spike500 sounds like he is way off the mark. Still waiting for the evidence of 73% home ownership and 380K net family worths. http://www.aneki.com/richest.html This shows that belgium is at #11 for per capita GDP. Something fishy here. Check this out: http://www.timbro.com/euvsusa/pdf/EU_vs_USA_English.pdf Page 23: All USA households dwelling space in square feet - 1875 Poor USA household dwelling space in square feet - 1228 Belgium household - 928 Now take a look at page 32 "If Belgium were an american state, it would be the 6th poortest in the union" SOURCE - http://www.timbro.com/euvsusa/ I think spike500 is misinformed. Goverment propaganda???
When you sell your house that's paid for, you downsize. That's what many Americans do. You extract a big chunk of capital appreciation which is now tax advantaged (for primary residence sales) and move down in house size. It's the reason the average square footage per house is lower in Florida than the rest of the country. This business about Belgium being the richest per capita is just bogus nonsense. There are states that have economies larger than the whole country of Belgium. I agree with an earlier poster, we may be having a misunderstanding of "average" v. "median".
the website: http://www.nbb.be/pub/index.htm In most families , both parents have a job, we have about 2 children on average, pay between 10 and 20% of inheritage taxes. We learned from our parents to work hard and save hard (we have amongst the highest saving rates in the world). We buy what we can afford, not what our creditcard can give us.
Can you imagine how much we would have if the taxrates were reasonable. Much of the 385000$ comes form real estate. When you marry you MUST buy or construct a house, or they will declare you an idiot. BTW national sport overhere is avoiding taxes.
What you tell is nonsense.It is not the largest economy that is the richest. If the Us spends all in consumption and we save all our money, we will as a person be richer that a US citizen. All i said is that we have 73% ownership and 385000 $ net worth per family. I never said we had the biggest economy nor the biggest houses. It is so typical that so many americans get frustrated if they only even think the might NOT be the biggest and the best in the world in any area. To ease your minds i will confirm the following:the Americans are the biggest, the best and the only nation that has reached wealth. The rest of the world is an undeveloped area, where nobody knows what internet, telephones, computers, cars or TV's are. Just wanted to give information about a place outside of the US, but apparently i have to be selective and only show our bad points and the good points of the US. I will later on publish the article, but it will be in dutch as i don't find the english version. But that cannot be a problem for americans as they will surely speak and read more than the 4 languages that i speak and read as an undeveloped european. Regards from my treehouse in the woods. I went to the US embassy and asked to post this message. It took me several days as we don't have cars or bicycles. Everybody has to do everything by foot overhere.
Spike... calm down... it's okay if you have your math wrong on how wealthy or not the people in Belgium are. Nobody is out to say anything negative about how small the housing is or isn't or how much money you really have per household or don't. And for the others trying to blast the USA for whatever reasons... We really don't give a crap. So shut up. You know what's funny. America is running some really high national debt levels yet the rest of the world expects us to contribute as much money as they think they can get from us. We are supposed to be the "World Saviours". And we have millions living below the poverty level in our country. People that need taking care of in our own country. Maybe we should stop helping out people in other parts of the world. Let them starve and die from diseases.
First of all, please stay on topic. For those wanting a US vs rest-of-world shouting match, there is chit chat. At least on housing, you are wrong. Sales have already fallen dramatically, shortage has turned into a glut, and prices turned down. Since sales seem to continue falling and inventory climbing that downward spiral should just steepen. And that high historical return is an illusion - of course it looks great at a market top. The future, at least the next few years will be very different. As to how overextended the average Joe is, I'm not so sure. According to the facts presented so far, he is very extended indeed. If you, or anyone else, can find "better" stats, please post them. At least we agree that clearly the most important asset of average Joe is his home. IF he's more than 50% leveraged (less than 50% equity) at current home values, he WILL be wiped out IF house prices are cut in half. And 50% price declines are indeed very possible, unlike most people want to accept. In Japan real estate values fell by 80% over 15 years (and so did the Nikkei), since their bubble burst. Here we had a similar bust at around the same time with also unemployment shooting up to 20%. Perhaps you Americans are such optimists you don't want to believe such a crash is possible over there. This is understandable, since you have not seen it happen since the Depression. But that doesn't make it less likely.
Reading plain english seems too difficult for some people. I will say for the last time what i said before: Net worth per family seems to be approx 307000 euro, and 73% of the families have their own house. If the National Bank lies to me than i lie to you but i didn't make the math to come to these conclusions. Wealth is a result of savings. I you earn 10 million dollars a year, but consume everything your net wealth is zero. If i save 1$ form my 1000$ yearly income, my net wealth is higher. Not income or GDP but savings create net wealth. My postings was just a statement, nothing to show off, but for certain people anything or anybody that might perhaps be better of seems to be enough to become jealous.
So who made you boss? And I am only responding to an attack post against the US. Which 99% of any posts that involve the US and other countries are here on ET. A lot of jealousy when it comes to the USA. Isn't this the real reason for this thread in the first place? Of course it is. Otherwise it might read: "Typical African family's net worth is $2".