You don't say?
Posted on 08/27/2014 11:48:58 AM PDT by Red Badger
Now and again, America puts its inequality on display to the world. We saw it after Hurricane Katrina and we have seen it again in the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. A white police offer shoots dead a black man, after having stopped him for jaywalking. Britain’s police don’t have guns, so these scenes are unthinkable to us. But American-style inequality? We have plenty of that too, we’re just better at hiding it – as I say in my Telegraph column today.
I came across a striking fact while researching this piece: if Britain were to somehow leave the EU and join the US how would we rank? The answer is that 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.
I’ve been asked (on Twitter) to link to my source, but I’m afraid there’s no study to point to. It’s original research. But it’s also a fairly straightforward calculation. You take the US figures for GDP per state (here), divide it by population (here) to come up with a GDP per capita figure. Then get the equivalent figure for Britain: I used the latest Treasury figures (here) which also chime with the OECD’s (here). A version of this has been done on Wikipedia, but with one flaw: when comparing the wealth of nations, you need to look at how far money goes. This means using a measure called Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). When this is done, the league table looks like the below. I’ve put some other countries in for comparison.
It’s not surprising that America’s best-paid 10 per cent are wealthier than top 10 per cent. That fits our general idea of America: a country where the richest do best while the poorest are left to hang. The figures just don’t support this. As the below chart shows, middle-earning Americans are better-off than Brits. Even lower-income Americans, those at the bottom 20 per cent, are better-off than their British counterparts. The only group actually worse-off are the bottom 5 per cent. Here are the figures:-
In America poverty is more obvious due to White Flight, a phenomenon we just didn’t have. In the era of the motor car, the middle class (who tended to be white) worked out they could buy a lovely house in the safer suburbs and commute. The population of St Louis, where Ferguson is a neighbourhood, has halved since 1970. And back then, Ferguson was 99 per cent white. Now it’s 67 per cent black. Any Brit who has walked the streets of today’s Detroit will be stunned: this supposed city looks like a bombed-out ghost town. But 45 minutes up the I94 lies the gorgeous sprawl of Ann Arbor, and some of the loveliest spots on earth. America’s White Flight has created a visual spectacle with no equivalent in Europe. When urban trouble kicks off in America, this spectacle is there for all to see.
Britain has no space for white flight, we’re forced to live closer together. And we fool ourselves into thinking that proximity has brought cohesion. In fact, we have developed a new kind of segregation: keeping the poor cooped up in council estates, a stone’s throw from the posh parts – yet abandoning them in a welfare trap from which escape is pretty damn hard. Brits may be appalled at America’s gap in black-white life expectancy. But our Liverpool-SW1 life expectancy gap is just as big; we just don’t get upset about it. When you walk south over Westminster Bridge from the House of Commons, life expectancy drops five years.
No one beats up America better than Americans. They openly debate their inequality, conduct rigorous studies about it, argue about economics vs culture as causes. Their universities study it, with a calibre of analysis not found in Britain. Americans get so angry about educational inequality that they make films like Waiting for Superman (trailer below). And the debate is so fierce that the rest of the world looks on, and joins in lamenting America’s problems. A shame: we’d do better to get a little angrier at our own.
An easier way to explain this is because too many people in Britain adhere to a religion which starts with an “I” and ends with an “M”.
We're not. The toxic AA culture with its drugs, rap and black-on-black genocide speaks for itself.
A decrepit nation with a massive overpowering central government, full of individuals with little to live for who refuse to reproduce, being beset upon by a vicious gang of foreign Muslims hellbent on ‘culturally enriching’ them.
Whenever a TV show or movie depicts british middle class life, I’m always amazed how everything is so small and, well, plain. I used to watch Monty Python reruns and marvel at the camper oven/stove in most homes. And the tiny refrigerator.
I even remember in the 70’s I was in hi-fi sales and Philips had this amazing speaker that was pretty small but sounded really big - with a price to match. They didn’t catch on in the US. The theory was that americans didn’t have to worry about how big their speakers were because, relatively speaking, the average home has much more room than the average european home. And since space is at a premium in europe, you pay a premium to get a good sounding speaker in a small package.
Awful cryptomarxist commentary. This is why I stopped my subscription to the Spectator - after they fired Mark Steyn they turned into a more expensive version of the Guardian.
Fraser Nelson... SOD OFF!
You almost make me ashamed my Mother is from the U.K. she hasn't stepped foot back there in over 20 years and she traded Kansas for country of her birth >:(
but doesn't say anything about the skyrocketing gun crime in the U.K. or prosecuting legal guns owners who defend themselves.
You don't say?
bump
In England 5 acres is a farm, a sprawling country estate.
Where I’m at it is about the minimum you are allowed to build on. Only the very wealthy can afford to go hunting in England.
I’m willing to bet ol’ Fraser has never spent much time in the US, much less the states he’s comparing his country to. I agree with his assessment of Great Britain, though. It slid into socialism many decades ago and is well on its way to becoming a defacto islamic state.
She’s beauty..........and so’s the cop......
Outside of the posh areas of London most Brit cities are like a combination of Detroit and Gary, Indiana.
In what way is Kansas "much-maligned".
Truth be told, I don't think I've ever heard anyone malign Kansas.
Wow.
That bad, eh?
Yep, he acts like he is from MISSOURI or something! ;)
Welcome to the club, Kansans. Southerners have been dealing with "experts" on the south who have watched Gone With The Wind for the better part of a century.
Irritating, ain't it?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.