Britain Is Poorer Than Any US State (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: Britain Is Poorer Than Any US State (2014)

#41

Post by hjek » Fri, Sep 14, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

ausjke wrote: post #21

Quite a lot friends went to Europe travelling this summer for whatever reason. They share the common impression: 1. You don't realize how great USA is until you travel elsewhere, e.g. Europe. 2. Europe will become a mix between the old Europe population and people from Africa based on the faces they saw on the street and the birth rate among different races these days. Soon, white will become minorities there. Yes I…

> Soon, white will become minorities there. [...] The only solution is to have more kids?

Yes, because of course our goal is to have a white majority all over the world, right? Right? (Just casually being a little bit white supremacist has never hurt anyone, ever, right?)

> it takes guts to just state that fact these days.

It also takes something else, and I'll let you figure out what that is.

Re: Britain Is Poorer Than Any US State (2014)

#42

Post by NeedMoreTea » Fri, Sep 14, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

Ahh, Tim Worstall, senior of the Adam Smith Institute and former press officer for UKIP.

I can stop at the byline to avoid his unusual approach to economic fact.

Re: Britain Is Poorer Than Any US State (2014)

#43

Post by kalenx » Fri, Sep 14, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

ausjke wrote: post #21

Quite a lot friends went to Europe travelling this summer for whatever reason. They share the common impression: 1. You don't realize how great USA is until you travel elsewhere, e.g. Europe. 2. Europe will become a mix between the old Europe population and people from Africa based on the faces they saw on the street and the birth rate among different races these days. Soon, white will become minorities there. Yes I…

It is also fascinating how some US people cannot even _think_ about a different society than theirs.

Take this simple example:

> No Air conditioning in many hotels/airbnb and they had to switch places last minute.

Why do you absolutely need air conditioning in Europe? I have been multiple times in Southern France, Spain, and Italy, where the temperatures are comparable or even higher than many US regions (say, Aix-en-Provence vs San Jose, which share the same climate with temperatures even a tad higher in the former). Nonetheless, air conditioning is seldom used in residential areas. Commercial areas are using it, but still to a much lesser extent than in USA.

Yet, everything works out quite fine... True, people work later and take a break in the middle of the day, achieving nonetheless a better productivity...

Thus, I ask the question : are you sure the air conditioning presence (or absence) is a good metric of "greatness" -- or general well-being of people living there?

Re: Britain Is Poorer Than Any US State (2014)

#44

Post by teamhappy » Fri, Sep 14, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #15

This Wikipedia page may also be of interest. It has two lists: 1) median household income, and 2) median adult income. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income#Gross_median_hou...

Also this list of countries by income equality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

Re: Britain Is Poorer Than Any US State (2014)

#45

Post by patatino » Fri, Sep 14, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

JorgeGT wrote: post #36

patatino wrote: post #20

Off topic: What is this form of title when they add stuff like "Yes, Even Mississippi" which doesn't add any value? Is there a term for it?

I'm tempted to classify it as an instance of the logical fallacy appeal to emotion .

Thank you, I think that's what I was looking for.

Re: Britain Is Poorer Than Any US State (2014)

#46

Post by drcongo » Fri, Sep 14, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

brink wrote: post #23

dagi3d wrote: post #3

and Brexit hasn't arrived yet...

Switzerland isn't in the EU and is doing fine. Switzerland poverty rate - 6.6% Germany poverty rate - 16.7% Source: https://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/switzerland.germ...

I'm going to assume you're not British / European, but for the record Switzerland is in Schengen and EFTA, Britain is heading for being in neither.

Re: Britain Is Poorer Than Any US State (2014)

#47

Post by Sharlin » Fri, Sep 14, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

So what this article primarily shows is that "wealth" (as measured by PPP-corrected median per-capita GDP) isn't that relevant a metric for measuring anything except "wealth". Of course the not-so-subtle implication is that "wealth" is intrinsically "good" and that income redistribution has not achieved "good" (although the final remark in itself is a silly cum hoc ergo propter hoc and in itself reveals the biases of the author).

Few people disagree that the median purchasing power in the US is greater than in Europe; the real question is "so what?"

Re: Britain Is Poorer Than Any US State (2014)

#48

Post by lbriner » Fri, Sep 14, 2018, 2:24 PM UTC

I think the sleight of hand here is that "Britain is poorer" reads as "the people of Britain are poorer" even though strictly speaking in GDP terms, Britain the country has a smaller market.

GDP is not wages. You can make tonnes of money in a company and none of it ends up as wages (just goes in the bank) so GDP is high but standards based on wages are no different.

As an example (I could be wrong - not an economist) but a single company making $1B more in one year would equate to a GDP/per capita increase of $10K in a town of 100K.

There are loads of places in the USA that looks desperately poor compared to everywhere I have seen in the UK so I can live with the headline as an economists click-bait.

Re: Britain Is Poorer Than Any US State (2014)

#49

Post by craig_asp » Fri, Sep 14, 2018, 2:24 PM UTC

He should remove the outliers and study those separately. The gini consideration goes a bit in that direction, but not far enough. Possibly even split the population in 4-5 buckets: from people under the poverty line through to the extremely rich and then compare each of those. Admittedly, this would be way harder but would paint a much better picture.

Re: Britain Is Poorer Than Any US State (2014)

#50

Post by dsfyu404ed » Fri, Sep 14, 2018, 2:24 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #9

This article keeps talking about mean GDP. Unless you live in a perfectly communist society, mean GDP is a poor proxy for how wealthy the people in it are. Additionally, if the author wants to adjust for PPP, they should also adjust for cost of healthcare, education, median transportation expenses - all of which are much higher in the US. (All right, median transportation expenses may be higher in the UK. I honestly…

>healthcare, education, median transportation expenses - all of which are much higher in the US.

Transportation by car costs dirt in the US. Transportation by rail isn't so much higher to make up for how dirt cheap it is to go places in the US by car when compared to Europe.