
Mississipi is richer than Europe - Anon84
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/09/ms-per-capita-gdp-ppp-higher-than-eu.html
======
MaysonL
Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.

Of course, I would bet that _median_ per capita income, or _median_ household
income, is substantially lower in Mississippi than in most of the EU15 (The
first 15 members). Median household income in Mississippi is ~$29K.

see <http://crookedtimber.org/2005/06/03/its-the-median-stupid/> for some
discussion of this topic

Also, I would bet that the deprivation index for Mississippi [1] would be
higher than for most of the countries he cites, especially for the lowest
quartiles.

[1] Deprivation index: add up the number of these you can't afford. Adequate
home heating, an annual holiday, new furniture to replace worn-out items, a
meal with meat every second day, new clothes, the wherewithal to entertain
guests at home.

The worst off of the countries he cites, Italy[2], has a top quartile
deprivation index of 0.5, median quartiles of ~0.6-0.7 (estimating from chart0
and bottom quartile of 2.0. I doubt that Mississippians are better off than
that.

[2] See
[http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/pubdocs/2008/52/en/1/EF0852EN...](http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/pubdocs/2008/52/en/1/EF0852EN.pdf)

------
m_eiman
Does PPP take into account things that are paid for with taxes (to a greater
degree) in the EU and by insurance fees in the US, e.g. healthcare?

~~~
david927
Exactly. PPP is calculated in such a way that makes such gigantic jokes like
this possible. You simply have to travel to see how funny it is. Has that
person been to Mississippi, and has he been to Switzerland or Norway? I mean,
come on.

~~~
tptacek
I was waiting for someone to debunk this, but I have to ask --- everyone in
Jackson has a Wal-Mart within a 5 minute drive, and the average home purchase
price is $129,000. It isn't possible that people in Jackson have approximately
the same standard of living as Germans, at a much lower price?

~~~
desu
I guess that depends on what you mean by "standard of living".

I can give you a triple gold plated guarantee, though, that the Germans would
not consider living in Jackson in your $129k house next to Wal-Mart a "high
standard of living".

So, in summary, no, it's not possible. You should travel a bit. The whole idea
is a complete joke. I mean seriously, would you rather live in Berlin or
Jackson? Seriously? Berlin has a 24hr tram every 15 minutes, go whereever you
like for like a euro. Some of the best nightclubs in Europe (America has 0
good nightclubs). What was that about cheap jars of pickles at Wal-Mart?

~~~
tptacek
I've traveled a lot, including to Germany. My wife lived in Zurich. Please
don't assume I'm being parochial.

You and I are not the right control group for this experiment. I'm not going
to move to Jackson because my favorite bands will never play there, and
because I like high-end and ethnic restaurants. But a 44-year-old
schoolteacher might not care about those things. The decision between Jackson
and Chicago might not be cut-and-dry for him.

(Also, have you been to Jackson? I have. It's not squalid. It's not hickish.
It's just a small city. It has several large colleges, and is the headquarters
for a couple large companies.)

~~~
desu
Oh, I didn't mean that. I just meant that "how much stuff you can buy" is
perhaps not the only possible measurement of quality of life. And I've long
thought PPP to be almost irrelevant in developed countries. Every single thing
I buy I buy on quality, not price or quantity. PPP utterly fails to account
for that. It's useless.

Anyway. Cool, I like Zurich. Hm, this thread is making me remember all these
cities and influencing my holiday plans!

update: you edited your post. I have never been to Jackson, nor any American
city aside from NYC and the California sprawl (LA/SF/SD). Yes, your 44-yr-old
schoolteacher might enjoy a happy, quiet life there. I am sure it is a fine
city, but I have zero interest in ever visiting it. Again, you are right - we
are not the right control group here.

~~~
tptacek
Not sure I totally buy this argument. Housing, food, and transportation are
three things that vary wildly in price around the world, and which you can't
buy strictly on quality. For instance, whatever else you might want to say
about Jackson, you can get a _better_ house there than you can get in NYC
metro.

(edits: look me up if you ever make it to Chicago, which is a cooler place to
visit than LA, and also note that SF is not in the same sprawl as LA and SD.
=P)

~~~
desu
But people don't just buy houses, they buy lifestyles and locations in which
they live. The actual physical house might be better but who cares?

Your average NYC dweller probably wouldn't even live in Jackson if the rent
was totally free. The physical quality of the house's construction, etc, is
almost totally irrelevant.

~~~
tptacek
Your arguments are tending to sound more emotional than rational. NYC has a
huge underclass, perhaps most of which would happily take a house in Jackson
if they could get a secure job there and move without totally disrupting their
lives. NYC is, for instance, a really bad place to raise a family on the
national median income, or to start a company on same.

The point made upthread was that no German would consider a life in Jackson
equivalent to the life they could have in Germany. That's true, but it's
probably mostly true because most people in Jackson don't speak German or eat
the same food. And the converse is also true; someone from Jackson would
probably find Berlin cramped and invasive. That's why you have to control for
cultural stuff.

(This post is now getting lots of debunking comments that I think are more
sound than "it's ridiculous to even compare the two because Germans would
scoff at Jackson").

------
barrkel
On the face of it, this comparison seems pretty absurd. I haven't been to
Mississippi, but I have been to many European countries, and can attest that
Germany is pretty rich on the face of it, personal incomes aside. I wonder how
such comparisons value public goods, and how well their basket of goods (for
PPP weighting) is balanced.

~~~
tptacek
Well, where in Germany have you spent serious time?

~~~
barrkel
Roughly in order of time spent, Neumünster, Bochum, Frankfurt am Main / Mainz,
Hamburg and Berlin. I've never lived there, but my GF is German, and have been
to and fro for weddings, meet parents, various trips etc.

I should hasten to add that this isn't an exhaustive list, I've been on a
number of train trips too, but I wouldn't count the handful of hours in those
places, e.g. Lübeck, Kiel, Flensburg.

------
electromagnetic
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(PPP\)_per_capita)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(nominal\)_per_capita)

PPP is a very inaccurate measure of quality of life and cost of living.
Countries with a bigger income inequality leads to far higher cost of living
and much poorer quality of life. So suggesting that having a high PPP is good
when the US on the Gini indices (which measure income inequality) rates a 45
and the EU rates a 31 is seriously screwed up and seriously misleading.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_Hum...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_Human_Development_Report_2007-2008.png)

Ignorance goes a long way, and Americans (both through blogs and the American
media) repeatedly release BS like this, claiming the US is 'better' than
Europe for an endless list of reasons. There was one of these racial BS things
posted a few weeks about how Europe was worse off than the US because it
doesn't have Wal-Mart. Ironically the UK _does_ have Wal-Mart and it's being
beaten by Tesco, and Tesco since 2007 has opened stores in the UK to directly
compete with the US. Carrefour is _the largest_ supermarket retailer in the
world and far out beats the US in terms of hypermarket square footage. Two of
the Big Three Supermarket chains are from Europe (Carrefour and Tesco). France
also has a huge established systems of Cooperatives that far pre-date the
founding of Wal-Mart and who have had hypermarkets long before Wal-Mart even
owned a store overseas.

The promotion of these articles repeatedly is showing a very disturbing trend
in the US posters on HN. I'm unsure if this is a reflection of the US as a
whole or not, but it appears to me to be a strong effort by Americans to say
"well it was already worse elsewhere, so it's not so bad here" to the economic
recession. I find it worrying.

~~~
toretore
Wal-Mart was also in Germany but they didn't last long for whatever reasons
and sold their stores to Aldi or Lidl I think.

------
dimitar
Someone forgot to put all the EU countries that have higher PPP than
Mississippi like Ireland, Denmark, Austria, Luxembourg, Sweden, Belgium,
Finland. Luxembourg a PPP of $~80k which is more than DC which is on top of
the US list with its $65k.

Better read this:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per_capita_%28nominal%29)

and this:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita)

and make your own conclusions.

------
lkrubner
PPP is bunk. It assumes that currency traders are morons who market trades are
unable to correctly value a currency. Why not compare the US to Europe using
the market values of the currencies? If you do that, then you realize
Mississippi is poorer than any European country. You also realize that all of
the US is poorer than several European countries.

------
jdburdette
One thing to remember is that a country where one person makes $120,000 and
nine others make $20,000 has the same per-capita GDP as a country where ten
people make $30,000 each. Also, as m_eiman points out, PPP does not account
for social costs such as increased greenhouse emissions or declining
infrastructure.

~~~
tptacek
It's not obvious to me that the infrastructure in Mississipi would be
declining faster than the infrastructure in, say, Italy. At the very least,
Mississipi is bound to have a much better road system.

~~~
davidw
Italy's roads aren't _that_ bad, actually (at least in the north). The problem
is that they are covered with Italian drivers, and there are an awful lot of
them: 60 million in an area a bit smaller than California. (Well, 60 million
inhabitants - not all of them drive, but more drive than they ought to)

~~~
tptacek
I wasn't trying to imply that Italy's roads were bad, just pointing out that
US roads are _unusually excellent_. I picked Italy instead of Germany to avoid
a pointless message board argument comparing Germany's often-excellent roads
to Mississipi's.

~~~
toretore
People (and by that I mean Americans, sorry) seem to think Germany's roads are
an exception. While this may have been true 20 or 30 years ago, in reality
they're pretty much the same as or even a little worse than the rest of
Europe. An exception might be the EU10, but they're catching up really fast.

Also, 20-lane motorways through the centre of a city is not a sign of
excellency but rather that of poor planning.

------
lkrubner
tptaceck writes: "But a 44-year-old schoolteacher might not care about those
things."

That is the problem with PPP - it depends on making hundreds of such
subjective valuations, all of which defy the actual market value of the
currencies of the various countries. Why not simply compare the standard-of-
living of 2 countries using the fair market value of the currencies?

I think such an honest approach is unpopular in the US because such an
approach shows how much the US has declined over the last 40 years, relative
to other nations.

------
tybris
This is probably accurate. If I want to make money I go to the US. If I don't
want to have concerns over money I go to Europe.

------
brazzy
When did HN become a forum for country dickwaving?

~~~
tptacek
What a weird response. It is, to say the least, counterintuitive that, when
PPP-adjusted, Mississipeans have greater buying power than Germans. It either
suggests that something is wrong with the author's naive methodology of
ranking countries, or that something weird is going on in Germany.

~~~
gojomo
I think it's easy for Americans -- especially the educated and cosmopolitan-
minded -- to idealize other countries.

Speaking as one, we're most likely to see their wealthy, urban, tourist-
friendly areas. We're most likely to interact with foreign elites who travel
here or work in international businesses.

We only pay their internal higher prices -- from their smaller and often more-
oligopolistic domestic markets, and higher taxes -- on brief trips where we
are price-insensitive, as tourists or corporate travelers.

That most people in admirable, 'rich', developed countries live simple, frugal
lives -- by American standards -- can thus be surprising, even though it
shouldn't be.

~~~
davidw
Some of us Americans live in foreign countries and are well past idealizing
them, but take them for what they are; both things that are, in our opinions,
way better than the US, or much worse.

It's a complicated enough matter that I could talk about it all night over a
bottle of wine. Suffice it to say, however, that "Mississippi is richer than
Europe" is stupid flame-bait. It's more or less on the level of snotty
Europeans who think Americans are dumb. Couldn't we leave silly pissing
matches like that to other sites? Pretty please?

~~~
gojomo
The same statement can be flame-bait or a spark for thoughtful discussion,
depending on the presentation and participants.

Stated without nationalistic puffery, "According to a respected economic
measure (purchasing-power parity), Mississippi produces more, per-capita, than
almost any country in Europe", among the right audience, is a very interesting
thing to talk about.

Let's _choose_ to see it as an invitation to subtle discussion among
respectful participants, rather than patriotic pissing.

