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Middle-class Americans live like wealthy Australians. This fact shocks any Aussie who visits the US. The underlying reason for the wealth disparity is even more surprising.

The United States of America just celebrated its 250th birthday, and I was privileged enough to be present for the occasion.

I married my American beauty in 2020, and we’ve lived in the US for around three of the last eight years. My time in the States has afforded me a perspective on this incredible nation that bears little resemblance to the caricature most Australians have been fed.

So on America’s semiquincentennial, let me set the record straight — and let me do it in a language most Australians understand right now: money.

I recently tweeted the following:

Australians have been conditioned to critique America instead of trying to understand it.

On America’s 250th birthday, maybe we should be quiet and listen instead.

And ask why, on so many metrics, their country is fairing so much better than ours. https://t.co/WEYLlSXk9F

— Kurt Mahlburg (@k_mahlburg) July 5, 2026

Below my tweet was a chart measuring how much money households actually get to keep and spend after tax (adjusted for cost of living, per worker). On that measure, Australia sits at just 61% of US levels.

It’s a staggering gap. And it’s very visible once you’re stateside. Whether you compare house sizes, the average family car, retail and grocery abundance, ownership of boats and other recreational toys, or investments into children’s education and sport, it’s simply a fact that most middle-class Americans live like upper-middle-class Australians. Until an Australian has seen this phenomenon with their own eyes, they’ll probably struggle to believe it.

Perhaps that’s why, true to my observation, many Australians replying to my tweet proved me right by critiquing America instead of trying to understand it.

American Dominance By Other Metrics

I mentioned “so many metrics” in my tweet. Here are some others:

• Household income: The average American family takes home more and keeps more of it — about $71,000 a year after tax, adjusted for cost of living, compared to $56,000 in Australia.
• Productivity: Americans produce more per hour of work — roughly $91 of output, against $75 in Australia. This is what helps drive the income gap between our nations. Measured annually, the gap is even more obvious: while the average American generates $91,500 a year in economic output, the average Australian generates $66,000.
• Economy size: America accounts for just 4% of the world’s population but produces a quarter of everything the world makes. That’s bigger than the next three economies — China, Germany and Japan — combined.
• Market dominance: American companies dominate global markets — 8 of the world’s 10 largest public companies are US-based, and American stock markets hold roughly 40–50 per cent of all global equity value.

Are Americans Just More Selfish?

Many Australians reading through this list will — as I have predicted — have their own list of critiques for America and other assorted rebuttals. So allow me to address these, too.

Objection 1: Americans are wealthier because their culture is more individualistic and selfish.

American culture is more individualistic, but in my view, this trait has far more advantages than disadvantages. Yes, left unchecked, individualism metastasises into selfishness. But when it is rightly ordered, individualism drives aspiration, rewards self-reliance, and trains people to look to each other instead of the government.

This is also seen in the data. While Australians are generous when it comes to charity and volunteering, Americans are more generous still:

• US philanthropy sits at nearly 2% of GDP — around 2.5x Australia’s rate.
• Americans give about 0.97% of income to charity, compared to 0.77% in Australia.
• Around 28% of American adults formally volunteer their time, compared to 23% of Australians.

Individualism, rightly ordered, is an outgrowth of the Bible’s teaching that God loves every single person, not just the abstract mass of humanity; that he is willing to leave the 99 to go after the one; and that he holds each of us responsible for how we respond to him, as seen in Jesus’ promise in John 3:16 that “whoever believes in him” will have eternal life.

As an outside observer, there’s no doubt in my mind that American generosity — which I have experienced firsthand — is owing to this country’s enduring Christian foundations.

Australian Prosperity By Other Metrics

Objection 2: You’re just measuring money. Australians are better off by other measures.

It might be true that Australians are better off by other standards. We have ready access to world-class beaches. Australia’s cities are safer than those in the US. We maintain a more relaxed work-life balance, working over 100 hours less per year than Americans. We have a historically strong universal healthcare system and a life expectancy that’s around four years higher than America’s (83 years compared with 79 years). And Australia ranks 15th on the World Happiness Report, compared to 23rd for the United States.

My claim isn’t that the US is perfect, or even that I prefer it to Australia. I consider myself extremely blessed to be an Australian.

My point is that, on metrics that make a real day-to-day difference for the average punter, the United States is racing ahead of Australia while we stagnate — and that we’d learn a lot if we took the time to stop and listen instead of criticising.

God’s Providence in American History

Objection 3: America’s success is just a quirk of history. There’s little for Australians to learn from it.

If there’s one thing America’s Founding Fathers emphasised, it was the role that Providence — God — played in the nation they were building. A quarter of a millennium later, the endurance, scale and influence of the United States suggests they were right.

As one X user recently explained, since America’s founding, the world has produced around 800 national constitutions, with the average one lasting about 19 years. America’s, by contrast, has survived a War of Independence, a Civil War, two World Wars, a Great Depression and 27 amendments without ever being torn up and replaced.

(In the same period, France — which underwent its own revolution when the US did — has worn through five republics, two empires, a couple of monarchies, and at least 14 constitutions. Its current one was written in 1958).

Today, America still runs on the same written constitution it began with in 1789 — the oldest of its kind still in use anywhere in the world. For the US to not only survive 250 years but now stand as the world’s dominant economic and cultural power is a miracle that defies the ordinary course of nations.

Australia inherited its institutions from Great Britain. Ever since, Australians have learned to lean on government as our protector. By contrast, America was founded on a violent break with a distant crown — and a bet that ordinary people could govern themselves without one.

That difference has compounded today. The US built an economic engine that allows capital to scale rapidly, while Australia’s economy is mired in higher taxes and far more red tape. The welfare state we’ve built is open to greater exploitation to a culture losing its Christian heritage and opening its doors to mass migration. America pushed hard for energy independence, but Australia chose policies that made energy unaffordable, even though we sit on some of the richest reserves on earth. And while Americans celebrate success, the Australian egalitarian spirit — for all its strengths — tends to cut down the “tall poppy”.

We can’t change our history but we can certainly learn from it. We can also learn from our allies and friends in the United States, who forged a different path, and 250 years later have so much to teach us, if we have the humility to learn.

For underneath their economic story is the spiritual engine that drives it, and that was celebrated with great fanfare over the weekend — a truth so fundamental the American founders thought it self-evident: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.