Re:China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network
by flukus on Monday January 16, 2017 @07:39PM
(#13414305)
Not sure how seriously that can be taken either. Australia is so high but most of that wealth is in over inflated property values.
Re:China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network
by NamTaf on Monday January 16, 2017 @08:35PM
(#13414514)
That's a symptom of broken governmental policy, not so much imaginary value. People still need to buy houses for them to sell, so it's not like the property bubble isn't backed by real money. It's just that people are placing disproportionate value on property over other investments.
For example, say your house went from 400k-500k in a year. For it to be 500k you still have to find a seller. Yes, there's a degree of paper value there however it's paper value only because other properties are selling for that. If you were to somehow remove property from being bought and sold, the money would just go into other investments. There is no way that 'most' of that wealth is wealth on paper in the form of property.
The reality is that Australian wages are very high comparitively. Australia is a wealthy nation.
The US apparently has about half the median wealth of many European countries, although notably not Germany, which is comparable to the US on this metric.
But I'm not sure how meaningful this is or what factors might be affecting the numbers. (And I'm not even exactly sure what's being measured.)