. Australia...............$60,642
5. Denmark..............$59,684
6. Sweden...............$56,927
7. Canada...............$50,345
8. Netherlands...............$50,087
9. Austria...............$49,707
10. Finland...............$49,391
11. United States...............$48,442
12. Ireland...............$48,423
13. Belgium...............$46,469
14. Singapore...............$46,241
15. Japan...............$45,903
16. United Arab Emirates...............$45,653
17. Germany...............$43,689
18. France...............$42,377
19. United Kingdom...............$38,818
20. Italy...............$36,116

Now you may be shocked to see the United States is only 11th on this list -- after all, aren't we supposed to be the richest nation in the world? But remember, we have quite a bit larger population than the other nations on this list -- so when the per capita GDP is multiplied by the population, it shows the U.S. has a far larger GDP than most of them (making it the richest country).

But we are not the richest per capita. And even worse, that GDP is not spread evenly throughout the population. In a perfectly fair world, each citizen should be making the figure shown above for the country they live in. Look at your own pay check. Do you make $48,442 a year (your share of U.S. GDP)? Good for you if you do, but most Americans make less.

From previous reports, we know that about half of the U.S. population lives of less than 150% of the federally defined poverty level (which is slightly over $20,000 for a family of four). That means half of the U.S. population makes less than approximately $30,000 a year, and you can bet that a lot more make less than $48,442. So  where is the rest of your share? It's sitting in the bank account of some rich person.

Now I'm not saying every dollar of GDP should be equally distributed to every citizen in the country. That wouldn't really be workable. But this country has a very unfair distribution of wealth and income -- worse than many banana republics (who are famous for their unequal distribution). We could be doing a whole lot better, if the playing field was not tilted to favor the rich and the corporations. And a lot of the nations on the list above, both with a higher per capita GDP and a lower per capita GDP, do a much better job of wealth distribution than the United States does. In plain language, their workers are much better off than our workers.

This is the result of over 30 years of "trickle-down" economics imposed by the Republicans -- resulting in millions of unemployed people, wages with less buying power than 30 years ago, and a disappearing middle class. We must change this, before we are left with a nation of only the few rich and the many poor. Is that the kind of country you want to live in?