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Comment by dmitrygr | Hacker News Reader

> Even the EU is a lot of different countries. Some of them quite poor, and some of them wealthier also with high GDP per capita.

All poorer than Mississippi per-capita

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Not sure if you still conflate "poor" with "GDP/capita". If you do, that is an incorrect statement. Mississippi's GDP/capita is lower than many EU members' (e.g. Luxembourg, Ireland, Denmark... ). If you look at purchasing power parity (PPP) it also becomes a lot more muddy.

Nonsense.

Mississippi: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPCPI

Belgium: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

And that is not counting the substantial safety net that your average European has. I would MUCH rather live in Belgium than Mississippi, and I say this as an American.

Have you lived in Mississippi? How about Belgium?

Or are you basing that on what you see on social media?

Not GP, but: Belgium and Louisiana. And I’d pick Belgium again in a heartbeat, even if you removed all of the non-political (e.g. climate) differences.

Different stroke for different folks but looking at immigration flows between countries on a per capita basis, average preferences are clear

I think he meant mixed Europe with Canada, which would have made the statement true.

Yet there are many places in Europe I would rather live in than Mississippi. That’s America in hard mode.

The best thing about living in Mississippi is that you have absolute freedom to move to another State where the benefits of living in the US are much easier to realize.

Still people live in Missisippi. Starting a new life somewhere else is easy when you are a rich well-off employee in tech.

My point was that many of the oft-argued benefits of living in the US are relatively difficult to access in Mississippi. But if one finds themselves in that position it is relatively easy to improve their lot even if they are poor and don’t work in tech.

Been there, done that, and know many others that have.

Did you miss the bit about freedom of movement in the EU

The “freedom of movement” in the EU is considerably more difficult and limited in practice than what exists in the US.

40-50% of US citizens live in a different State than the one they are native to. 4-5% of EU citizens live in a different country than the one they are native to. That is a very large disparity.

GDP is flow, there is also stock.

Source?

And yet I expect the QOL for the median French person to be higher than the median Mississipian.

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