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London has the house prices of California and the income levels of Mississippi. the UK is seriously broken, I always reflect on the energy generation statistic
by dzonga 10mo ago
London has the house prices of California and the income levels of Mississippi.
the UK is seriously broken, I always reflect on the energy generation statistics of the UK per capita
while in the US you see automated car washes, in the uk most car washes are Albanians n other immigrants etc
- klysm 10mo agoIncome and wealth inequality! I don’t see a way out for the UK
- turbonaut 10mo agoMedian wealth per adult in the UK is 176k. In the US it is only 124k. Source: UBS Global Wealth Report 2025 Of course US does has a much higher mean wealth…
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- hdgvhicv 10mo agoThe wealth inequality in the U.K. is very genratioanly skewed, mainly from the source of that wealth (housing and final salary pensions) which is no longer available to younger people.
- specproc 10mo ago[flagged]
- lithocarpus 10mo agoNot disagreeing but also I wonder how it compares to inequality in Britain before the US was a thing.
- specproc 10mo agoThe core issue is that most major businesses are ultimately owned directly or indirectly abroad, largely in America, with some tapping by London-based intermediaries. Supermarkets and shopping centres, national assets (e.g., water) the story is the same. Then there's Amazon et al. Profit generated in this country is by and large not spent here, and is certainly not taxed adequately. This causes inequality by short-circuiting redistributive measures, either local economic multipliers or government spending. What gains are felt are concentrated in service sectors which facilitate global capital, concentrated in London. See OP's thoughts on legalistic societies. It compares to inequality in England before the US was a thing, in the same way. Small elite benefiting from global plunder, vast inequality internally. The British Empire didn't actually end. There was a hostile takeover by Washington at the end of WW2.
- 01284a7e 10mo agoMeh. Everywhere has foreign investment. The economic elite of the UK owns the US as well.
- nradov 10mo agoThe UK is already close to the USA on obesity rates and catching up fast.
- cindyllm 10mo ago[dead]
- elevatortrim 10mo agoWould you mind telling me if you are a genuine person who lived in the UK, or at least have some knowledge of the country beyond recent tweets? Honestly I am shocked at the recent rise of anti-UK comments with horribly incorrect information or skewed views and curious about what is sourcing this.
- bix6 10mo agoHouse prices are out of wack anywhere desirable because the local income is irrelevant when non-locals are allowed to scoop up the local supply.
- yunnpp 10mo agoCountries like Indonesia have banned foreigners from owning land altogether. You can apparently still own property through land-lease agreements and other arrangements, but not the land. I think they've cracked down on illegal rentals too.
- shimman 10mo agoHouse prices are only "out of wack" in areas with poor social housing programs. Housing in Vienna is still affordable, only due to their very successful public housing programs. Public housing can be both beautiful and highly affordable if you want it to be, it's not like we don't know how to make good quality homes with lovely public amenities. It's mostly developers that want to skim on everything while selling it at the highest cost possible. Poor system if this is the outcome: unaffordability.
- lifeisstillgood 10mo agoI am interested in what is working in Vienna when “housing problem” is what almost every city in “the West” has or thinks it has. To me it seems to be a combination of - wealth inequality (eg 20/30 trillion dollars was printed and furloughed out in Covid, which funnels its way up to the holders of the most assets, seeing asset price inflation but no attempt to tax back the money printed). Repeat on different scales for unfair tax systems and poor infrastructure and and and - urban planning (we think the ideal city is dense using seven storey or so apartment buildings and fairly aggressive anti-car (ie far less parking than seems possible) with better public transport and lots of pedestrian access. This describes almost no cities - mortgages and other pro house incentives. You want house price inflation for decade after decade, just allow people to borrow a greater ratio against their salary — and allow married women into the workplace. Suddenly turning a mortgage limit of 2.5 x a man’s salary into 5x a dual couples salary. People bid up prices, forcing more couples to have two salaries to compete. And companies don’t have to increase salary to compensate … people combine salaries and go deeper into debt. Hell if you only had one policy weapon, forcing 2.5 borrowing against one highest paid persons salary is not a bad one. You won’t get re-elected however.
- xixixao 10mo agoThere are differences, but this is oversimplified, and market is “mostly” working. You need more money in California, for transportation, for health care. The standard is bigger houses (bigger everything) in Cali. Life might be richer, in some ways more pleasant, in London (it’s not weather though), including shorter flights to many interesting places. From my experience the ratio of savings was similar, but the ppp of course favored US for absolute numbers.
- kubb 10mo agoNobody will admit that the housing is overpriced, so they would have to be forced to do so. This is terrible for normal people, and slightly bad for the investors, but only a crisis or organized government action can reset the damage done by decades of investment in already existing buildings. The former is much more likely to happen.
- verbify 10mo agoI spot checked some of this and from what I can find, the median salary in London is about $12k more than Mississippi, and the median house price in London is about $100k less than California. Bear in mind that obviously the mean salary in London is going to be far higher than the median (the finance industry will skew it), while I'm not sure that's as extreme as Mississippi. Additionally median salaries reflect a lot of service jobs and similar labour. Dubai has a lower median wage than either London or Mississippi, but people don't think of it as economically broken. Comparing California (an extremely large state that I presume has cheaper housing outside major urban areas) to a city seems a bit of a poor comparison. I don't disagree that the UK has high energy costs.
- lukevp 10mo agoIf you’re trying to do a rebuttal, saying that wages are slightly higher than Mississippi and house prices are slightly lower than Cali doesn’t refute anything, it just serves to make the example more extreme and concrete. Look at house prices in Mississippi in relation to their income and then compare the same ratio for Cali and for London.
- piker 10mo agoAlso, taxes?
- butvacuum 10mo agotax numbers are irrelevant except as part of a takehome pay calculation. at the very least, pretending that health insurance isnt another tax is a common way to derail these discussions.
- piker 10mo agoThat’s right if the quote is net of income tax, but that wasn’t clear. While we’re on the subject we should include the 20% VAT (delta 5-10% sales tax in the states) which is the most regressive tax on the poor there is.
- jemmyw 10mo ago> while in the US you see automated car washes, in the uk most car washes are Albanians n other immigrants etc Er what? I moved away from the UK in 2007 but even then the only place I or my parents washed a car was the ubiquitous petrol station automated car wash.
- drcongo 10mo agoI can only think of one automated wash in my UK town, and well over 10 "Albanian" hand washes. Personally I go to the Albanians every time - they take pride in what they're doing, handle the vehicle with care and do a far, far better job than an auto wash.
- basisword 10mo agoNo idea where OP is based but like most suggestions about the UK or London online it's bullshit. Most petrol stations have the same automated car washes they've always had. If you want your car hand washed there are lots of people doing that too, as there always have been. Like all places, the UK and/or London has plenty of issues including serious ones - but I'd still pick it over anywhere in the US regardless of salary differences.
- hereonout2 10mo agoConversely, I've no idea where you or the parent has the idea that the UK is full of automated car washes and the OP is talking bullshit. I live in London and can think of a only a handful of the old fashioned automatic car washes. Whereas I can get a hand carwash at pretty much any supermarket car park I land on. From a guy with a bucket and trolley to a full team of four going at it with a power wash. Tesco, Sainsbury's, wherever. The Albanian angle feels loaded, but it's true that many of the employees do seem to be recent immigrants. I don't see much point denying this reality, it feels a bit like trying to argue there's always been high streets full of betting shops, charity shops, vape stores and American candy shops.
- basisword 10mo agoLondon is an odd one as space is limited and the hand wash places can pop up anywhere quite easily. If I look at the more suburban place I'm from most petrol stations still have the automated ones (contactless payment now instead of the tokens). And most of the larger supermarkets there that have petrol stations still have the automated car washes too.
- pron 10mo agoLondon doesn't have the income level of Mississippi, although that might be true for the UK average. I'd say that the UK may be "seriously broken", but not more so than other post-industrial countries, including the US (or France, or Japan). It's just broken in different ways. E.g. life expectancy in the UK is significantly higher than in America even though they were the same in the '80s. Education levels (and measures such as literacy profficiency and skills etc.) are also significantly better in the UK than in the US. Somewhat tongue in cheek, Americans are richer but they don't seem to be putting their money to good use, as Brits are better educated and live longer.
- i_love_retros 10mo agoYes but London isn't in America so there's that. Have you lived in the UK at all, or at least spent considerable time there? I've lived in the UK and America, and America seems far more broken to me.
- zeroonetwothree 10mo agoI’ve lived in an actual “broken” country. Compared to that both the US and UK are great.
- overfeed 10mo agoI don't think Four-Yorkshiremen-style one-upmanship[1] this discussion adds anything meaningful to the conversation around comparing US/China/Europe 1. https://youtu.be/ue7wM0QC5LE https://youtu.be/ue7wM0QC5LE
- Nextgrid 10mo ago[flagged]
- elevatortrim 10mo agoAs a person who moved from a third world country to UK, this could not be further from the truth. Life in the UK, both economically and socially, is miles better than my previous 3rd world country (which is still in world top 20 GDP).
- ben_w 10mo agoI'm British by birth, lived there until 2018. I've also visited Kenya and Switzerland and the US. Kenya's actually third-world. Was playing a card game with my partner and family in a gas station in Nairobi when sparks started flying out of the outdoor lighting system covering the forecourt roof. Place I was staying, there was a power cut that meant the water pump couldn't keep the taps and toilet pressurised. The fancier toilets in the shopping mall, the paper was outside the cubical because it cost too much to not be a theft target if it was inside; other places, squat toilets. Public transport included a Matatu, kind of a hybrid of a bus and a taxi, very cheap but it was also a minivan that only moved when full, and "full" meant about as many people as would physically fit given they'd replaced the cargo area with another two benches and everyone was squeezed in. I didn't visit the actual slums, which are (from the pictures I've seen) much worse. Switzerland… the discount food is priced like Waitrose. In this regard, it's a bit like America. But American discount food has the quality of Poundland, while Swiss discount food has the quality of Sainsbury's. The UK is much better put together than Kenya. It is much cheaper than Switzerland or the US.
- DicIfTEx 10mo ago> I always reflect on the energy generation statistics of the UK per capita Can you elaborate on this? From what I can tell, the UK's per-capita electricity generation has dropped steadily from a 2003 high[0] (4,069 kWh in 2024, 6,657 in 2003, 5,266 in 1985) and per-capita energy consumption has been going down since 2005,[1] but energy intensity (read: inverse of efficiency) has been decreasing consistently since at least 1965.[2] Domestic electricity production is down 24% since 2000,[3] whilst imports (which I don't think includes Albanians) are up 206% in the same period.[4] That all reads to me as a country whose domestic generation has been replaced by imports and whose consumption has been reduced by efficiency gains, but I'm aware that I'm conflating figures here for 'energy' and for solely 'electricity'; I couldn't find anything for per-capita energy generation, as you specified. [0]: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-kingdom#in-the-united-kingdom-how-much-electricity-is-generated-per-person https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-kingdom#in-... [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-kingdom#what-is-the-united-kingdom-s-average-energy-consumption-per-person https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-kingdom#wha... [2]: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-kingdom#energy-intensity-how-much-energy-does-the-united-kingdom-use-per-unit-of-gdp https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-kingdom#ene... [3]: https://www.iea.org/countries/united-kingdom/electricity#where-does-united-kingdom-get-its-electricity:~:text=CC%20BY%204%2E0-,Total%20electricity%20production,-Electricity%20production%20tends https://www.iea.org/countries/united-kingdom/electricity#whe... [4]: https://www.iea.org/countries/united-kingdom/electricity#where-does-united-kingdom-get-its-electricity:~:text=Electricity%20imports%20and%20exports https://www.iea.org/countries/united-kingdom/electricity#whe...