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Comment by VLM | Hacker News Reader

google for UK vs mississippi and the like. Basically you take GDP adjusted for purchasing power parity per citizen and Britain as a whole is poorer than Alabama but slightly richer than Mississippi. Regardless of the decimal places the headlines are all along the lines of if Britain joined the USA as a 51st state it would be roughly the 49th or 50th poorest depending on who's numbers you use.

It was a huge fad across all the infotainment sites about three or four weeks ago.

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these figures are deceptive considering the UK's comparatively-socialist tax attitude. The biggest thing I would point out is that we have nationalised free healthcare for everyone, which takes a big bite out of PPP but also means that being poor isn't a health concern. We also have a pretty comprehensive benefits system which, although unpopular, provides a large safety net for the unemployed, disabled and otherwise non-working.

The UK isn't some pauper state where everyone's living on the breadline, we just take a different approach to the USA.

[edit] replaced GDP with PPP for better clarity/relevance.

Also we have more holidays, Americans get next to nothing.

That's per capita and has rather little to do with the overall size of the UK's economy. The US is very rich and even its poorest states are doing pretty well.

The UK's GDP is substantially bigger than that of any state of the US. (UK: about $2.5T; California: about $1.9T.)

True. The bad news is the article specified Britain not the UK as a whole and the population of Britain is twice CA.

The innumerable articles on the topic seem to miss the point that its not necessarily a poverty thing as a quality of living thing.

Poverty in the USA means poor health and very high crime and awful living conditions. And there's a cultural correlation with trash blowing around in the streets and run down buildings. I've spent some time in Ireland (I don't like on the US coasts so I can afford international travel) and poverty in Ireland merely means they can't afford luxuries. I never really found a slum in my wanderings of Galway and Dublin but all US cities have slums.

I have also spent time in Huntsville Alabama, mostly in the neighboring military base, decades ago. I can hear the coasties snickering already, but its really quite nice other than the humidity. So Britain being as poor as the deep south really isn't all that bad.

I've linked to an article from a reputable source on the matter below. However, I would say that having lived in Bay Area, France and the UK, despite the fact that the headline figures place France and the UK below California, France and the UK feel wealthier than those numbers would suggest. I suspect the difference lies in better public amenities and provisions in Europe.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/Decoder-Voices/2014/...

I searched for this - because, not very surprisingly, this didn't really make the news in the UK - and found the following: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/08/26/if...

It's actually quite an interesting thought exercise to contrive as many reasons as you can why the information presented there is pretty much meaningless.

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