States in the US vary in nominal GSP per capita by only 2x — from Mississippi at $35K to Delaware at $70K. In the EU, it ranges from Bulgaria at €6K to Ireland at €55K. (This excludes DC and Luxembourg, which are outliers in many ways.)
In fact, even Mississippi, the poorest US state, is wealthier than the EU average (€28K, about $31K)! Only the wealthiest EU countries are wealthier than Mississippi: Luxembourg, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Austria, Finland, German, Belgium, France. And of those, only Luxembourg and Ireland have a higher GDP per capita than the US average.
So the EU member states vary economically far more than the states in the US do, and the US is more easily characterized as a uniformly "high income" region than the EU is.
Mississippi's GDP per capita being similar to that of France, Italy or Spain is really hard to reconcile with the fact that many of us would love to live in the latter countries and couldn't be paid to move to Mississippi.
That doesn't entirely explain why revenues in the US are that much higher than revenues in Europe however. The fact that the current trade value of the € against the $ is significantly lower to what it was ten years ago (European debt crisis) also partially explain the different revenues between the two continents.
And that's why GDP per capita is so useless.
You have a few multi billionaires running your country, and you have tens of millions of people in abject poverty, tens of millions with no health insurance, etc.
Don't look at GDP per capita, it tells you noting about life for the average person.
Mississippi's median household income is $36,919. This compares to the UK's median household income of $31,617.
Note, of course, that this doesn't count social benefits. The UK's household income is lower, but they also get the NHS, better unemployment insurance, and so on.
We do have about 25 million people with no health insurance.
Remember good GDP versus bad GDP; a traffic jam increases GDP, but isn't anything particularly worth buying. Accumulated capital (like Notre Dame and the Louvre) doesn't show up in GDP either, and if anything tends to lower it. There's a lot of bad GDP and not much capital accumulation in the US...
Climate also doesn't show up in GDP, now that I think of it, and I think that has a lot to do with the Mississippi situation. Who wants to live in hundred-degree heat with hundred-percent humidity?
What? No, it doesn't, in any possible measure. Those are lost hours of productivity.
You are right though, it isn't a good example. Here is a better one: Someone getting cancer increases GDP significantly due to health care costs.
Notre Dame and the Louvre are a couple of the things that make Paris the single biggest tourist destination in the world, from which it derives a huge amount of GDP. The French tourist officials make sure to monetize the Louvre for all they can.
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"Mississippi's GDP per capita being similar to that of France, Italy or Spain is really hard to reconcile with the fact that many of us would love to live in the latter countries and couldn't be paid to move to Mississippi."
No, it isn't, because people wouldn't love to move to France/Italy/Spain, they don't even want to. People say they'd love to live in Spain/Italy/France, but the fact that they don't reveals it's mostly cheap talk.
There are some exceptions in professions that make well above the average for these countries (also retirees, students). Europe is really very nice if you make well above the average, but this is not (by definition) the typical life in those countries. Very few Americans are excited by a 24k take home salary in a mid-sized French town, or 15k in an Italian formerly wealthy industrial city.
The vast majority of migration flows are up the GDP gradient.
The access to the Louvre (permanent collection) is free for :
everyone under 18 years old whatever the nationality,
every resident of the European Economic Area (31 countries) under 25 years old,
everyone under 26 years old whatever the nationality the Friday from 6 p.m. to 9:45 p.m.,
everyone the first sunday of each month between october and march and on july 14th,
other specific groups of people,
And it is 15€ for everyone else for a day. Not what I would call particularly excessive.
http://www.louvre.fr/en/hours-admission/admission
The Louvre still relies mainly on public subvention (102 M€ in 2015) tickets bring ~65M€, private subventions ~12M€. But yes it surely brings people and has a good impact on the local economy.
The official Paris tourist office has a picture of the Louvre on the top of its front page.
Let me put it this way: if I say that google monetizes its search engine as much as it can, I don't mean it charges you to search.
The difference with the google search engine is if you are not willing to pay and so do not use the search engine then google won't make money at all from you whereas few people will decide no to go to Paris just because the Louvre entrance is not free.
I can't comment on the rest of the US, but I'm seriously considering emigrating to Europe at some point, for the sake of long-term stability. The US might be in a very bad situation 300 years from now; I doubt that France, Germany, or the northern parts of Spain and Italy will.
It seems to me that there are many people who say things like that about most of the less-populated states.
To be honest, I'm glad. After moving to SF from a small Midwestern city, I've realized that I couldn't be paid to live here. Even if we don't mention the extremely high cost of living in San Francisco, if we just consider the negative externalities:
- Garbage everywhere
- Constant noise
- Unbelievable homeless problem
- High crime rates
- Extreme clash of culture (I see anti-tech graffiti on my way to work every day; I regularly overhear pretentious "how could you not be in tech?" conversations)
- Infinite suburbia
- High rates of mental illness (not that mental illness is a bad thing, but I think it is at least somewhat telling about the environment)
I'd still rather live back home in the Midwest, even if we didn't talk about explicitly quantifiable costs of living. There is an entire America out there between the coasts that has absolutely none of the things I just listed.
I'd say that mental illness doesn't make one a bad person, (just like having pneumonia isn't a punishment for your sins), but mental illness is a bad thing---it should be avoided, mitigated where it exists, and if possible cured.
I'm guessing you might have meant something similar?
You might as well compare California to Mexico because they share a physical border. You'll find similar disparities in income.
It would be more unfair to compare separate US states with European countries. While US states share a common fate, the same can't be said about say Germany and Greece even though they are both in the EU.
From whose perspective? A us state, Spain, or a third party?
Source: http://www.lavanguardia.com/vangdata/20150520/54431341415/ra...
Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
Individual US states are pretty close to sovereign. Other than ability to tax and a few other things, the US federal government doesn't have much power.
But the idea of the geographical transfer of resources is there. While Texas may not want to refinance american banks, the FED doesn't care. Germany may not want to refinance Greece, and the European Central Bank can't enforce it. [0]
>> While US states share a common fate
> Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
It's a great question. You can get the best answer from the following article: https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100510_europe_nationalism_...
[0]: https://geopoliticalfutures.com/lehman-brothers-and-germany-...
The shared taxes that you mention are also huge: how different would Europe be if Germans were really on the hook for Greek budgetary issues?
Look at this in practical terms: if the US states really resembled sovereigns, you'd have far wider differences in economic performance. Outcomes would diverge more widely if states were really doing things that were really all that different. We'd see incredibly different unemployment rates too. But in the US that can't really happen, because ultimately the federal government has everyone's back, and you don't see big, country threatening arguments about how California federal taxes are spent in other states: Those situations were possible back when the federal government was really weak, but the aftermath of the civil war took care of all of that.
Along with the legislative differences, there's also a far more unified culture across states, if just for the shared language, and thus media. I can move from Missouri to California pretty easily: Better weather, higher taxes, but most of the rest stays about the same. Moving from an EU country to another is far more traumatic in comparison, which also makes each country be far more unique than US states.
At this point US states are mostly satrapies of the federal government, since the feds can withhold block grants to the states who don't fall in line.
Eh, not really. Central bank-controlled states are a reasonable grouping measure, which is why it's the US, EU, Switzerland, the UK, etc. that people compare (even though the UK is part of the EU, and Switzerland has signed on to most economic measures the EU mandates).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Texas
Maybe 'central bank control' is a reasonable grouping measure, but 'size of economy' is also reasonable. There is certainly more nuance than a simple ranking can model.
And the 'central bank' argument is muddied by the existence of the Euro and the particular economic struggles of countries like Greece.
I'm sure some folks in Texas are itching to secede, but until that happens, we compare other countries with the US, not California, Texas, or New York.
Like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_U.S._states... for instance.
Your phrasing is as if the popularity of the per country comparison makes it impossible to discuss any other comparison. But that's not the case.
It seems crazy to lump Mississippi and North Dakota in the same basket as NYC
Every countries has regions which are less well off. But most comparisons lump everything up. Otherwise madness ensues trying to create "proper" economic divisions...
There's a reason North Korea locks its citizens in and doesn't allow them access to any information about the outside world.
NYC itself has got to have a pretty high value given DC is 160,563.
I think its a bit problematic for a very different reason, North Dakota is mostly exporting raw materials (crops and oil) where NYC is services. I'm not sure people really get how the system fits together. To me, the friction points (borders, regulations, shipping, etc.) are the dividers. Not sure how one weighs how much those add to get regions.
Yes, there are slightly different laws and politicians, but also different infrastructure in different districts.
The are multiple political, cultural and so on levels. Countries and states inside countries often don't work the same and the hierarchical structures might be different.
Taking only EU and US already shows the huge difference. Take really banal things. The countries in the EU are also all part of the Council of Europe, which doesn't have a lot to do with the EU other than the geographic location. But they create certain rules, such as a common view against capital punishment (they actually caused that in some countries). On the other hand in the US you have very different views.
It's not easy to compare complex political, cultural structures and economic competitiveness in itself is kind of a weird thing to measure, cause there are so many layers of that term itself. Now while it is clear that this isn't meant think about all kinds of movements, be it for money less societies, be it people that want gold or resources. Describing economies can include only the monetary part, but might include goods, infrastructure, even health. And for such a report one can come up with kind of arbitrary ways of measuring things, giving them a value.
Now, I think many here know how hard it can be to measure non-complex things, how hard it can be to get the KPIs right and for how a startup those can be different and how those KPIs can change from one day to another (and that might or might not make sense).
Now comparing countries and economies is a wholly different thing.
Also I am not saying that what was done is bad or whatever. It certainly is not. I just think that people often interpret too much in those things. Taking different, equally qualified people to create such a report could result in rather big differences, because what makes sense to put in there is rather subjective and for example influenced by culture.
You shouldn't feel competitive (pun intended) about this kind of lists anyway, it's just a score on criteria some organization called "WEF" values for reasons that are their own. You don't have to 'win' every ranking, if you "win" one, you're going to lose another that uses different criteria.
One important way we don't compare is that healthcare and retirement costs are a massive drag on our economy. Just an hour ago I received an e-mail from my employer letting me know that their 401k matching is decreasing 1% next year, but that they're cool with it because it's still "competitive". The reality is that many Americans working today will never afford to retire. And at some point in the future they will not be able to afford their healthcare either.
How can we talk about productivity and competitiveness when we can't even afford to keep ourselves alive and healthy?
TL;DR; American competitiveness is a joke.
Not really. "It's complicated" and there are many aspects to it.
US health care is terrible, for instance, in terms of costs/benefits. The startup I worked for in Italy dedicated all of 0 person-hours to health care or health insurance stuff because it's none of their business. Big advantage.
OTOH, the public pension system in Italy is pretty creaky and I would not trust it a lot. There are a bunch of people who got to retire at like 55 or 60, which is pretty early for a country where many people live quite long lives, and are no longer doing hard manual labor.
"At will" employment in the US is way, way more flexible than the kind of system they have in Italy where you'd pretty much have to murder someone while on the clock to get fired. Definitely a win for business.
There are all kinds of things to compare countries on, and it's not simple.
I agree, it could be a win for employees as well if we changed some of the social norms. One example, change "2 weeks notice" to "give as much notice as they would pay if they laid you off" (In the majority of jobs currently, none) and employers would start offering severance packages again.
My own view is that making employers directly responsible for 'social welfare', rather than simply taxing them and providing money for the unemployed through the government, or some such, is suboptimal. If I'm not mistaken, places like Denmark take the latter approach: easy hiring/firing, high taxes, and a lot of benefits. Not everyone might like it, but it seems more efficient than making it impossible to fire people who are not really contributing much.
By "our economy", do you mean private persons? The whole country?
Regardless, coming from one of those magic fairylands of modern Europe - health care and retirement costs are a massive drag on our economy as well, they're just not as easily seen by general people (you certainly don't see it on your pay slip).
But I'm afraid I have no retort to the Olympic question other than that is it a completely different ranking of the best of each population rather than the average, so different rules apply? I'm not sure that is a good argument against your sentiment, though.
Isn't success at international competition largely a factor of financial investment into a particular sport? Arguably the US being the world's biggest economy, would also give them the world's best trained athletes, the best trainers, the best training facilities and so on.
Many (most?) sports have specific checks and guards in place to minimize the effect of money on team success, but that only goes so far.
Individual banks have branches all over the country. It's one currency. There's one federal set of trade laws with minor state limits on some goods. Shipping goods across state lines or selling digital wares across state lines are covered mostly by federal law. Contracts may or may not, by their own language, invoke state laws in interstate sales with few exceptions (some states don't allow a seller to waive certain of a buyer's rights in a standard sales contract).
There's no government interference moving from one state to another for work (unless you're a felon or a sex offender or some other special case). There's one set of immigration laws. There's one set of passport requirements.
Yes, you could say each state is its own market. But then you could say the same about each city and town. For some people individual cities in the US compete directly against one another more than state vs. state. Am I likely to find work in my field in any little farm town in northern California, upstate New York, rural Georgia, Texas hill country or scrub desert, or in downstate Illinois? Not at all. In San Francisco and the Valley? In NYC? In Chicago? Houston? Dallas? Austin? LA? Atlanta? Sure.
I think there is probably room to compare economies in different ways. It's certainly notable that California has roughly the same size economy as France, but it isn't the only comparison you would want to make when trying to compare the economic situation in the US to the economic situation elsewhere. But if you were considering the availability of opportunities, you might start with the few US states with the largest economies just like you might start with the few EU countries with larger economies.
You might find http://www.medalspercapita.com/ interesting.
Otherwise one must wonder what is the point in remaining a single nation if the end result is always less happiness, education and "competitiveness".
The point of keeping the US as a single nation is to further the interests of those who are aligned with FEDGOV, not for the education or happiness or prosperity of ordinary people.
If anything, the Federal government is overly distracted bringing the slow parts of the country kicking and screaming into the 21st century and by those same parts randomly derailing it.
But anyone ever want to secede again, I won't object.
As to not complaining about a possible future secession... You also think it's a federal obligation to bring the "slow parts" of the country "into the 21st century". I'll venture that anyone who makes that sort of mental investment in pharisaic priggishness has more to lose, ego-wise, if the "slow parts" do better outside the union than inside.
In fact, I'd be willing to pay for them to leave. Even willing to fund a wall on the Mason-Dixon line if they wanted one when the got independence.
And the first world part of the country wouldn't have to do such 'priggish' things as ending Jim Crow or endlessly fighting disenfranchisement. And those who feel oppressed by such outrageous intrusions as teaching evolution in schools, would have their own country to move to. Why they could have their war with Iran and a president who's testosterone levels are announced on the Dr Oz show while the rest of the country could move on. Everyone wins!