UK is poorer than Mississippi and not much richer than Italy or Spain or former East Germany (without London in the equation)

[rosetintedmemories2023]

Does this shock you?

A welfare state and free healthcare is generally the preserve of rich countries. It makes sense why the NHS pay is no longer competitive (whether inside or outside London) as the country can only pay proportionately to its wealth (even if you make a policy decision to try to pay essential workers well, there is only so much you can do without overstretching)..

The U.K. is the 6th largest economy in the world. So no, not smaller than anyone other than the top 5…

But overall poverty is a much bigger issue in Wales. And with proper investment in areas of deprivation and poverty across the UK, these areas have a chance to start generating their own wealth. The UK is fucked on many levels, the lack of infrastructure spending over many years is what will keep it at that level for ever more until we have massive and sensible investment. (Idiotic vanity schemes like HS2 dont count).

I know they're not. MOST are. I know because my son has secured a graduate actuarial job with one. Yes, the major ones have a few offices in other cities, but their graduate scheme jobs aren't available in every one of their offices! The firm where my son has got his job only have graduate actuarial vacancies in two of their six UK offices, inevitably being London and one other! The fact is that the vast majority of the jobs my son applied for WERE based in London, despite the fact that the firms he applied for had (smaller/satellite) offices in other major cities. But none at all in smaller cities nor towns out in the regions! He made every attempt possible to secure a job outside London and closer to either our home town or his University city, but such jobs were tiny in number compared to those located in London.

There are plenty of them in London. Majority of them chose to move to London.

Many of them have savings from their time in HK so obviously life is good. I am an immigrant myself and very happy in London. But mainly because I 'married well' (DH who i met at university has a mum with a london house who kindly provided us with free housing while we started out careers in the financial sector which allowed us to buy a london apartment in our 20s!)

I have a colleague from HK whose mortgage is paid for using the interest on his savings, of course life in the UK is great for him. If you have money, most places in the world are good. As the UK has a large middle class (which is shrinking) and attracts lot of foreigners from upper middle class backgrounds who study here and decide to stay on, there is a disproportionate share of privileged people but their experiences aren't always indicative of the country as a whole. Many Mumsnet users may also be similarly privileged but at the same time, living in a poorer country does mean your assets and savings probably do lose value over time.

Plus the data didn't say UK was a third world country, just that it is poor compared to most places in western europe, same level as italy and spain and poorest state in the America. Cos most Britons don't live in London

How much of that is due to London. Thats the post- London is very wealthy, most other parts not so.

Poor with or without London included?

Not where we live. Nice rural, affluent area, plenty of pubs and expensive non-chain shops.

Is London getting its ducks in a row?

The graph does show the gdp per capita if you remove the richest region from each of the countries. From the article:

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.comT&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email [email protected] to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found here.
https://www.ft.com/content/e5c741a7-befa-4d49-a819-f1b0510a9802

It will surprise nobody that London accounts for an outsized share of Britain’s output, but the magnitude of the UK’s economic monopolarity is remarkable. Removing London’s output and headcount would shave 14 per cent off British living standards, precisely enough to slip behind the last of the US states. Britain in the aggregate may not be as poor as Mississippi, but absent its outlier capital it would be. By comparison, amputating Amsterdam from the Netherlands would shave off 5 per cent, and removing Germany’s most productive city (Munich) would only shave off 1 per cent. Most strikingly, for all of San Francisco’s opulent output, if the whole of the bay area from the Golden Gate to Cupertino seceded tomorrow, US GDP per capita would only dip by 4 per cent.

Obviously didn't look in Glasgow. Or Manchester. Or Birmingham. Or Cardiff.

You mention Italy and Spain, but they, and many others are equally divided countries if you take out the main wealth creating areas. The Northern League in Italy has been trying to get rid of the South for years, Barcelona wants to break away from Spain, rural areas of France spawned the Yellow Vests, this is not a uniquely British problem.

rosetintedmemories2023

Your graphics are blurry op - how does France compare?

Rural areas need much more investment in public services (as there is less economies of scale). They are the worst hit if a country becomes poorer over time because there is less money that can be invested.

We have a centralized form of government so even if you are in an affluent part, the services are not necessarily better. Esp if its rural and affluent, that usually means more old people so more strain on services.

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.comT&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email [email protected] to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found here.
https://www.ft.com/content/e5c741a7-befa-4d49-a819-f1b0510a9802

It will surprise nobody that London accounts for an outsized share of Britain’s output, but the magnitude of the UK’s economic monopolarity is remarkable. Removing London’s output and headcount would shave 14 per cent off British living standards, precisely enough to slip behind the last of the US states. Britain in the aggregate may not be as poor as Mississippi, but absent its outlier capital it would be. By comparison, amputating Amsterdam from the Netherlands would shave off 5 per cent, and removing Germany’s most productive city (Munich) would only shave off 1 per cent. Most strikingly, for all of San Francisco’s opulent output, if the whole of the bay area from the Golden Gate to Cupertino seceded tomorrow, US GDP per capita would only dip by 4 per cent.

OP our wealth inequality is not that different to other European countries. You mention Italy however they have significantly more wealth inequality than in the UK.

I'm not surprised, but I expect it to improve.

I've worked in tech all my life (now 60). My current employer is London based but since Covid we employ people from Nottingham, Peterborough, Somerset, Milton Keynes..... The skills shortage has forced us to look further afield.

The Wfh culture makes that possible and is (will be) a major factor in improving the GDP of the regions.

not that different to France that is true. Germany has the East which was under communism. They were only been reunified in 1990 which actually in the grand scheme of things wasn't a million years ago.

And the northeast is poorer than saxony anhalt. Were they under communism, or is that something I didn't know about?

Knowledge based economies lead to clustering - if your economy depends on high tech, high value industries then they will tend to cluster together.

This is to facilitate: knowledge sharing, potentially through things like R&D projects that can involve a university and several companies; to allow people in the industry to easily move jobs between companies, spreading knowledge and practice between them; to be close to their suppliers and competitors; to spur competition by seeing what others are doing.

It's a well established outcome https://hbr.org/1998/11/clusters-and-the-new-economics-of-competition

High value companies are also exporting (either goods or services like finance and tech).

It's why cities are more economically vibrant as they have more clusters - not just London but you can see they in Cambridge which is a huge life sciences and pharma cluster. Edinburgh for financial services and insurance. Bristol for aeronautical and defence companies.

Companies don't want to be spread out across the UK because they don't benefit from clustering then. You can do that with lower value back office functions but the high value benefits from clustering.

😲

However it is comparable to other more rural areas of western countries. The GDP per capita of the north east is comparable to that of Friesland in the Netherlands which also wasn’t under communism or Picardy in northern France.

False comparison, because the reality is that London does help fund the regions and - which people often forget - the regions help fund London, through people flow, universities, remote workers for london-based businesses, resources etc. England is one of the few developed countries without multiple meaningful hubs - eg. The US has New York, SF, LA, Chicago, Houston, Germany has Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, Brazil has Sao Paulo, Rio and Brasilia - this also skews our numbers.

All this said, as a Londoner I still find it really annoying to see so much complaining about things like wind farms needed to supply the country, but have some sympathy for smaller places stuck for what they need to grow.

Not a shock at all.

Very depressing though & I'm not sure how it can be fixed now.

Yet productivity rose by 87% between 1981 and 2019. It's just that the additional value of that productivity went into the pockets of shareholders and executives instead of workers.

So the UK is now effectively stuck in a demographic doom loop (more and more money being diverted to the older folks due to demographics) AND stagflation (zero growth with high inflation).

the ageing population issue or rather the lack of planning for it is a huge problem.

Yes this is what I was listening to the other day

rosetintedmemories2023
not that different to France that is true

France is slightly poorer? Presumably that's why you omitted France from the thread title?