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Mississipi is richer than Europe

mjperry.blogspot.com

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Re: Mississipi is richer than Europe

#31

Post by desu »

tptacek wrote: post #22
desu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that depends on what you mean by "standard of living". I can give you a triple gold plated guarantee, though, that the Germans would not consider living in Jackson in your $129k house next to Wal-Mart a "high standard of living". So, in summary, no, it's not possible. You should travel a bit. The whole idea is a complete joke. I mean seriously, would you rather live in Berlin or Jackson? Seriously? Berlin has…

I've traveled a lot, including to Germany. My wife lived in Zurich. Please don't assume I'm being parochial. You and I are not the right control group for this experiment. I'm not going to move to Jackson because my favorite bands will never play there, and because I like high-end and ethnic restaurants. But a 44-year-old schoolteacher might not care about those things. The decision between Jackson and Chicago might…

Oh, I didn't mean that. I just meant that "how much stuff you can buy" is perhaps not the only possible measurement of quality of life. And I've long thought PPP to be almost irrelevant in developed countries. Every single thing I buy I buy on quality, not price or quantity. PPP utterly fails to account for that. It's useless.

Anyway. Cool, I like Zurich. Hm, this thread is making me remember all these cities and influencing my holiday plans!

update: you edited your post. I have never been to Jackson, nor any American city aside from NYC and the California sprawl (LA/SF/SD). Yes, your 44-yr-old schoolteacher might enjoy a happy, quiet life there. I am sure it is a fine city, but I have zero interest in ever visiting it. Again, you are right - we are not the right control group here.

Re: Mississipi is richer than Europe

#32

Post by tptacek »

desu wrote: post #31
tptacek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've traveled a lot, including to Germany. My wife lived in Zurich. Please don't assume I'm being parochial. You and I are not the right control group for this experiment. I'm not going to move to Jackson because my favorite bands will never play there, and because I like high-end and ethnic restaurants. But a 44-year-old schoolteacher might not care about those things. The decision between Jackson and Chicago might…

Oh, I didn't mean that. I just meant that "how much stuff you can buy" is perhaps not the only possible measurement of quality of life. And I've long thought PPP to be almost irrelevant in developed countries. Every single thing I buy I buy on quality, not price or quantity. PPP utterly fails to account for that. It's useless. Anyway. Cool, I like Zurich. Hm, this thread is making me remember all these cities and inf…

Not sure I totally buy this argument. Housing, food, and transportation are three things that vary wildly in price around the world, and which you can't buy strictly on quality. For instance, whatever else you might want to say about Jackson, you can get a better house there than you can get in NYC metro.

(edits: look me up if you ever make it to Chicago, which is a cooler place to visit than LA, and also note that SF is not in the same sprawl as LA and SD. =P)

Re: Mississipi is richer than Europe

#33

Post by tptacek »

barrkel wrote: post #6

On the face of it, this comparison seems pretty absurd. I haven't been to Mississippi, but I have been to many European countries, and can attest that Germany is pretty rich on the face of it, personal incomes aside. I wonder how such comparisons value public goods, and how well their basket of goods (for PPP weighting) is balanced.

Well, where in Germany have you spent serious time?

Re: Mississipi is richer than Europe

#34

Post by MaysonL »

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.

Of course, I would bet that median per capita income, or median household income, is substantially lower in Mississippi than in most of the EU15 (The first 15 members). Median household income in Mississippi is ~$29K.

see http://crookedtimber.org/2005/06/03/its-the-median-stupid/ for some discussion of this topic

Also, I would bet that the deprivation index for Mississippi [1] would be higher than for most of the countries he cites, especially for the lowest quartiles.

[1] Deprivation index: add up the number of these you can't afford. Adequate home heating, an annual holiday, new furniture to replace worn-out items, a meal with meat every second day, new clothes, the wherewithal to entertain guests at home.

The worst off of the countries he cites, Italy[2], has a top quartile deprivation index of 0.5, median quartiles of ~0.6-0.7 (estimating from chart0 and bottom quartile of 2.0. I doubt that Mississippians are better off than that.

[2] See http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/pubdocs/2008/52/en/1/EF0852EN...

Re: Mississipi is richer than Europe

#35

Post by desu »

tptacek wrote: post #32
desu wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I didn't mean that. I just meant that "how much stuff you can buy" is perhaps not the only possible measurement of quality of life. And I've long thought PPP to be almost irrelevant in developed countries. Every single thing I buy I buy on quality, not price or quantity. PPP utterly fails to account for that. It's useless. Anyway. Cool, I like Zurich. Hm, this thread is making me remember all these cities and inf…

Not sure I totally buy this argument. Housing, food, and transportation are three things that vary wildly in price around the world, and which you can't buy strictly on quality. For instance, whatever else you might want to say about Jackson, you can get a better house there than you can get in NYC metro. (edits: look me up if you ever make it to Chicago, which is a cooler place to visit than LA, and also note that S…

But people don't just buy houses, they buy lifestyles and locations in which they live. The actual physical house might be better but who cares?

Your average NYC dweller probably wouldn't even live in Jackson if the rent was totally free. The physical quality of the house's construction, etc, is almost totally irrelevant.

Re: Mississipi is richer than Europe

#36

Post by davidw »

gojomo wrote: post #26
tptacek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a weird response. It is, to say the least, counterintuitive that, when PPP-adjusted, Mississipeans have greater buying power than Germans. It either suggests that something is wrong with the author's naive methodology of ranking countries, or that something weird is going on in Germany.

I think it's easy for Americans -- especially the educated and cosmopolitan-minded -- to idealize other countries. Speaking as one, we're most likely to see their wealthy, urban, tourist-friendly areas. We're most likely to interact with foreign elites who travel here or work in international businesses. We only pay their internal higher prices -- from their smaller and often more-oligopolistic domestic markets, and…

Some of us Americans live in foreign countries and are well past idealizing them, but take them for what they are; both things that are, in our opinions, way better than the US, or much worse.

It's a complicated enough matter that I could talk about it all night over a bottle of wine. Suffice it to say, however, that "Mississippi is richer than Europe" is stupid flame-bait. It's more or less on the level of snotty Europeans who think Americans are dumb. Couldn't we leave silly pissing matches like that to other sites? Pretty please?

Re: Mississipi is richer than Europe

#37

Post by bilbo0s »

m_eiman wrote: post #5

Does PPP take into account things that are paid for with taxes (to a greater degree) in the EU and by insurance fees in the US, e.g. healthcare?

Uhh . . . Do you guys know how PPP is calculated?

Using PPP the people of Mississippi are more wealthy than the people of Nebraska, New Mexico, Delaware, New Hampshire, Hawaii, West Virginia, Idaho, Maine, Rhode Island, Alaska, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota and Vermont.

In fact, they are more wealthy than the people of Hawaii and Vermont COMBINED!!!

Another one an econ professor loves to throw at his students.

You ready?

The people of Gary, Indiana are far better off than the people of Darien, Connecticut!

If you are not American, you probably don't have a good appreciation for the absurdity of the previous assertions. So think of it this way, using PPP, the people of Lagos, Nigeria are LOADS better off than the people of Singapore. This is as close as I can find to the international equivalent of a comparison of Gary, Indiana, and Darien, Connecticut. If any Americans out there can come up with some better ones do jump in! PPP comparisons reach quite humorous conclusions at times. I'm sure we are all up for a good laugh.

Re: Mississipi is richer than Europe

#38

Post by tptacek »

desu wrote: post #35
tptacek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I totally buy this argument. Housing, food, and transportation are three things that vary wildly in price around the world, and which you can't buy strictly on quality. For instance, whatever else you might want to say about Jackson, you can get a better house there than you can get in NYC metro. (edits: look me up if you ever make it to Chicago, which is a cooler place to visit than LA, and also note that S…

But people don't just buy houses, they buy lifestyles and locations in which they live. The actual physical house might be better but who cares? Your average NYC dweller probably wouldn't even live in Jackson if the rent was totally free. The physical quality of the house's construction, etc, is almost totally irrelevant.

Your arguments are tending to sound more emotional than rational. NYC has a huge underclass, perhaps most of which would happily take a house in Jackson if they could get a secure job there and move without totally disrupting their lives. NYC is, for instance, a really bad place to raise a family on the national median income, or to start a company on same.

The point made upthread was that no German would consider a life in Jackson equivalent to the life they could have in Germany. That's true, but it's probably mostly true because most people in Jackson don't speak German or eat the same food. And the converse is also true; someone from Jackson would probably find Berlin cramped and invasive. That's why you have to control for cultural stuff.

(This post is now getting lots of debunking comments that I think are more sound than "it's ridiculous to even compare the two because Germans would scoff at Jackson").

Re: Mississipi is richer than Europe

#39

Post by tptacek »

bilbo0s wrote: post #37
m_eiman wrote: post #5

Does PPP take into account things that are paid for with taxes (to a greater degree) in the EU and by insurance fees in the US, e.g. healthcare?

Uhh . . . Do you guys know how PPP is calculated? Using PPP the people of Mississippi are more wealthy than the people of Nebraska, New Mexico, Delaware, New Hampshire, Hawaii, West Virginia, Idaho, Maine, Rhode Island, Alaska, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota and Vermont. In fact, they are more wealthy than the people of Hawaii and Vermont COMBINED!!! Another one an econ professor loves to throw at his s…

Neat. Why does it work this way?

Re: Mississipi is richer than Europe

#40

Post by RyanMcGreal »

tptacek wrote: post #28
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mississipi is bound to have a much better road system Which brings us to "increasing greenhouse gas emissions". Also, there's rather more to both infrastructure and living standard than the number, size and quality of roads.

I'm not sure what your point is. Mississipi has many, many problems, but smog isn't one of them.

I'm not sure what your point is. Greenhouse gas emissions (chiefly carbon dioxide and methane) don't cause smog (caused by ground level ozone and nitrogen oxides).

Edit 2 Moved reply into reply.

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