The average person in California earns twice as much as the average person in Germany and three times as much as the average person in Japan.
Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
What would count as true or false
Use per-capita income measures (per-capita personal income, or GDP per capita at market exchange rates, in USD) for California, Germany and Japan in the most recent year available as of November 2022 (about 2020–2022). Accept any standard per-capita measure; state which one is used. The claim is rough ('twice', 'three times'): a California/Germany ratio of about 1.7–2.3 counts as 'twice', and a California/Japan ratio of about 2.5–3.5 counts as 'three times'. True: both ratios fall in those bands on a standard measure. Mostly true: both ratios are near the bands (e.g. 1.6 or 2.4 for Germany; 2.3 or 3.7 for Japan), or both fall in the bands only on one reasonable measure while slightly missing on another. Mixed: one ratio holds and the other clearly does not. Mostly false: California is substantially richer per capita than both countries, but both multiples are clearly overstated (e.g. about 1.3–1.5x Germany and about 1.8–2.2x Japan). False: California's per-capita income is not meaningfully higher than Germany's or Japan's, or both ratios are far from the stated multiples.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (4)
-
E1 Germany GDP 2021 — Free Download NationData
“Germany's GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is $4.36T in 2021, ranking #4 worldwide. GDP per capita $52,349.”
-
E2 Mapped: GDP per Capita Worldwide Visual Capitalist · 26 July 2021
“Germany | $51,967 |”
-
E3 Mapped: GDP per Capita Worldwide Visual Capitalist · 26 July 2021
“Japan | $40,733 |”
-
E4 Personal Income by State, 2021 (Preliminary) and 4th Quarter 2021 U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis · 23 March 2022
“BEA also released revised quarterly and annual estimates of population and per capita personal income for the second quarter of 2010 through the third quarter of 2021.”
Reasoning
E1 gives Germany's 2021 GDP per capita as $52,349. E2 and E3 give GDP per capita for Germany ($51,967) and Japan ($40,733), but the quoted rows do not state the year or the source dataset. E4 confirms that BEA publishes state per-capita personal income, but it gives no California figure. With no per-capita figure for California, neither ratio the criteria require can be calculated.
Cite this claim
Peter Thiel, “The average person in California earns twice as much as the average person in Germany and three times as much as the average person in Japan.” (said 9 November 2022). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_9c4592b73cda, method 0.1.0+3e03e2df, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_9c4592b73cda
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Peter Thiel
-
Mostly true
“But if tech means producing more with less, then we should be seeing dramatic economic progress, we don't.”
-
Mostly true
“I tend to measure it in things like these economic terms in the way that the average millennial is having a tougher time than their boomer parents at the same point in life.”
-
Mostly true
“California is not poor.”
-
Mostly true
“The average California government worker gets paid twice as much as the average private sector worker in California.”
-
Mostly true
“We weren't deeply connected to the Soviet Union.”
The US economy was not deeply connected to the Soviet Union's during the Cold War.
Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.