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Comment by lukevp | Hacker News Reader

If you’re trying to do a rebuttal, saying that wages are slightly higher than Mississippi and house prices are slightly lower than Cali doesn’t refute anything, it just serves to make the example more extreme and concrete. Look at house prices in Mississippi in relation to their income and then compare the same ratio for Cali and for London.

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I'm not sure why we're doing states vs cities. Jackson (the largest city in Mississippi) has a population of 150k. If I find a non-commuter belt town in the UK with a size of 150k, then the house prices will be dramatically lower. An analysis of London house prices needs to take into account that major urban areas in general command a premium (for reasons other than the ability to earn more).

If you compare SF or LA to London, then you'll find:

City | Median Wage | Median House Price | Ratio SF | 104k | $1.5m | 14.42 London | 67k | $890k | 13.28 LA | 73k | $1.1m | 15.07

London ends up being slightly more affordable despite lower salaries.

The whole analogy was a bit meaningless - it wasn't an apples to apples comparison. The writer mixed geographic and demographic scales to make a point that could just as well be about the unaffordability of large cities.

Fixed table formatting:

    City   | Median Wage | Median House Price | Ratio
    SF     | 104k        | $1.5m              | 14.42
    London |  67k        | $890k              | 13.28
    LA     |  73k        | $1.1m              | 15.07

Also, taxes?

tax numbers are irrelevant except as part of a takehome pay calculation.

at the very least, pretending that health insurance isnt another tax is a common way to derail these discussions.

That’s right if the quote is net of income tax, but that wasn’t clear. While we’re on the subject we should include the 20% VAT (delta 5-10% sales tax in the states) which is the most regressive tax on the poor there is.

No vat on the majority of spending - from rent to food.

But buy a £50k Rolex and yes there is vat.

Roughly the same with sales tax, it's just 1/3rd of that number.

> But buy a £50k Rolex and yes there is vat.

This is wildly ignorant of how less fortunate people live. They are hit with VAT on many daily expenses. Ignoring that fact and "tsk tsk"ing them for being frivolous is the [British] way.

> the European way

There we go, the European monolith strikes again. Because the UK and Germany and Spain and Italy and Poland and Finland and and and are just so alike.

For purposes of this discussion, I believe VAT is roughly uniform across the EU + UK and some other European jurisdictions. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I did update the comment to limit the critique to the UK.

Many daily expenses, yes. Before I left the UK, IIRC there was some campaign about tampons.

But "majority" just means half.

Between "The standard rate of VAT is 20 per cent, with around half of household expenditure subject to this rate." - https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/...

And Figure 10.2 on page 6 of https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN05...

I'd say it's very close to even odds that the other poster is correct to say "No vat on the majority of spending".

I'd also say that VAT should be reduced to encourage domestic spending and local growth, but I did leave the country for various reasons that can be simplified as "I do not expect the UK government to do the right thing".

Tampons, toothpaste, soap. Yes it’s all crazy, but that’s maybe £5 a week in vat.

Compare to £250 a week in rent and £100 a week in food and it’s peanuts.

Yes, but you're not contradicting anything here. £5/week in VAT is what I'd expect roughly bottom 5% by income to pay, because of limited disposable income.

If you eat in a restaurant, IIRC that's VAT-rated. A meal for two coming to £20? That's £3.33 of VAT you just paid. Poorest 5% can't afford to eat out basically at all, but it quickly adds up the moment you can start affording that.

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