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TIL That Britain Is Poorer Than Any US State, Even Mississippi (www.forbes.com)
submitted 1 year ago by tst123@lemmy.world to c/til@lemmy.world
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[-] 1bluepixel@lemmy.world 132 points 1 year ago

The author takes PPP (Purchase Power Parity) per capita of the UK as a whole versus individual U.S. states. So what does it mean that Mississippi on average has a higher PPP than the UK? Two things:

  1. The UK gets dragged down by it's poorer regions; and
  2. The U.S. has enough ultra-rich people to drag its PPP up despite a large swathe of its population being poor.

Another way to look at it is, if wealth distribution was fair in the U.S., even people in Mississippi would be better off than the average Brit.

[-] lasagna@programming.dev 37 points 1 year ago

That's the problem with averages vs medians. It completely overlooks wealth gap.

Here is an example. Moderna CEO made something like $500 million last year. If Moderna had 1000 employees, that would mean the company's average employee pay is $500,000. And that's before even adding their pay to this average.

[-] Tar_alcaran@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

Exactly. The median wealth of me, my partner and Bill gates is basically zero. The average wealth in billions of dollars.

[-] Teppic@kbin.social 24 points 1 year ago

Yep, there is a good reason the median average is usually used when looking at incomes.

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

It's like Bernie always says: it's the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. So why is basically everybody poor?

[-] Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

There's even an entire book related to this topic, Progress and Poverty

[-] delicious_tvarog@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

The PPP adjustment is going to inflate the values in low cost of living states/nations; cost of living correlates pretty well with average income (i.e. don't travel to Switzerland unless you like spending money), which means all those eastern European countries and southern states with lower average incomes are going to get a leg up on central/western Europe.

We're approaching BadEconomics territory

[-] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago

Thank you for making this make sense.

[-] Tar_alcaran@lemmy.world 85 points 1 year ago

Poorer?

That's weird because in terms of Median Wealth (you know, the thing that decides rich/poor) the US is 21st in the world, the UK is 11th. (Pdf link: https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/about-us/research/publications/global-wealth-databook-2022.pdf)

GDP doesn't mean shit by itself.

[-] Taleya@aussie.zone 53 points 1 year ago

And yet still manages socialised healthcare

[-] Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Hey buddy, it's a extremely difficult problem to solve that much of the world has figured out.

[-] jellybreadracer@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago

Very much doubt the final conclusion of this Adam Smith institute fellow. They state that the bottom 10% is equally rich in Sweden/Finland than the US. If true, then income is a very poor barometer of quality of life. Or that the Swedish poor don’t need to use as much of their income on housing, day care, education etc

The conclusion is that Sweden make the rich poor. Which is not true as well, since while Sweden has income equality, it has a very poor wealth inequality. It’s just that the rich of Sweden decided (correctly) that there would be little backlash against them if they ensured for a more equal society instead of maximizing their income.

Tl;dr this article could be largely true but the biases revealed at the end question the their conclusions and methodology to reach it

[-] sab@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago

I'd rather be poor in Sweden than rich in the US.

No offence.

[-] DessertStorms@kbin.social -1 points 1 year ago

It’s just that the rich of Sweden decided (correctly) that there would be little backlash against them if they ensured for a more equal society instead of maximizing their income.

lol, imagine crediting the filthy rich with only exploiting the rest of the population "enough" to keep them from revolting. They are still exploiting you and removing hoards of wealth not only from your economy but from the people who actually hold it up

Sweden has over 40 billionaires. The existence of 1 would prove you are just as fucked by capitalism as the rest of us, let alone 40+. All you are is a couple of years behind the rest of us in how much that capitalism is decaying.

[-] NoneOfUrBusiness@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Uh... What? That makes absolutely no sense.

[-] casualPeeper@lemmynsfw.com 30 points 1 year ago

I stopped reading when I saw it was published 8 years ago.

[-] VikingHippie@lemmy.wtf 12 points 1 year ago

I decided against it when I saw it was from All Billionaires Are Geniuses Magazine aka Forbes

[-] IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

Forbes is such a shit magazine even for a business and financial mag. It’s basically the Buzzfeed of the business world. The only reason people buy the magazine is for the stupid pay to win lists. Like 30 under 30.

[-] GiuseppeAndTheYeti@midwest.social 13 points 1 year ago

It literally says in the summary of the article that it's poorer than all but one US state, Mississippi...

[-] stealth_socks@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Tldr news recently did a really good video on this topic that goes into more detail on what the statistics mean

https://youtu.be/gF1G47kyTxw

[-] Space_Cat_95@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

This reads like someone’s first undergrad comparative Econ paper.

this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
35 points (59.5% liked)

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