There must be a scientific explanation for how I manage to forget Brunei on every quiz I take. Immaterial on quizzes like 'desert countries,' or 'countries where gay marriage is legal.' But when I reach for the brain cell labelled 'Brunei,' I just grab air. Sigh.
Just ask yourself, "am I forgetting an atrocious micronation internationally condemned for its human rights laws that would allow death by stoning for homosexuals and adulterers while its sultan lives lavishly hypocritical lifestyle?" or AIFAAMICFIHRLTWADBSFHAAWISLLHL for short.
It's because they're using PPP. Israel in reality has a higher GDP per capita than the United Arab Emirates, Japan, Brunei, South Korea, Kuwait, Bahrain, Taiwan, or Saudi Arabia, but because it's a relatively more expensive place to live when you adjust for PPP then its economy gets unrealistically deflated. A lot of this I imagine has to do with out-of-control housing prices in Israel. Nominal GDP is not affected at all by the vagaries of housing market bubbles blowing up the price of rent. And perhaps counter-intuitively if there is a massive housing market crash in Israel, substantially lowering housing prices (but probably badly damaging the economy), it's PPP GDP per capita could go UP because PPP would calculate that shekels suddenly became worth more, even though everywhere else they would be worth the same
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Brunei are very cheap countries to live in so their numbers go up.
I was always under the impression that the Japanese and South Koreans were financially better off than these quizzes demonstrate. Very surprising to see Japan ranked so lowly.
Japan: very high HDI, well-developed and generally prosperous. But the quiz uses PPP and many cities in Japan, most notably Tokyo, have a very high cost of living. So they get docked using this magical figuring. Another thing to consider is that Japan has extremely high income equality, relatively speaking.. so even next to some countries with higher GDP per capita Japan usually has less wealth concentrated at the top and fewer citizens living in poverty.
China: their economy has been growing by leaps and bound and they're about 100x better off now than they were under Mao and before adopting some free market economic reforms, but certainly they are still quite far from being a "rich" country. Maybe in another 2-3 decades, though I suspect that their one-child policy is going to start having a serious dire impact on their fortunes within the same time frame as they start running out of younger people to grow the economy and support their aging population.
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Brunei are very cheap countries to live in so their numbers go up.
China: their economy has been growing by leaps and bound and they're about 100x better off now than they were under Mao and before adopting some free market economic reforms, but certainly they are still quite far from being a "rich" country. Maybe in another 2-3 decades, though I suspect that their one-child policy is going to start having a serious dire impact on their fortunes within the same time frame as they start running out of younger people to grow the economy and support their aging population.