Constantin von Hoffmeister's argument for a new Darwinian multipolarity, where regional hegemons rise and clash, rests on a fundamental misreading of modern history. This vision, while rhetorically powerful, is a relic of a world that began to disappear with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The true nature of global power did not fracture into rival spheres; rather, it consolidated into a new, unique form of dominance that the West, and particularly the United States, came to embody. The idea of a return to multiple, geographically bounded hegemons is a fiction, because the West already won the hegemonic struggle on terms far more advanced than mere territorial dominion.
The Industrial Revolution unleashed a force that fundamentally transcended the logic of regional empires. Power was no longer measured solely by the size of an army or the breadth of a kingdom's borders. Instead, it was defined by control over capital, technology, and global supply chains. The British Empire, and later the United States, did not seek to rule every territory directly but to integrate the world into a single, interconnected system from which they profited immensely. This system, built on free trade, financial institutions, and technological innovation, became the new battlefield. It is a system in which the West's cultural, economic, and institutional norms serve as the default setting for global interaction. To suggest that a new "regional hegemon" can simply emerge and compete on this field is to ignore the existing, deeply entrenched infrastructure of Western power.
Von Hoffmeister’s claim that multipolarity is driven by Darwinian struggle fails to account for the true nature of modern power. The "claws" he describes are not just military; they are the financial networks, the intellectual property laws, the global reserve currency, and the control over data and digital communication. Russia's "claws" in Central Asia are not a sign of a new, equal hegemon rising; they are the desperate grasp of a declining power attempting to maintain relevance through outdated, 19th-century methods. China, while a formidable economic force, is a case in point. Its so-called "rise" is less a modern ascent and more a reversion to a historical model of top-down, state-driven control. This pre-industrial form of governance, based on an absence of internal pluralism and a rigid, hierarchical system, is fundamentally ill-suited to navigate the fluid, decentralized world of global finance and innovation. Its power is brittle and will likely prove unsustainable in the long run against the adaptive, flexible, and decentralized nature of Western influence.
International law, far from being a "ghostly word," is the language of this Western-dominated order. It may not prevent all conflict, but it largely dictates the terms of engagement, the rules of trade, and the norms of diplomacy. This legal framework is not an illusion of parity but a reflection of the hegemonic reality. The world is not fracturing into rival, equal spheres but rather showing signs of a single, deeply integrated global system that, for now, remains fundamentally organized around Western principles. Putin's vision of an equal table is indeed a fiction, but not for the reasons Von Hoffmeister suggests. It is a fiction because the table is already set, and the rules of the feast have long been established by the West.
The idea that the West has permanently transcended multipolarity is the Actual fiction. Industrial capitalism & financial hegemony did build a global operating system, but entropy is eating it alive: negative-sum economics, hollowed industry, fractured supply chains, stag-deflation, etc., is here to stay. Sir Constantin is right... History has always been Darwinian, civilizations tearing at One another’s throats when the center weakens. Russia’s “claws” & China’s brittle authoritarianism don’t need to mimic Western pluralism; they only need to exploit a collapsing empire already devouring itself. International law is not proof of Western permanence; it is the ghost of an order rotting from within. The feast isn’t fixed; the table is cracking, & new civilizational claimants are dragging their own into the hall.
Your argument reflects a common but fundamentally flawed narrative about inevitable Western decline and the rise of authoritarian alternatives. While it's true that the international system is experiencing significant stresses, the conclusion that this represents terminal decay of democratic capitalism overlooks both historical precedent and current realities.
The Adaptability Advantage
Democratic systems have repeatedly demonstrated something that authoritarian regimes consistently lack: the ability to adapt, self-correct, and emerge stronger from crises. The "entropy" described as eating the Western system alive is actually evidence of its greatest strength—the capacity for creative destruction and renewal that Joseph Schumpeter identified as capitalism's core feature.
Consider the track record:
The Great Depression led to stronger financial regulations and social safety nets
World War II catalyzed technological innovation and international cooperation
The 1970s stagflation crisis spurred monetary policy reforms
The 2008 financial crisis resulted in improved banking oversight and new economic tools
Each crisis that supposedly proved the system's fragility instead demonstrated its resilience and capacity for evolution.
The Innovation Engine Continues
Claims about "hollowed industry" ignore the reality of economic transformation. The West hasn't lost its industrial capacity—it has evolved beyond traditional manufacturing into high-value sectors like technology, biotechnology, aerospace, and advanced services. Silicon Valley, not steel mills, represents the current competitive advantage.
Meanwhile, the "fractured supply chains" narrative overlooks how quickly Western economies adapted to pandemic disruptions and geopolitical tensions. The reshoring of critical industries, diversification of supply sources, and development of new trade relationships demonstrate systemic resilience, not collapse.
Authoritarian Brittleness vs. Democratic Flexibility
The argument that Russia and China "don't need to mimic Western pluralism" fundamentally misunderstands the source of long-term competitive advantage. Authoritarian systems may appear strong in the short term, but they suffer from critical structural weaknesses:
Military forces that have struggled against a much smaller neighbor
Isolation from global financial and technological systems
China's "brittle authoritarianism" is more fragile than it appears:
Massive debt burdens at both local and national levels
Real estate and financial bubbles
Aging population and shrinking workforce
Growing social tensions over inequality and environmental degradation
Technological dependence on Western innovation despite attempts at decoupling
The Myth of Zero-Sum Competition
The "Darwinian" framing of international relations as civilizations "tearing at one another's throats" represents outdated thinking. Modern prosperity is built on positive-sum interactions—trade, technological exchange, and cooperative problem-solving. Even during periods of strategic competition, economic interdependence continues to create mutual benefits.
The most successful countries today are those most integrated into global networks of trade, investment, and knowledge exchange. Attempts to create autarkic systems or closed economic blocs consistently underperform open economies.
International Law as Living System
Dismissing international law as merely "the ghost of an order rotting from within" misunderstands how legal and institutional frameworks actually function. International law isn't a static monument to past Western dominance—it's a dynamic system that adapts to changing power distributions while maintaining stability.
Recent years have seen:
New institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank integrating into existing frameworks
Reform of international organizations to reflect changing economic realities
Development of new legal frameworks for cyber warfare, climate change, and space exploration
The Demographic and Technological Edge
While authoritarian challengers face demographic decline and technological stagnation, Western democracies maintain several crucial advantages:
Demographics: Immigration provides demographic renewal and innovation
Technology: Open societies continue to lead in breakthrough technologies
Alliances: Democratic alliances expand while authoritarian partnerships remain transactional
Soft Power: Cultural and educational influence remains predominantly Western
Crisis as Catalyst, Not Collapse
The current challenges facing Western democracies—inflation, political polarization, supply chain disruptions—are better understood as the growing pains of adaptation rather than symptoms of terminal decline. History suggests that democratic systems emerge from such crises more resilient and competitive.
The "cracking table" metaphor assumes that current arrangements are fixed and brittle. In reality, Western institutions have shown remarkable adaptability. NATO expanded and renewed its purpose after the Cold War. The EU survived the eurozone crisis and Brexit. Democratic alliances in Asia have strengthened in response to Chinese assertiveness.
Conclusion: Evolution, Not Entropy
Rather than witnessing the collapse of Western hegemony, we're seeing its evolution into a more complex but sustainable form. The transition from unipolarity to a more multipolar world doesn't necessarily favor authoritarian alternatives—it may actually play to the strengths of flexible, adaptive democratic systems.
The "new civilizational claimants dragging their own into the hall" may find that the hall itself transforms to accommodate new participants while maintaining its fundamental rules. The West's greatest advantage isn't its current dominance but its proven ability to reinvent itself while preserving core values of freedom, innovation, and cooperation.
History's lesson isn't that decline is inevitable, but that adaptation is essential. The question isn't whether Western systems will face challenges, but whether they will meet those challenges with the same innovative spirit that has enabled their success for centuries.
You look at the past century & see resilience, but what you call resilience has always been a desperate bargain with decline, a survival mechanism that consumes more of your own foundations each time. You survived the Depression not by repairing capitalism but by inflating government & financial abstractions; you survived the Second World War not through ingenuity alone but by draining the sovereignty of Europe & binding it to your will; you staggered through 2008 not by strengthening your economy but by fastening yourself to mountains of debt that can never truly be repaid. Even now, your answer to stagnation is mass immigration on a scale so vast that it erodes the cultural coherence you need to exist as a civilization. You dress these cycles up as creative destruction & adaptation, but beneath the surface it is simply exhaustion: the machinery of the West lurches forward by cannibalizing itself, mistaking the temporary adrenaline of crisis management for a permanent renewal of strength. You think you are evolving into something higher, but in reality you are dissolving into something weaker, mistaking the symptoms of decay for proof of dynamism.
Your analysis mistakes adaptation for decay and confuses the mechanics of complex systems with cannibalization. The premise fundamentally misunderstands how resilient civilizations actually function and evolve.
On Economic Resilience:
The New Deal wasn't "inflating government abstractions" but creating institutional infrastructure that prevented future depressions while establishing social safety nets that strengthened rather than weakened the system's foundations. The 2008 recovery, while imperfect, demonstrated the West's capacity to prevent total collapse through coordinated action—something previous civilizations couldn't achieve. Modern financial systems, for all their flaws, have created unprecedented prosperity and lifted billions from poverty globally.
On Geopolitical Evolution:
Characterizing post-WWII alliances as "draining European sovereignty" ignores that Europe actively chose integration and NATO membership as strategies for peace and prosperity. The EU and transatlantic partnerships weren't imposed but constructed through democratic processes. These alliances created the longest period of great-power peace in European history and unprecedented prosperity.
On Cultural Dynamics:
The claim about immigration "eroding cultural coherence" reflects a static view of culture that history doesn't support. American and Western cultures have continuously evolved through immigration waves—Irish, Italian, Eastern European, Asian, Latino—each initially seen as threatening "cultural coherence," yet each ultimately strengthening rather than weakening the civilization. Cultural vitality comes from synthesis, not stasis.
On System Dynamics:
What appears as "cannibalization" is actually how complex adaptive systems work—they continuously reorganize, shed obsolete elements, and integrate new components. The West's strength lies precisely in this capacity for institutional renovation without revolutionary destruction. Comparing this to "exhaustion" misses that static systems are the ones that truly decay.
The fundamental error here is conflating change with decline and mistaking the temporary disruptions of adaptation for permanent weakening. Civilizations that cannot adapt do collapse—but the West's defining characteristic has been its unusual capacity to transform itself while maintaining core institutional and cultural continuity.
You treat resilience as though it were renewal, but what you’re describing is a civilization burning through itself to buy a little more time. You point to the New Deal or the postwar order as if they were proof of infinite strength, but they were really desperate attempts to patch a system already cracking apart. What you call adaptation is closer to cannibalism: the West eats its own institutions, debts, & populations, hollowing itself while pretending to innovate. Yes, systems change, but change doesn’t always mean vitality; it can just as easily mean exhaustion disguised as motion.
You assume immigration, integration, & cultural churn strengthen coherence, but look around: every new addition frays the center further, leaving no myth, no binding story, only a crowded marketplace of fragments. A civilization isn’t immortal because it can shuffle pieces endlessly; sooner or later, the shuffling becomes disintegration. You confuse the noise of survival for the music of renewal, when in reality you’re watching a structure collapse slowly, its foundations mined out from beneath it while the facade still stands.
Across the OECD, real household income per capita grew by 1.8% in 2024, slightly up from 1.7% in 2023
OECD
.
The trend continues into 2025; in the first quarter, despite slowing, OECD real household income increased by 0.1%, with many G7 countries—including the U.S.—seeing positive growth
OECD
Anadolu Ajansı
.
Earlier in 2024, Q1 saw a 0.9% rise in real household income per capita across the OECD, with gains in all G7 member nations
OECD
. This included rebound in Japan and Germany.
2. Economic Resilience in G7 Economies
In Q4 2024, the U.S., UK, and France saw growth in real household income, even as GDP per capita varied
OECD
.
In Q3 2024, 12 of 19 OECD countries recorded income growth, including most G7 nations
OECD
.
Despite mixed trends across countries, the broader picture is one of sustained upward mobility.
3. U.S. Still Leads in Income Per Capita
The IMF reports the EU's GDP per capita is only around 72% of the U.S.’s, primarily due to lower productivity in Europe
Reuters
.
On face value, the U.S. maintains higher per-person economic output—translating into higher potential incomes.
4. Current Productivity Trends Still Favor the U.S.
Despite claims of stagnation, data shows that from 2004 onward, U.S. productivity grew by about 25%, slightly ahead of Sweden (21%), Austria (19%), and Germany (18%)
Reddit
. So U.S. productivity continues outpacing most European economies.
We are now in the time of Hegemons made up of a mix of metal and sand. Fragility. Short cycle.
Excellent analysis.
Constantin von Hoffmeister's argument for a new Darwinian multipolarity, where regional hegemons rise and clash, rests on a fundamental misreading of modern history. This vision, while rhetorically powerful, is a relic of a world that began to disappear with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The true nature of global power did not fracture into rival spheres; rather, it consolidated into a new, unique form of dominance that the West, and particularly the United States, came to embody. The idea of a return to multiple, geographically bounded hegemons is a fiction, because the West already won the hegemonic struggle on terms far more advanced than mere territorial dominion.
The Industrial Revolution unleashed a force that fundamentally transcended the logic of regional empires. Power was no longer measured solely by the size of an army or the breadth of a kingdom's borders. Instead, it was defined by control over capital, technology, and global supply chains. The British Empire, and later the United States, did not seek to rule every territory directly but to integrate the world into a single, interconnected system from which they profited immensely. This system, built on free trade, financial institutions, and technological innovation, became the new battlefield. It is a system in which the West's cultural, economic, and institutional norms serve as the default setting for global interaction. To suggest that a new "regional hegemon" can simply emerge and compete on this field is to ignore the existing, deeply entrenched infrastructure of Western power.
Von Hoffmeister’s claim that multipolarity is driven by Darwinian struggle fails to account for the true nature of modern power. The "claws" he describes are not just military; they are the financial networks, the intellectual property laws, the global reserve currency, and the control over data and digital communication. Russia's "claws" in Central Asia are not a sign of a new, equal hegemon rising; they are the desperate grasp of a declining power attempting to maintain relevance through outdated, 19th-century methods. China, while a formidable economic force, is a case in point. Its so-called "rise" is less a modern ascent and more a reversion to a historical model of top-down, state-driven control. This pre-industrial form of governance, based on an absence of internal pluralism and a rigid, hierarchical system, is fundamentally ill-suited to navigate the fluid, decentralized world of global finance and innovation. Its power is brittle and will likely prove unsustainable in the long run against the adaptive, flexible, and decentralized nature of Western influence.
International law, far from being a "ghostly word," is the language of this Western-dominated order. It may not prevent all conflict, but it largely dictates the terms of engagement, the rules of trade, and the norms of diplomacy. This legal framework is not an illusion of parity but a reflection of the hegemonic reality. The world is not fracturing into rival, equal spheres but rather showing signs of a single, deeply integrated global system that, for now, remains fundamentally organized around Western principles. Putin's vision of an equal table is indeed a fiction, but not for the reasons Von Hoffmeister suggests. It is a fiction because the table is already set, and the rules of the feast have long been established by the West.
The idea that the West has permanently transcended multipolarity is the Actual fiction. Industrial capitalism & financial hegemony did build a global operating system, but entropy is eating it alive: negative-sum economics, hollowed industry, fractured supply chains, stag-deflation, etc., is here to stay. Sir Constantin is right... History has always been Darwinian, civilizations tearing at One another’s throats when the center weakens. Russia’s “claws” & China’s brittle authoritarianism don’t need to mimic Western pluralism; they only need to exploit a collapsing empire already devouring itself. International law is not proof of Western permanence; it is the ghost of an order rotting from within. The feast isn’t fixed; the table is cracking, & new civilizational claimants are dragging their own into the hall.
And India, which is a part of the new Eurasian concept, isn't authoritarian at all.
Your argument reflects a common but fundamentally flawed narrative about inevitable Western decline and the rise of authoritarian alternatives. While it's true that the international system is experiencing significant stresses, the conclusion that this represents terminal decay of democratic capitalism overlooks both historical precedent and current realities.
The Adaptability Advantage
Democratic systems have repeatedly demonstrated something that authoritarian regimes consistently lack: the ability to adapt, self-correct, and emerge stronger from crises. The "entropy" described as eating the Western system alive is actually evidence of its greatest strength—the capacity for creative destruction and renewal that Joseph Schumpeter identified as capitalism's core feature.
Consider the track record:
The Great Depression led to stronger financial regulations and social safety nets
World War II catalyzed technological innovation and international cooperation
The 1970s stagflation crisis spurred monetary policy reforms
The 2008 financial crisis resulted in improved banking oversight and new economic tools
Each crisis that supposedly proved the system's fragility instead demonstrated its resilience and capacity for evolution.
The Innovation Engine Continues
Claims about "hollowed industry" ignore the reality of economic transformation. The West hasn't lost its industrial capacity—it has evolved beyond traditional manufacturing into high-value sectors like technology, biotechnology, aerospace, and advanced services. Silicon Valley, not steel mills, represents the current competitive advantage.
Meanwhile, the "fractured supply chains" narrative overlooks how quickly Western economies adapted to pandemic disruptions and geopolitical tensions. The reshoring of critical industries, diversification of supply sources, and development of new trade relationships demonstrate systemic resilience, not collapse.
Authoritarian Brittleness vs. Democratic Flexibility
The argument that Russia and China "don't need to mimic Western pluralism" fundamentally misunderstands the source of long-term competitive advantage. Authoritarian systems may appear strong in the short term, but they suffer from critical structural weaknesses:
Russia's apparent "claws" mask deeper vulnerabilities:
An economy dependent on commodity exports
Demographic decline and brain drain
Military forces that have struggled against a much smaller neighbor
Isolation from global financial and technological systems
China's "brittle authoritarianism" is more fragile than it appears:
Massive debt burdens at both local and national levels
Real estate and financial bubbles
Aging population and shrinking workforce
Growing social tensions over inequality and environmental degradation
Technological dependence on Western innovation despite attempts at decoupling
The Myth of Zero-Sum Competition
The "Darwinian" framing of international relations as civilizations "tearing at one another's throats" represents outdated thinking. Modern prosperity is built on positive-sum interactions—trade, technological exchange, and cooperative problem-solving. Even during periods of strategic competition, economic interdependence continues to create mutual benefits.
The most successful countries today are those most integrated into global networks of trade, investment, and knowledge exchange. Attempts to create autarkic systems or closed economic blocs consistently underperform open economies.
International Law as Living System
Dismissing international law as merely "the ghost of an order rotting from within" misunderstands how legal and institutional frameworks actually function. International law isn't a static monument to past Western dominance—it's a dynamic system that adapts to changing power distributions while maintaining stability.
Recent years have seen:
New institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank integrating into existing frameworks
Reform of international organizations to reflect changing economic realities
Development of new legal frameworks for cyber warfare, climate change, and space exploration
The Demographic and Technological Edge
While authoritarian challengers face demographic decline and technological stagnation, Western democracies maintain several crucial advantages:
Demographics: Immigration provides demographic renewal and innovation
Technology: Open societies continue to lead in breakthrough technologies
Alliances: Democratic alliances expand while authoritarian partnerships remain transactional
Soft Power: Cultural and educational influence remains predominantly Western
Crisis as Catalyst, Not Collapse
The current challenges facing Western democracies—inflation, political polarization, supply chain disruptions—are better understood as the growing pains of adaptation rather than symptoms of terminal decline. History suggests that democratic systems emerge from such crises more resilient and competitive.
The "cracking table" metaphor assumes that current arrangements are fixed and brittle. In reality, Western institutions have shown remarkable adaptability. NATO expanded and renewed its purpose after the Cold War. The EU survived the eurozone crisis and Brexit. Democratic alliances in Asia have strengthened in response to Chinese assertiveness.
Conclusion: Evolution, Not Entropy
Rather than witnessing the collapse of Western hegemony, we're seeing its evolution into a more complex but sustainable form. The transition from unipolarity to a more multipolar world doesn't necessarily favor authoritarian alternatives—it may actually play to the strengths of flexible, adaptive democratic systems.
The "new civilizational claimants dragging their own into the hall" may find that the hall itself transforms to accommodate new participants while maintaining its fundamental rules. The West's greatest advantage isn't its current dominance but its proven ability to reinvent itself while preserving core values of freedom, innovation, and cooperation.
History's lesson isn't that decline is inevitable, but that adaptation is essential. The question isn't whether Western systems will face challenges, but whether they will meet those challenges with the same innovative spirit that has enabled their success for centuries.
You look at the past century & see resilience, but what you call resilience has always been a desperate bargain with decline, a survival mechanism that consumes more of your own foundations each time. You survived the Depression not by repairing capitalism but by inflating government & financial abstractions; you survived the Second World War not through ingenuity alone but by draining the sovereignty of Europe & binding it to your will; you staggered through 2008 not by strengthening your economy but by fastening yourself to mountains of debt that can never truly be repaid. Even now, your answer to stagnation is mass immigration on a scale so vast that it erodes the cultural coherence you need to exist as a civilization. You dress these cycles up as creative destruction & adaptation, but beneath the surface it is simply exhaustion: the machinery of the West lurches forward by cannibalizing itself, mistaking the temporary adrenaline of crisis management for a permanent renewal of strength. You think you are evolving into something higher, but in reality you are dissolving into something weaker, mistaking the symptoms of decay for proof of dynamism.
Your analysis mistakes adaptation for decay and confuses the mechanics of complex systems with cannibalization. The premise fundamentally misunderstands how resilient civilizations actually function and evolve.
On Economic Resilience:
The New Deal wasn't "inflating government abstractions" but creating institutional infrastructure that prevented future depressions while establishing social safety nets that strengthened rather than weakened the system's foundations. The 2008 recovery, while imperfect, demonstrated the West's capacity to prevent total collapse through coordinated action—something previous civilizations couldn't achieve. Modern financial systems, for all their flaws, have created unprecedented prosperity and lifted billions from poverty globally.
On Geopolitical Evolution:
Characterizing post-WWII alliances as "draining European sovereignty" ignores that Europe actively chose integration and NATO membership as strategies for peace and prosperity. The EU and transatlantic partnerships weren't imposed but constructed through democratic processes. These alliances created the longest period of great-power peace in European history and unprecedented prosperity.
On Cultural Dynamics:
The claim about immigration "eroding cultural coherence" reflects a static view of culture that history doesn't support. American and Western cultures have continuously evolved through immigration waves—Irish, Italian, Eastern European, Asian, Latino—each initially seen as threatening "cultural coherence," yet each ultimately strengthening rather than weakening the civilization. Cultural vitality comes from synthesis, not stasis.
On System Dynamics:
What appears as "cannibalization" is actually how complex adaptive systems work—they continuously reorganize, shed obsolete elements, and integrate new components. The West's strength lies precisely in this capacity for institutional renovation without revolutionary destruction. Comparing this to "exhaustion" misses that static systems are the ones that truly decay.
The fundamental error here is conflating change with decline and mistaking the temporary disruptions of adaptation for permanent weakening. Civilizations that cannot adapt do collapse—but the West's defining characteristic has been its unusual capacity to transform itself while maintaining core institutional and cultural continuity.
You treat resilience as though it were renewal, but what you’re describing is a civilization burning through itself to buy a little more time. You point to the New Deal or the postwar order as if they were proof of infinite strength, but they were really desperate attempts to patch a system already cracking apart. What you call adaptation is closer to cannibalism: the West eats its own institutions, debts, & populations, hollowing itself while pretending to innovate. Yes, systems change, but change doesn’t always mean vitality; it can just as easily mean exhaustion disguised as motion.
You assume immigration, integration, & cultural churn strengthen coherence, but look around: every new addition frays the center further, leaving no myth, no binding story, only a crowded marketplace of fragments. A civilization isn’t immortal because it can shuffle pieces endlessly; sooner or later, the shuffling becomes disintegration. You confuse the noise of survival for the music of renewal, when in reality you’re watching a structure collapse slowly, its foundations mined out from beneath it while the facade still stands.
1. Real Household Income is Rising
Across the OECD, real household income per capita grew by 1.8% in 2024, slightly up from 1.7% in 2023
OECD
.
The trend continues into 2025; in the first quarter, despite slowing, OECD real household income increased by 0.1%, with many G7 countries—including the U.S.—seeing positive growth
OECD
Anadolu Ajansı
.
Earlier in 2024, Q1 saw a 0.9% rise in real household income per capita across the OECD, with gains in all G7 member nations
OECD
. This included rebound in Japan and Germany.
2. Economic Resilience in G7 Economies
In Q4 2024, the U.S., UK, and France saw growth in real household income, even as GDP per capita varied
OECD
.
In Q3 2024, 12 of 19 OECD countries recorded income growth, including most G7 nations
OECD
.
Despite mixed trends across countries, the broader picture is one of sustained upward mobility.
3. U.S. Still Leads in Income Per Capita
The IMF reports the EU's GDP per capita is only around 72% of the U.S.’s, primarily due to lower productivity in Europe
Reuters
.
On face value, the U.S. maintains higher per-person economic output—translating into higher potential incomes.
4. Current Productivity Trends Still Favor the U.S.
Despite claims of stagnation, data shows that from 2004 onward, U.S. productivity grew by about 25%, slightly ahead of Sweden (21%), Austria (19%), and Germany (18%)
Reddit
. So U.S. productivity continues outpacing most European economies.
5. Wage and Disposable Income Comparisons