I was surprised to learn that poor states like Mississippi have about the same gdp per capita as rich developed countries. How can this be true? Why is there such a different standard of living?
In: Economics
Because your picture of places like Germany is based on what English speaking Germans on the internet post. Your average English speaking Germany comes from a wealthy family, is highly educated, has a high income job, and also hates America.
Those Germans are not representative of the lifestyle that an average German lives; rather, they are representative of the lifestyle of a modern day German aristocrat. To further complicate things, they often present a distorted picture of their own lifestyle because they are ideologically invested in making Germany look good. A good example of this is “free” education in Germany.
Internet Germans will tell you that their education system is better than the education system in the US because “college” is “free” in Germany. The problem with this comparison is that what Germany calls “college” is considered to be community college in the US and what Germany considers to be “free” is really just low cost tuition, which every US community college has as well. What Americans consider to be college is called “university” in Germany, and the cost of attending university in Germany is comparable to the cost of a state college in the US.
Schools like UCLA, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, or MIT – where the school itself has world leading programs in virtually every discipline – don’t really have an equivalent in Germany.
Then going back to Mississippi – your perception of how the average person in Mississippi lives is largely based on tropes that are ubiquitous in modern media, rather than how people in Mississippi actually live.
There is also a misperception that people have that rural = poor and urban = rich. That’s simply not true. Many people living in cities are extremely poor, even if the 19th century building that they’re living in looks pretty. Conversely, many people living in rural areas are not poor, even if the old house they’re living in looks basic and outdated.
All of which is not to say that there aren’t poor areas in Mississippi or rich areas in Germany, but the standard of living of an average person is Mississippi is roughly equal to the average person in Germany. The same is true of any other comparison between a poor US state and a “high income” country that isn’t the US.
GDP per capita is an average figure and doesn’t account for how wealth is actually distributed. For example, a state or country can have a few very rich people, and their wealth can pull up the average GDP per capita, even if the majority of people aren’t doing well. Also the cost of living can be very different so that with the same amount of money, a person might struggle in one country but be well off in another one. The US in general is quite expensive.
In Mississippi, income inequality is quite high, meaning that a smaller group of people have a lot of wealth, while many others might be struggling. In contrast, Germany and the UK tend to have more evenly distributed income and stronger social systems, like universal healthcare, more robust unemployment benefits, and affordable education. This means that even people who earn less in these countries have access to services and opportunities that improve their quality of life.
Im pretty sure the stats came out not too long ago, and if the UK was an American state it would be the 50th poorest (out of 51)…
We are NOT rich my guy…
Edit: 50th richest? Look, were the 2nd worst okay
Mississippi has a lot of poverty, but don’t think Mississippi is people living in shacks with no heat and eating scraps.
Poverty in Mississippi is earning $8/hr and living in crappy living accommodations but still having the American infrastructure. Your water is probably clean. Your kids can go to school. And there is still a safety net possibly available.
Edit: So y’all can understand; shack can mean a lot of different things. When I wrote that, I meant some closet sized enclosure that’s falling apart. There are definitely run down houses that may not be inhabited.
And the reason I wrote there is a safety net possibly available is because the leadership of Mississippi makes it difficult for poor Mississippians to get the assistance they need.
Tagging on to what’s been said, there are also other indicators that try to take into account other factors like education level and life expectancy that have been calculated for both countries and some subnational entities. One of these is HDI or Human Development Index which is at 0.858 for [Mississippi ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index_score)and 0.950 for [Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index#List). Note that there’s also equivalent of such for [German subnational entities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_states_by_Human_Development_Index) and the lowest that gets is 0.921 for Saxony-Halt.
Some of this probably stems from comparatively poor health indicators like obesity and gun violence, but there’s a host of reasons out there.
GDP is also something that takes into account the output of everything in the state including that of corporations, so that’s not the same thing as household income which is also different from wealth.
You are being racist and thinking all of a certain people live the way you have been told.
All states are full of all types of people. Some poor, some middle class, some rich.
Some black, some white, some other.
Whatever trope you are holding on to of the southern poor person is wrong.
> so why are people in Mississippi so much poorer with a much lower living standard?
That’s not even true. 19.6% of Mississippians live below the United States’ poverty live, and 14.8% of Germans live below Germany’s poverty line.
Mississippians are not “so much poorer” than Germans, the difference isn’t as great as you are suggesting.
Higher costs of living, more income inequality, different priorities on how income gets spent, more uncertainty/less social safety net all contribute to those differences.
There are two groups of 10 people, each group has a total income of 1 million dollars. Yay!!!
In one group, each person gets $100,000. Not bad! They are all feeling fairly good.
In the other group, one person gets $820,000. The other 9 each get $20,000. If you look at that group, they look pretty poor overall.
But on paper? They both have the same overall income!
That’s super simplified of course, but that’s the reason. In Germany wealth is more evenly distributed. They get lots of social benefits, universal health care, better worker conditions, etc.
By what standard do you figure mississippians are living a lower standard than germans?
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