Britain poorer than Mississippi

[BritishMississippi]

Our GDP per capita has now dipped to the level of America’s poorest state. It’s not dipped below due solely to London. We’ve been on a spiral for the last twenty years that means our children are facing not being able to find jobs and even the jobs they can find have miserable wages attached to them. AIBU that we need to engage quite seriously with how to bring the country out of this spiral in a meaningful way?

But is that much different to a load of people on benefits while low paid people slog away to fund them? As a working person neither appeal.

I don’t think that she can be blamed for everything, but she certainly got the ball rolling and no government since then has done anything to improve the situation.

Yep, it was short term gain and kick the can down the road. We have now run out of road plus we have an ageing population which is ££££.

A massive amount of US "growth" at the moment is concentrated in tech stocks and not really representative of how normal people experience life. That GDP is not distributed evenly at all.

That said, the UK is divided. The wealthy south east and a few other pockets are hiding a much poorer midlands/north.

Sounds like heaven on earth

Remember as well, a huge chunk of the US "economy" is the private healthcare sector, which is hugely profitable because it charged US citizens hundreds of dollars for medications the NHS pays a tenner for.

GDP per capita is a number on a piece of paper. It doesn't necessarily mean the ordinary citizen of mississipi can afford a wealthier lifestyle than the typical person in the UK.

Why GDP Falls Short for Well-Being

• Ignores Inequality: GDP measures the size of the overall economic pie, but it doesn't show how the pie is sliced. A rising GDP can mask widening gaps between the rich and poor.
• Counts "Bads" as Goods: GDP registers any monetary transaction. For instance, a natural disaster or an oil spill can "boost" GDP because of the money spent on repairs and cleanup, even though overall societal well-being has decreased.
• Omits Unpaid Work: Caring for children, tending to the elderly, and volunteering contribute immensely to human welfare but are completely absent from GDP figures.
• Overlooks the Environment: Economic growth often comes at the cost of pollution and resource depletion, which degrade long-term quality of life

Thatcher and the Right Wingers are definitely to blame, it's no wonder we are falling behind Mississippi which is run by Progressive Left-Wingers in a country being run by that nice Mr Trump.

The idea has been debunked OP. The same was being said about France (I.e. that Mississippi GDP per capita is higher than France, ergo Mississippi is richer than France).
https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/mississippi-richer-than-france-gdp-per-capita

Exactly. It was Gordon Brown who started the rot by encouraging everyone to claim benefits instead of lowering taxes for the lower earners.

Once that had started, there was nothing the coalition or the Tories could do.

From the Spectator in 2014

I came across a striking fact while researching this piece: if Britain were to somehow leave the EU and join the US we’d be the 2nd-poorest state in the union. Poorer than Missouri. Poorer than the much-maligned Kansas and Alabama. Poorer than any state other than Mississippi, and if you take out the south east we’d be poorer than that too.

^https://spectator.com/article/why-britain-is-poorer-than-any-us-state-other-than-mississippi/^

Thatcher started the decline in the 1980’s by decimating UK industries, so creating long term unemployment for the unskilled youth and ensuring we had to buy essential resources from overseas.

More years of Tory misrule followed culminating in Brexit and here we are!

Hardly a surprise when you compare the UK to the rest of Europe. 🤷🏻‍♀️

@BigYellowBus

One word: debunked,

It was also being said the France is poorer than Mississippi as well, by GDP per Capita

https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/mississippi-richer-than-france-gdp-per-capita

Austerity
Brexit
Boris Johnson
Liz Truss
Rachel Reeves.

How people can blame Labour for everything that’s happened over the past, is laughable and shows ignorance of facts.

I may have cracked it

Mississippi’s figures are boosted by medical bills, we don’t have that, and we certainly don’t live in trailers in swamps

Except the claim has also been made that Mississippi is richer than France as well by GDP per capita. But the flaws with this notion have been pointed out

https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/mississippi-richer-than-france-gdp-per-capita

This is not true.

GDP per capita is an common comparison, but it fails as a measure in a society where wealth is highly concentrated in a small percentage of the population - like Mississippi. In these cases, extremes of wealth distort the picture, and measures such as the median wealth per individual are more telling.

The 'X country is poorer than Mississippi' has been doing the rounds for some time, and is an eyecatching and emotive headline. Articles such as the one below, however, show why it is not a meaningful statement:

www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/mississippi-richer-than-france-gdp-per-capita

That’s because they’re medicated up to the eyeballs to carry on working even if they’re very ill and in pain, they don’t get paid or get sacked otherwise.

Cross posted MellowPoster!

And what about the years before that when labour were in power? Or does that not count?!

GDP per capital is still a misleading figure because it tells you very little about development and standard of living and can be skewed by one or two examples of private wealth.

HDI is considered to be a more reliable indicator of the overall state of a country as it takes into account wealth, health and education, looking at literacy and death rates. Countries are ranked between 0 and 1, the higher the score the better the levels of development and quality of life.

Missisippi's HDI score is 0.880, overall US is 0.938 and the UK's is the highest at 0.946.

The thing is you can find measures which will tell you anything you want and politicians and the media can manipulate our thinking. I am not saying the UK isn't without it's issues but even articles from more reputable sources will manipulate or omit data to make a point.

Source: Subnational Human Development - Global Data Lab https://share.google/2l1CGR53kHf0iCirN

You missed out a few wars and covid on that list. Labour are in power now and Britain's problems have escalated since.

Fortunately our literacy rate and life expectancy is far, far higher than Mississippi.

I've read some monumental propagandist bullshit threads on MN in my time, and this one is right up there with the worst of them.

At that time, Fraser Nelson described himself as an “ardent Europhile” who later voted to Leave with a heavy heart. In 2014, he had an agenda. Yet later, he fully supported Brexit, stating it had turned out better than he had expected as of May 2026 https://x.com/FraserNelson/status/2056053964840268069. he’s a Scot with a Swedish wife.

As per links I have posted elsewhere, the same claim was being made that France is poorer than Mississippi too. It’s been shown to be a misleading comparison.