Britain poorer than Mississippi

Well denial is in Egypt and they definitely have less than us

One word, denial 🤣🤣

🙄 Quite right, what we need is more Socialism:

• Open borders for criminals and unskilled migrants posing as ‘refugees.’
• High taxes on those who work hard or set up a business.
• Generous welfare payments for people like my cousin, whose ‘bad back’ and ‘depression’ don’t stop him going on fishing trips to France.
• Generous child benefits to encourage some of the most ignorant, amoral, uncivilised members of our society to have lots of kids, who they then raise to be as ignorant, amoral and uncivilised as themselves.
• An extra effort to destroy what is left of our national pride and identity. Teach people that their history is shameful and their culture worthless, and obviously they’re not going to care about the nation they live in - or want to work for it.

Sensible policies for prosperous future.

It's been a Conservative government in charge for most of the last twenty years. And for most of the last fifty, come to that.

Don’t know if anyone else has already posted it but If you compare education, infrastructure, healthcare, quality of life, life expectancy, UK about 10 years more, then the UK wins hands down.
Median net worth in Mississippi is just over $7000 (average $375K), vs the UK's median net worth of $151,000 (average $302K). So clearly the median Brit is dramatically better off than the median resident of Mississippi, and massive inequality is throwing off the average.

I can tell you what would happen if house prices fell...

• people who had recently bought homes on large mortgages would be in negative equity. They would be stressed and immediately start saving to pay their way out of negative equity. This would risk having a recessionary effect on the economy
• older people with fully paid of mortgages and really really care about house prices would lose their shit. Older people are the most reliable voting block
• Newspaper owners who own large property portfolios would lose their shit and run daily attacks on the government. More than usual I mean
• many politicians would also lose out because they usually have a house or 5. Or are invested in farmland/a landlord etc
• Everyone would know no government can hold it's nerve and that eventually they will do everything to make house prices will rise again. So noone will sell as they wait for the temporary fall to be over and the market will stagnate.

Any party overseeing house prices would be committing electoral suicide basically. That's why you'll see populist politicians dog whistle the idea of house prices without saying they will lower prices. But they will talk about "availability" and who is to blame for the lack of "available" houses for young people to buy. Available means afordable. But note this is never said.

So yes, they do need to fall IMO. But until there's a really sensible discussion in politics without using out groups as a scapegoat/distraction it's not going to happen.

It’s not about an apology, it’s about behaviour. You want to know why so many women on here are frustrated with their husbands, it is because of attitudes like this.

If you talk to someone like they’re an idiot, then they call you out on it and you realise you are wrong, the next thing you do is say, ‘yeah you are right, sorry’

It’s literally the tiniest thing which changes the whole tone of what has gone before it and would prove you weren’t a jackass. But by just saying ‘yeah ok’ you dismiss someone and show your colours, it’s just basic conversational skills.

Maybe you don’t do it in real life, maybe you are pleasant and your wife/partner has zero complaints, but I would be surprised if that were the case. If you are like this in real life, I would suggest a slight attitude fix, maybe it won’t make your life better, but the women who have to deal with you will certainly prefer it.

I also don’t believe for 1 second that you would speak to a man in the pub the way you spoke to me here, unless you were friends in which case crack on. If you did you would end up being chinned more than once…but what would I know, I’m only a poor uneducated, sensitive, female.

A decent house price crash would help, and taxing unearned wealth and income.
I’ve yet to hear any good argument for high house prices.

Well of course you are quite right.

I was wondering earlier today if the World Cup would underline to fans and the watching global public the high standard of living that Americans enjoy. Space is cheap relative to the UK, things work, you can get stuff done and there are jobs. If I were a young person visiting, I’d be tempted and I suspect some of these fans will make plans to move there permanently.

I will chalk this up to British preferring to shovel savings into unproductive houses (Climbing The Housing Ladder) instead of investing in real companies that make goods, provide services, and create jobs.

Agree it’s hard to know because Germany isn’t doing too well either rn.

It’s probably better looking forward and what to fix. Things such as too many not working, especially young people. That’s a very problematic drag on the economy and not good for their MH.

Yeah, I'm not anti-immigration as a rule. But Blair's decision was unnecessary. It isn't anything like the biggest cause of the main issues facing the UK though.
In terms of productivity. That is GDP produced for every hour of man power the UK was a world leader 25 years ago. Literally we were in first place. But it flat lined after 2008. You would expect productivity growth to pause after the crisis but it never ever picked up again. In the 16 years up to 2007 it increased 27%. In the 16 years after 1.7%. not 1.7% a year. 1.7% in total
It's amazing in a way that we had a real life, real time experiment into what happens when you cut back all the "useless" public services and slash investment into infrastructure etc. It sort of proves all the Keynesians right. But you still have people who are pushing that we need to cut more. I think (apart from the very real budget constraints) we are now almost in a habit of "there's a crisis, cut!!!"

But on the plus side, if the UK has low productivity that means there's lots of space for it to grow and that's an "easy" was to raise living standards. Not really easy but you know. But like you said, you should focus on other things and productivity rises in response

The only thing I will say about Mississippi is they did do a huge programme to improve their education system. Including going back to basics (phonics because lots of American schools fell victim to some crayzee educational theories) and also investing money. So investing money in helping children to read is one way Mississippi is worth emulating.

This. If you want productivity, you need a population that is able to be productive. 14 years of austerity have reduced our capacity to be that population, because people can't get treatment in a timely manner when they become ill - so they wait, becoming steadily more ill, until the original issue becomes something that is costly and lengthy to repair.

Same with education and training. Tony Blair made a massive, massive mistake when he allowed immediate access to the UK labour market from the accession countries. It allowed businesses to use imported labour at a lower cost and gave them a way to not invest in the training and upskilling of its people. The shareholders won out big time. British workers? Not so much. But never forget that Blair's decision was heavily influenced by pressure from big business - the same big business that the political right now wants us to appease at every turn.

In terms of education we have stupidly persisted with our one-size-fits-really-not-many system. We don't value vocational education and training, instead we demand that everyone who passes through our school system analyses Shakespeare and Dickens to death. When we mention the word 'selection' we recoil - but it is what we need, so that young people whose talents lie outside of academia are trained, educated and supported. Selection isn't a dirty word, but only if we invest in ALL forms of education and value them properly. The Guardian had a very good article about why the Netherlands has far fewer NEETs than the UK, and selective education is part of that.

Now we're in a fix and there isn't an easy answer. But more austerity and taking money away from those who already have very little isn't it. Emulating the likes of Mississippi isn't either.

this

I agree that the UK has challenges/issues. I don't think that we are dooooomed as other posters have suggested. Also as someone who's lived in or visited quite a few other countries I feel quite aware of things that are done better than we do them (the Netherlands lack of Austerity over the last 15 years is very noticeable compared to the UK) but I'm also always really happy to be back in the UK. It's.still my favourite place with a lot going for it. Not some hell hole.

I think GDP can be a very rough indicator. But the problem with people saying "politicians need to focus on raising GDP/raising PPP" is that can lead to weird decisions. As you end up chasing a target it can be counterproductive to actually improving the economy or people's lives.
It would be better for the government to focus on (eg) improving infrastructure, lowering unemployment and NEETs, education and apprenticeship opportunities etc etc. Done well probably you would then see GDP/PPP rise as a side product of an economy that was doing well.

You might be right about it being a man thing. In my thousands of pub convos on political and economic things I don't think I've ever known a man stop play and ask for an apology for slightly mocking a ill-framed objection. Certainly not someone who'd led with a complaint about the "brainwashed masses". All good fun, innit.

Or…

Sorry Boreded, I was being condescending and it was unnecessary, you aren’t an idiot like I presumed

👍

Saying ‘fair enough, but’ is such a fucking man thing to do. You made a mistake, just apologise for the bad attitude rather than making an excuse for the behaviour.

Fair enough. I don't think either of us think PPP is a perfect measure. I do feel you were doing a pretty good impression of not being aware of it though:

Here are some PPP numbers.
> But you need to consider different costs of living!
PPP does that, though it doesn't handle medical well, of course.
> But it doesn't handle medical well!

There are better versions of PPP but I think the broader point, which we agree on, is that there is a lot that just isn't captured at all in any version of GDP.

I'm not saying Mississippi is a better place to live than the UK. But I do think we have boiled-frog our way to being much poorer than we think we are, both relative to the US and even to much of Europe.

It comes out in lots of things. Like politicians who say "of course we can afford X, we are the sixth richest country in the world!". They never say "of course we can afford X, we are only slightly poorer than Italy!".

I'm not an economist, but it strikes me that the limitation of PPP is that it is still a thing that only measures one metric, i.e. financial cost. It doesn't look at health outcomes, mortality, education outcomes, personal and press freedom - all things where the UK scores better than the US, as does most of Europe. It seems to be the case that posters wanting to talk down Western Europe are the people who understand the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

And actually whilst you’re mansplaining at me, maybe you want to look at the limitations of PPP and the issues it actually has when measuring housing costs. Or that the things being measured in PPP in the US in comparison to the UK cannot actually be compared properly, heating costs, aircon costs, healthcare, etc…people across the uk comparing their ‘average basket’ might work, but comparing them to the US, not so much.

And, homeownership rates vary, what about housing association fees and property taxes, have you considered those, all of these things skew the comparisons when you use PPP across countries that are so different, rather than just regions in the same country.

So end of conversation, apples vs oranges, even if they are doing their best to compare it is still not perfect. Off you pop!

I was in the car and quickly writing a reply that was a combination of replies to other nonsense that was written by other posters…it was 20 years ago also.

Does it make you feel special to be condescending on the internet Peter?

Sounds interesting! Puzzled then that you seemed unaware that PPP was already a measure that adjusted for differing cost of living, or gave housing as an example of something it left out. Still, I guess it was a long time ago so forgivable!

Haha, nice try, but it was either in the early 00s when doing my A-level economics, or the early-mid 00s when doing my Business Finance and Economics Degree which culminated in my writing a dissertation which was an analysis of the Nationalised UK healthcare vs the Privatised US healthcare systems, and their impact on household standard of living.

It is outdated now, given that the landscape has changed significantly, and there is a much increased reliance on private healthcare in the UK, but if you would like to read it I can send you a copy. I actually think it ended up in the public domain to be honest so you could probably find it.

Be honest, when was the first time you heard of PPP?

Yeah so the healthcare is one of the biggest charges for Americans, so it can’t effectively compare.