I think the sleight of hand here is that "Britain is poorer" reads as "the people of Britain are poorer" even though strictly speaking in GDP terms, Britain the

I think the sleight of hand here is that "Britain is poorer" reads as "the people of Britain are poorer" even though strictly speaking in GDP terms, Britain the country has a smaller market. GDP is not wages. You can make tonnes of money in a company and none of it ends up as wages (just goes in the bank) so GDP is high but standards based on wages are no different. As an example (I could be wrong - not an economist) but a single company making $1B more in one year would equate to a GDP/per capita increase of $10K in a town of 100K. There are loads of places in the USA that looks desperately poor compared to everywhere I have seen in the UK so I can live with the headline as an economists click-bait.