> The interview was in London, the central city of three English regions (London, South East, and East) that have a total population of 20 million people that t

> The interview was in London, the central city of three English regions (London, South East, and East) that have a total population of 20 million people that together hold Europe’s most populous urban area. The economy of this “Greater South East” of England is already stronger than any sizeable country in the EU and nearly as strong as the USA. > So why doesn’t the Greater South East feel richer than the Netherlands, Denmark, or Austria? And why don’t the people Matt speaks to there feel that they’re already living in a place as economically successful as the USA? I mean, for starters, isn't the fact that the strongest region is lower still than the full aggregate of those other countries a really bad sign? Their chart is 2019 GDP per capita in 2015 dollars, compare with 2019 California-alone GDP per capita in 2012 dollars: https://www.statista.com/statistics/304615/california-gdp-per-capita/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/304615/california-gdp-pe... which is still a pretty damn large and heterogenous region (roughly twice the size of the part of England they selected). 70k 2012 dollars for 2019 California, what looks like ~57k 2015 dollars for that region of 2019 England. Possibly the PPP adjustment brings that closer, but it's not exactly a cheap region. They then talk about the worse-off parts of England... and a lot about infrastructure specifically (trains especially), but of course the train infrastructure in California is pretty awful! And train infrastructure in some of the countries lower on that list than the UK is better than California's... So what else is going on? This doesn't seem like the right lens to look through to try to right that ship at all.