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?

What?

The problem is that politicians seem to be more interested in lining their pockets and increasing their property portfolios rather than addressing the Cost of Living Crisis.

Council Tax goes up 5% and politicians give themselves a 5% pay rise, but the rest of the country won't get a 5% pay rise.

I think politicians salary's should reflect the UK median salary so then they'd have a better idea of what they are dealing with.

I can’t comment on whether the UK is as poor as Mississippi.

A long line of political mismanagement hasn’t helped. But it’s the short termist, self-focused culture that has led to the politicians we have being voted in had over the years.

This thread may as well be deleted. This has been on the net for ages and already debunked

It hasn’t been debunked. You can argue whether or not there are better measure than GDP per capita or not but if you do use the metric and most economists do then it peaked in 2008 and has been stagnant or in decline since then. We would be foolhardy to ignore it.

We have money. We just give it away..

Yes it's a concern. I think the route cause is the socialist and welfare undercurrent, that exists heavily in the UK society and in institutions like the NHS, regardless of what party is in power. It stifles innovation and growth by proxy, and allows people to not do much, and get away with it.

Any thoughts on this @BritishMississippi

Yup bringing in millions of people from the third world’s gonna do that!

https://www.newsweek.com/are-people-mississippi-really-richer-people-europe-2066233

This is interesting. The statistic OP quoted is correct but context, analysis and interpretation helps when looking at stats.

When is that starting please?

We need to become a country of can do-ers

And people need to be told that while it's terrible that they are "depressed" and "disabled" it doesn't mean that they don't have to work to support themselves and their families.

Labour have not been in power for most of the last 20 years which is the period of the decline.

the article is in this months issue of the Atlantic. It is not some old internet meme. GDP per capita is an important metric. It’s not the only metric, far from it. BUT it’s been stagnant or in decline for nearly the past 20 years. Even if you emotionally can’t get past the Mississippi comparison surely it’s still very much worth discussing the decline in per capita GDP and how to fix it?

I saw that earlier but cannot read it as it is mostly paywalled. All I can see is the dip started just after the GFC (in 2008) and has not recovered.

I find GDP per capita fairly unhelpful though.

@MyLimeGuideNo it doesn’t because per capita GDP peaked in 2008.

The answer to this is multifaceted but the UK is light years behind the US in economic productivity.

The UK is very poor at investing in new technologies and makes life almost impossible for new small businesses. It also doesn’t attract a lot of larger companies because it wants to hammer them with tax.

Same with working people where a decreasing number of people actually work enough to pay tax to support a growing number of people who don’t work for various reasons. We’ve become an insanely unhealthy country which results in even poorer productivity.

Then there’s 2 other massive black holes that the UK throws money into. Pensions are unsustainable but no easy solutions. And then there’s the NHS where we all know it’s failing in multiple levels but we’re too proud to really admit it. Probably best to strip it back to a very basic service and then seek investment for the rest. Not saying this is a perfect solution but we can’t keep throwing money at something that is failing.

Can anybody with access post what the article says as speculating is pointless with an article there.

Actually not quite.

I'd say (although I voted to remain) it's what we did or didn't do after Brexit.

Had we post Brexit pivoted to a more dynamic economy, lower taxes, smaller, more efficient govt, pro business growth economy, we could have done very well. It would definitely have required big adjustments but we could have been a bigger Western version of Singapore and possibly super successful. Could still be.

By actually doing nothing different after Brexit (save be outside the EU) we have all the disadvantages of not being members and taken advantage of none of the freedoms that could still be available to use.

Where is that sourced from?

Why are we worse off under 2 years of Labour as opposed to 15 years of Tories when most of decline was under Tory governments?

It’s not that simple. New jobs that did not exist have been created and men and women congregate in different roles.

Why was there nothing the Tories could do?

This 10,000,000 immigrants did not come cheap.

Lots of people saying this has been debunked but even if it was true, I suspect the average (mean? Median?) American absolutely does not feel this due to the huge wealths of the top 1% skewing the overall data. It’s sickening that Elon Musk has today become a trillionaire, when so many people in the US and around the world whose work he has profited from, are struggling so much.

And then he convinces people to vote for political parties that will benefit him and his ilk, by pointing to immigrants and saying it’s all their fault