5 ms·
The UK is poorer than the US, but US software engineering salaries are an outlier. The difference is not as big as that comparison would suggest.
by foldr 2y ago
The UK is poorer than the US, but US software engineering salaries are an outlier. The difference is not as big as that comparison would suggest.
- gspetr 2y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/03/britain-economy-society https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/03/britai... "another respected data journalist, John Burn-Murdoch, calculated that without London, the UK would be poorer, in terms of GDP per capita, than even the poorest US state, Mississippi."
- foldr 2y agoYes, it's true that the UK economy is very London-centric, but the original poster was talking about the UK as a whole vs the US as a whole. (The flip side of this is that the figures would look better if you compared London to a major US city.) None of this changes the fact that US software engineering salaries are a poor comparison to use to illustrate wealth disparities between the US and other countries, as they are an outlier.
- titanomachy 2y agoThe above comparison was actually aerospace engineering, not software.
- foldr 2y agoRegardless, Americans are not five times richer than Brits by any reasonable measure. The salaries in the comparison upthread are outliers. The exact figure obviously depends on which stat you look at, but Americans are around 50% richer by most measures.