Taiwan is #3. If you live long enough in Taiwan, you will see this.
What a load of ol’ bollocks. Some daft economist has simply drawn a straight line on a bunch of old charts and said “that’s what’s going to happen 40 years from now”. There are any number of reasons why Taiwan is likely to fade away into obscurity, not least the fact that it’s economy is largely based on fossil-fuel consumption, which is in turn paid for by rich countries which buy Taiwanese exports. If the US is destined to slide, then Taiwan will slide with it. 2050 is also when Taiwan is going to really suffer from today’s low birth rate.
That means there should still be money in the social net to pay for my retirement! 
No, wait. I don’t get a retirement pension.
Never mind.
This was put together by Citibank. They were one of the banks that just about went belly up a few years back because of their ‘forward thinking’. So, I wouldn’t put money on it. Though, for all the people living in the countries listed as the top 4, I hope it works out for all of you! 
maybe they’re basing it on china’s rise in the world and tagging taiwan’s economy along with it. china will definitely be THE world economic power in 40 years.it’s already #2. and asia is expected to be THE biggest economic region in the world. so it makes sense they predict taiwan and other asian countries will be the richest in the world. also, the u.s. is expected to be the 5th richest in the world (probably on the backs of asia) so it cant be sliding that much.
dont be bitter that your home country didnt make the list. 
It’s not apples vs apples is it. Dumb survey. Rich cities against large countries will obviously have either per capita GDP. Dumb dumb dumb.
Also GDP is affected by all economic activity including transfer payments. So the structure is all wrong to start with.
But yeah Taiwan and most Asian countries should be in okay shape. They do have severe demographic issues at that time though.
Riches don’t mean much if your environment is crowded and degraded. It also doesn’t mean much unless you look at who holds the riches.
It made me giggle that this was actually written on cnn.com