Top 10 countries by National Wealth

[TheTruth]

Mass murder of Sikhs was done by people of a different ethnicity. We are Punjabi and they are biharis, yet we don't call it racism because the reasons were not racism in origin. They were because we are nonhindus. Similarly NE are killed because they Christians.

My understanding is a lot of NE women are harassed for their features, NE men killed regardless of religious affiliation. If anything the Christians (mostly in Nagaland, correct?) don't die so often as the Buddhists

 

[Edison Chen]

There is surprising good news. 50% of wealth for China is locked in real estate, the rest is financial. This is extraordinarily high. It either means real property wealth is vastly under-counted or Chinese people are being typical mass savers. The ratio for example is 80/20 in India and about 70/30 in the States.

Yes, so that's why Chinese government is protecting the real property market. The issue is too much wealth and money in circulation locked in this market, causing insufficient demand for consumption. But I do believe the true value of real property is still underrated, China only accomplished 50% urbanization. The real property market will not boom like in the past but will scramble slowly.

 

[ShahidT]

net wealth is not what OP says as total assets minus total liabilities of a nation, but total monetary assets such as cash or receivables minus monetary liabilities such payables that don't fluctuate with inflation and other short term macro variables.

net wealth as calculated at present is not the correct measure of wealth of a country, more so for a developing country such as India, because in the absence of a perfect financial system, it is hard to calculate cash and liabilities of households that are outside the formal financial system. Then there is the question of exchange rate effecting net wealth in a big way.

For all their fault, PPP followed by GDP Nominal are better measures as they capture economic activity of a country better. No wonder World Bank, UNDP, and IMF have adopted PPP and GDP Nominal as measure of national wealth.

exactly. he has now changed it but originally threw me off. monetary, fiat assets on books. ofcourse switzerland and belgium would outdo russia. but with oil already having peaked, shale peaking within the decade, russia definitely has more comprehensive wealth, when including agricultural land, hydrocarbons and a myriad other resources than any of these house of cards european economies (excluding Germany for its sheer industrial might).

this comes down to the crux of the matter. does financial speculation, backed with 'stimulus' as helicopter ben used to put it, really make a country wealthier? going into the future with water and energy scarcity, these assets will finally trump over those who claim a fiat monetary system, with no checks on potentially infinite 'growth', is sustainable.

1) First, from Piketty's famous study:

View attachment 175522

We have benefited from over a century of high returns on capital--capital that we have accumulated as a result of early industrialization. Wealth accumulated to holders of capital.

2) We ran a current account surplus for decades, and by definition that meant we had a negative capital account (i.e. we were accumulating assets abroad). Because the dollar has been gradually depreciating over time, these assets gained value in dollar terms. That's the magic of moderate inflation: assets re-price, debt does not. On the flip side, the capital inflows that resulted from our current account deficit have leveraged our economy and helped us achieve higher growth rates than were otherwise possible (with a predictable, but fortunately short-lived downside).

View attachment 175528

3) We have had a higher growth rate and productivity growth rate than other advanced economies, which also helped build national wealth (and in turn, attracted investment without causing interest rates to spike once our current account turned negative). Productivity is the source of all wealth creation (and Ireland's rapid transformation should be proof enough).

View attachment 175530


4) American multi-national corporations are skilled at harnessing the competitive advantage of other countries for their own gain. Here's an example I posted some time ago:

View attachment 175531

Apple products are manufactured in China and counted as a Chinese export, but a large percent of the profits belong to Apple. The same pattern repeats itself across the Chinese export spectrum, so we are sharing in China's growth, even as the US stagnates.

Conclusion
-Europe and the US have had a head-start in accumulating capital, and have benefited from the returns on that capital for much longer than post-Communist Russia has.

-European and American corporations have adapted faster to a globalized market, and have been able to increase their wealth by taking advantage of high-growth markets, while Russia has not (can you name 10 global Russian brands?).

-Japan, the Asian Tigers (including Taiwan), and China have all repeated this process, which is why Japan and the PIIGS can continue to sustain their tremendous debt loads--everyone pays attention to the debt, and forgets the assets that they have accumulated (let's not confuse the ability to service debt, which is a cash flow issue, with solvency, which is an assets and liabilities issue); and that's why little Taiwan and HK have managed to dwarf Russia in terms of net assets.

-China is rapidly accumulating assets with its high GDP growth rate and large current account surplus, which is why it's rising in the ranks so quickly.

there was a misunderstanding of OP's definition of A/L. as for rehashing econ 102, err... thanks?

 

[TimeTraveller]

...India is nowhere.....

 

[TheTruth]

...India is nowhere.....

This is because Indian upper class doesn't want to make very simple, cheap, high-return investments on the people. India's billionaires make China's look like beggars.

 

[IRAN 1802]

I've created this thread from the source below which is based on GDP of countries in 2014. Good to wtite your comments:
World's Richest Countries

World's Richest Countries, rank 1 to 100

 

[Solomon2]

After it's adjusted on a PPP basis (as we're talking about family living here) the bottom 90% of Americans have lower net worth than the average Chinese, and this isn't counting undocumented laborers in the United States

Note that median Chinese net worth figures are not made available by the CCP. Here's one probable reason why:

China’s Billionaire People’s Congress Makes Capitol Hill Look Like Pauper
By Bloomberg News Feb 27, 2012 2:21 AM ET

The richest 70 members of China’s legislature added more to their wealth last year than the combined net worth of all 535 members of the U.S. Congress, the president and his Cabinet, and the nine Supreme Court justices.

The net worth of the 70 richest delegates in China’s National People’s Congress, which opens its annual session on March 5, rose to 565.8 billion yuan ($89.8 billion) in 2011, a gain of $11.5 billion from 2010, according to figures from the Hurun Report, which tracks the country’s wealthy. That compares to the $7.5 billion net worth of all 660 top officials in the three branches of the U.S. government.

The income gain by NPC members reflects the imbalances in economic growth in China, where per capita annual income in 2010 was $2,425, less than in Belarus and a fraction of the $37,527 in the U.S. The disparity points to the challenges that China’s new generation of leaders, to be named this year, faces in countering a rise in social unrest fueled by illegal land grabs and corruption.

“It is extraordinary to see this degree of a marriage of wealth and politics,” said Kenneth Lieberthal, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at Washington’s Brookings Institution. “It certainly lends vivid texture to the widespread complaints in China about an extreme inequality of wealth in the country now.”

Most Powerful
The National People’s Congress, whose annual meeting will run for a week and a half, is legally the highest governmental body in China. While the legislature, with about 3,000 members, is often derided as a rubberstamp parliament, its members are some of China’s most powerful politicians and executives, wielding power in their home provinces and weighing in on proposals such as whether to impose a nationwide property tax.

“The NPC is not exactly what you would call a center of power, but being on it certainly gets you deeply engaged in the political system,” Lieberthal said.

Hurun, a Shanghai-based publisher of magazines targeted at the Chinese luxury consumer, uses publicly available information such as corporate filings to compile its annual list of the richest people in China. It then cross-checks that data with the government’s list of NPC members.

Zong Qinghou, chairman of beverage-maker Hangzhou Wahaha Group (HWGZ) and China’s second-richest person, with a family fortune of 68 billion yuan, is a member. So is Wu Yajun, chairwoman of Beijing-basedLongfor Properties (LHREZ) Co. She has family wealth of 42 billion yuan, according to the Hurun Report.

Jiang’s Pushing
Former President Jiang Zemin pushed for the inclusion of wealthy private entrepreneurs into the Communist Party a decade ago. Now they have regular access to top party leaders who are also NPC members.

The third-richest person in the NPC, auto-parts magnate Lu Guanqiu, traveled with Vice President Xi Jinping to the U.S. during his official visit this month, attending a meeting with Vice President Joseph Biden and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner in Washington on Feb. 14.

“The rich in China have strong incentive to become ‘within system’ due to the relative weakness in the rule of law and of property rights,” Victor Shih, a professor at Evanston, Illinois-based Northwestern University who studies Chinese politics and finance, wrote in an e-mail. Being a member of the NPC “means that one’s commercial or political rival cannot easily throw one in jail or confiscate one’s property.”

Richest Woman
Wu, who is China’s richest woman, doesn’t give media interviews, her spokeswoman said. Lu wasn’t available for an interview, his spokesman said. Zong wouldn’t comment on the makeup of the NPC because that’s a matter determined by the central government, Wahaha spokesman Shan Qining said in a phone interview.

Many of the NPC’s richest members, including Longfor’s Wu, are executives in real estate, a sector that has spurred protests and contributed to the rising wealth gap between city dwellers and farmers.

A land grab by a property developer in Wukan, a fishing town in southern China’s Guangdong province, sparked protests in December that resulted in the expulsion of its Communist Party leaders. Premier Wen Jiabao has pledged to crack down on such land grabs and work to ease wealth disparities.

China’s top political leaders, including President Hu Jintao and Wen, don’t disclose their personal finances or those of their families.

Chinese private executives such as Zong and Lu have built their fortunes on the back of economic growth that has averaged 10.1 percent in the last 30 years. The U.S. economy expanded by an average annual rate of 2.7 percent in the same period.

Out Of Poverty
Regular Chinese have also benefited from the growth of China’s economy, which surpassed Japan as the world’s second biggest in 2010. Since introducing free-market policies, China has lifted 300 million of its 1.3 billion citizens out of poverty, according to the United Nations.

Annual growth of per capita GDP in China was 9.8 percent at the end of 2010. Per capita GDP has more than doubled since 2000, according to the World Bank.

The wealth gap between legislatures holds with statistically comparable samples. The richest 2 percent of the NPC -- 60 people -- had an average wealth of $1.44 billion per person. The richest 2 percent of Congress -- 11 members -- had an average wealth of $323 million.

The U.S. figures come from a downloadable database on the website of the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics. The U.S. figures are inflated because the database includes members of Congress who were retired or defeated in the 2010 elections as well as their replacements.

Issa’s Wealth
The wealth of members of Congress did increase at a higher rate than that of their Chinese peers in the most recent disclosures as U.S. equity markets outperformed China’s. The average wealth of the richest 2 percent of Congress rose 22 percent in 2010 from 2009. The Standard and Poor’s 500 Index rose 12.8 percent in 2010.

The wealth of the top 2 percent of NPC delegates rose 13 percent in the 2011 Hurun list following a 14.3 percent fall in the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index in 2010 and a further 21.7 percent drop last year.Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 20 percent in 2011 and the Shenzhen Composite fell 33 percent in the same period.

The wealthiest member of the U.S. Congress is Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican who had a maximum wealth of $700.9 million in 2010, according to the center. If he were in China’s NPC, he would be ranked 40th. Per capita income in China is about one-sixth the U.S. level when adjusted for differences in purchasing power.

‘Cozy Relationship’
Financial disclosure forms ask lawmakers and other top U.S. officials to list the value of their individual assets in ranges, such as $1,001 to $15,000 or $1,000,001 to $5,000,000. Bloomberg News used the maximum range of wealth on the U.S. disclosures to compare with the Chinese NPC.

Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher for the Hurun Report, estimates that for every Chinese billionaire the company discovers for its list, there is another one it misses, meaning the gap between the wealth of China’s NPC and the U.S. Congress may be greater still.

“The prevalence of billionaires in the NPC shows the cozy relationship between the wealthy and the Communist Party,” said Bruce Jacobs, a professor of Asian languages and studies at Monash University in Melbourne,Australia. “In all levels of the system there seem to be local officials in cahoots with entrepreneurs, enriching themselves, and this has led to a lot of the demonstrations.”

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Michael Forsythe in Beijing at mforsythe@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg at phirschberg@bloomberg.net