How do America and Australia stack up?
Both America and Australia are enormous wealthy western nations. While we may differ significantly in population we share a similar culture and heritage as former colonies of the British Empire.
Today I want to compare how life compares between the two countries and how much of each nation's massive wealth truly makes its way down to the average citizen. While initially in undertaking this task I, like you believed that it should be an easy answer... Australia obviously. We constantly hear of America's issues on loud speaker, from race relations to a shrinking middle class. While all of it is true, the American media often fails to point out how incredibly rich the nation and its citizens are. To be clear I am not calling American media fake news or accessing them of misinformation or malpractice. It is the media's job to hold the government to account and often that means highlighting the nation's problems. This has the unfortunate consequence of skewing the international public view of America as we often only hear the bad and are unable to see the positives for our own eyes.
Economics and Wages:
To begin with let us compare the GDP per capita of our two nations:
GDP per capita it a nation's gross domestic product (the total amount in dollar terms a nations produces in goods and services, basically how big a countries economy is) and divides it by the population. This takes into account the enormous population differences between Australia and America and focuses on the individual.
America ranks 8th in 2019 with a GDP per capita of $65,062 US GDP per capita, World bank