US States by GDP per capita: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP)
Countries by GDP per capita: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita)
In: 322
Alongside the other reasons listed (in particular that, by PPP, France is substantially higher GPD per capita than Mississippi), Mississippi’s GDP is only around $105 billion and yet it receives around $20 billion a year in NET federal funding, ie: funding minus the amount the state contributes.
That’s an absolutely huge amount of money flowing into the state, contributing both directly and indirectly to the GDP. If you removed that money, Mississippi’s GDP per capita would collapse. France, on the other hand, is a net contributor to the EU.
poor vs rich are all relative terms. We typically compare states to each other and countries to each other. Also in that relativity, France, Germany and other European nations typically get a leg up on the competition due to their inclusion in the E.U.
Because the [income inequality in Mississippi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income_inequality) (48.1) matches most closely the [income inequality of Honduras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality) (48.2).
Don’t get me wrong: *the entire US* has rampant wealth inequality, our most-equal state, Utah (42.3), has that of Argentina or the Philippines (42.3), and all US states range in the 42-51 range, compared to the 30.6 of the EU average.
We can directly compare Mississippi and France by the share of income held by each quintile (as in, with incomes broken down into the bottom 20% of income earners, the 20-40%, the middle 40-60%, the 60%-80%, and the top 20%). The poorest quintile of earners in France earn 7.8% of all income; the same quinitile in Mississippi earns only 3.0% of the state’s income, so, Mississippi’s poor, are twice as poor as France’s poor. For each quintile:
* Bottom: France: 07.80%; Mississippi: 02.99%
* 20-40%: France: 12.62%; Mississippi: 08.03%
* Middle: France: 16.52%; Mississippi: 14.11%
* 60-80%: France: 21.82%; Mississippi: 22.85%
* Upper: France: 41.23%; Mississippi: 52.03%
Notice this: the middle class of France is wealthier than the American middle class. The French middle class really is rewarded better for their work than the American middle class; even paying for all that healthcare, even with all those vacation days, they’re still also wealthier.
So ultimately, the main reason why we Americans look at France and think “They’re *rich*!” in the first place, rather than looking at them and *perceiving them* as a developed country’s middle class, is because our sense of what a prospering middle class is *supposed to* look like has been skewed by the rampant economic inequality that the majority of us [don’t view as a priority](https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/most-americans-say-there-is-too-much-economic-inequality-in-the-u-s-but-fewer-than-half-call-it-a-top-priority/).
Lastly, if you scroll down at that first link to the part where it breaks down average incomes for five income brackets, Mississippi’s poorest income bracket is the third-poorest of any US region, making $9.7k yearly on average with only Louisiana ($9.4k) and Puerto Rico ($2.5k) having higher concentrations of poverty. Likewise; the middle-income bracket in Mississippi makes $45.9k; the 20-40% income bracket in Alaska makes $47.5, and in Minnesota, $46.4. So the working class in the North really do make more money than the middle class in Mississippi. However, note that even in states like Alaska and Minnesota, the middle quintile still only makes 15.39% of the state’s income; nowhere in the entirety of America is the middle class rewarded as fairly as the French middle class are.
Does PPP or GDP per capita take into account the $100-1000/month deduction for health insurance that Americans pay?
I guess all of those numbers are pretax so it doesn’t matter?
Because the money isn’t shared among all of their citizens. Although the PPP looks high when conspired to developed nations like France, that money isn’t actually distributed evenly amongst the Mississippi people. There’s a difference in how much a state produces in a dollar amount (gdp) and then taking that amount and dividing by total population….. versus the actual amount that people in Mississippi actually bring home because they’re underpaid, overtaxed, and the elite gobble up everything and they also get all the tax breaks. Poor people in the US pay way more in taxes as a percentage of their overall pay and they make less now than almost any time before. The rich are getting richer and they don’t actually pay a fair percentage in taxes and they also have access to a ton of loopholes designed just for them. That’s why Mississippi is perceived as a poor state – because most people there are extremely poor. There’s a couple pockets where rich people with ties to government and corporations huddle together and funnel all of the tax income to those areas, but overall, it’s a very sad and unattractive place due to its severe and widespread poverty
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