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:
- The UK gets dragged down by it’s poorer regions; and
- 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.
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.
Exactly. The median wealth of me, my partner and Bill gates is basically zero. The average wealth in billions of dollars.
Yep, there is a good reason the median average is usually used when looking at incomes.
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
It’s like Bernie always says: it’s the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. So why is basically everybody poor?
There’s even an entire book related to this topic, Progress and Poverty
Thank you for making this make sense.
You should read the last paragraph of the article.
I did, and it’s a vast argument to make based on two data points. That the bottom 10% of the U.S. and Finland have the same PPP says nothing about the wealth of the rest of the population, just that the rock bottom of both countries is more or less the same. Not to mention, socialized services probably means Finland and Sweden’s bottom 10% probably has higher life expectancy than the U.S.'s bottom 10%.
A homeless person in Finland has free access to medical treatment that could render a moderately wealthy American homeless.
Studying isn’t just free - the state pays you for it.
What you can purchase is, despite popular belief, not a good indicator of life quality.
Ultra rich people — like the royal family?
Yes, like that! The British royals often have around $30 million at their disposal. It’s completely fucked, nobody needs that much money.
Good thing you don’t have anything like that in the US.
One billion is a thousand million, in case anyone forgot.
The difference between a million and a billion is approximately a billion
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.
And yet still manages socialised healthcare
Hey buddy, it’s a extremely difficult problem to solve that much of the world has figured out.
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
I’d rather be poor in Sweden than rich in the US.
No offence.
You’d rather live in a white country than a diverse one, that’s what’s being said between the lines when we take out the excuses
Are you saying the US lacks social safety system because of black people? That’s a pretty fucking massively leap bro.
It’s not a leap when you see the same pattern with white leftists over the decades. It’s not a new thing, it’s called “white flight”
Or they would rather live in a country that doesnt treat its (poor) people like shit.
Nice try, but there’s a long pattern with neo-liberals not wanting to live around people of color and retreating to “whiter” neighborhoods.
It’s called “white flight” and it’s part of the systemic racism we talk about often
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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.
Uh… What? That makes absolutely no sense.
I stopped reading when I saw it was published 8 years ago.
I decided against it when I saw it was from All Billionaires Are Geniuses Magazine aka Forbes
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.
It literally says in the summary of the article that it’s poorer than all but one US state, Mississippi…
Tldr news recently did a really good video on this topic that goes into more detail on what the statistics mean
This reads like someone’s first undergrad comparative Econ paper.
