Europeans aren't rich!

So for a bit of background, it’s common amongst south-asians to have different kinds of inferiority complexes towards people living in Europe and North America, commonly known as “Westerners”.

These can be in terms of skin-tone, language and accents, as well as monetary capital.

Considering I’ve been to most of Western Europe, and having talked to dozens of locals, I can say for sure that Europeans are NOT rich!

In fact, looking at the monetary parallels, a lot of people living in South-Asian and Middle-Eastern countries, places where South-Asians commonly reside, live an equal if not much better quality of life than people from the Western Hemisphere of the world.

Let’s look at numbers based on what a good German friend of mine told me, while we were hiking down Mount Pilatus in Switzerland. The average Western European earns just around 2500 to 3000 euros per month, not taking taxes into account. After taxes, which range from 20% to 35% depending on the country, you’re left with 1625 to 2400 euros. That’s only just enough to survive, and it’s worse in Eastern Europe. While costs are definitely cheaper, the average citizen earns between 1500 and 2000 euros, which after taxes is around 1125 to 1700 euros assuming a smaller tax range between 15% and 20%.

What's interesting is that the services tax does cover, privatized coverage of those same services within most Middle Eastern and South-Asian countries would hardly come up to 5%, or a maximum of 10% of income. And when it comes to investing, unlike with western governments we are responsible for investing our own money, which can be done in the same way.

I firmly believe that the world will be seeing a major shift back to Eastern powers dominating in the next couple of decades. And I think these facts support this as well.