Posted on 08/24/2014 6:30:59 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Now and again, American inequality is 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. 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.spectator.co.uk ...
Who would have guessed that a country thousands of miles away with thousands of years of history would do things differently to Alabama. I for one am shocked.
“would do things differently to Alabama”
Who would have guessed that London wouldn’t have the modern conveniences that Alabama has.
Such as?
“I know personally that things weren’t that great in the 70s but London today is an amazingly vibrant, exciting city.”
I love London too——the first time I traveled alone that’s where I went because I was fairly familiar with the city. It is so easy to get around there.
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