Comment by 9JollyOtter
1 day ago
It depends where you are in the UK.
Almost all the wealth is in the South East of England. Outside of that the country is much poorer.
I drive from Manchester to Dorset once a month to visit my parents. There is a clear line where I notice all the street signs, the service stations, roads etc are better kept. Cars and houses are in better condition/news.
The same is true for China, though; all the wealth is at the urbanized coast, with a somewhat poor and underdeveloped hinterland.
It is going to exist pretty much anywhere. Wealth is going to be concentrated in some areas and not others. So comparing the Median income of the entire country is not representative of the whole.
e.g. Jobs in London (even remote ones) will pay twice as much as jobs in the North West of England.
I do agree that boiling it down to a single comparison is always gonna be reductive, but the median is IMO still the best you can do here, because it ignores outliers completely (on both sides).
From what I can tell the prosperity gap is also large enough that small errors don't really matter; I already looked at urban china vs average UK (systematically favoring China) and the numbers are still not close (something like $30k vs >$40k even after PP adjustment).
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