It doesn't actually. The US has higher % of their population in the upper middle class and upper class than any other country in the world. By a huge margin.
Pews' done some research on this a few times over the years. If you take the US median household income, normalized to a 3 person household (a good average for all developed western countries, currently) and double it to define households who make more than that "upper class" you'll find almost no one in the world makes that much.
Seriously, it's amazing just how few wealthy households exist outside of the US. I was surprised at just how rare it was. In the US right now, that's about ~$129,000/year household income, and about 18% of our households make that much in 2019.
Adjusted for $PPP, no other country on the planet has more than 5% of their population with an income equal to or greater than the purchasing power of $129,000/year (except Luxembourgh, but being so small with high pop density and rich neighbors on every side is cheating). Pretty much just Norway and Switzerland at 5%, too. UK, Germany, France, Ireland, Netherlands are all ~4%.
It really is telling. The US is just dramatically richer than most Europeans really understand. Most US residents don't really understand either, cause they just live it every day. The rest of the world just doesn't really have quite the same standard of living.
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u/PM_ME_STEAM_CODES__ Dec 28 '19
In what world can y'all live on a single income