[reqres]

If the UK was a US state, it wouldn’t quite be the poorest per capita. It would be USD400 per person better off than Mississippi. Everywhere else – from Arkansas to Washington – would earn anywhere between several thousand to several tens of thousands more.

[jeroenhd]

Include the cost of an individual's health insurance (and many other public services that Americans are charged for despite their similar tax load) and I think the cards wouldn't be quite so stacked in favour of the USA.

A direct comparison like this can't be made. I'm not even sure where your comparison comes from, the median American income seems to be about $5k lower than the median UK income.

[hollerith]

GDP and income per capita figures do include health care and other services provided by the government.

[stevenwoo]

You are right but there's a thing where if one has to worry about the affordability of healthcare one avoids seeing medical expertise at all for fear of crushing cost or debt. That probably isn't put into the normal economic measures though may be reflected in maternal outcomes or lifespan trends per income. A long wait as some complain about in Canada or the UK national healthcare seems like a luxury to many in the USA.

[orwin]

In my opinion, what's really important is how bad live the bottom 20% of the population. Education rate, life expectancy, suffering, suicide rate.

Other indicators are less usefull to see if a country is nice to live in.

[deanCommie]

GDP per capita is a terrible way to compare the actual lived experience of the citizens. It's regularly used to make Americans feel better about their lot, given that even the poorest US states tend to have higher GDP per capita than the Canadian provinces and some EU countries that are thrown in America's faces as doing better.

But massive corporations and billionaires don't improve the day-to-day life of citizens. Americans are wealthy on paper but are one health crisis away from destitution.

[esoterica]

The median income in America is much higher than almost everywhere else in the developed world. It’s not just a small number of billionaires padding the gdp and pulling up the averages.

[acchow]

GDP per capita is not a measure of actual societal progress. You have societies that don’t have natural gas pipes or potable water and so they buy tanks of propanw and bottles of water which is expensive (higher GDP) but doesn’t give a better quality of living. Instead, if you built the infrastructure then the costs (and GDP) for the same/better outcome would be lower.

For America, we burn a lot of productivity on vehicles that last 10ish years plus the gasoline to drive them. In much of Europe, they get the same/better experience with extensive subways and bike lanes and high speed rail.

[esoterica]

GDP per capita is not the only metric by which America is wealthier than other developed countries. Median incomes are also higher.

[cm2187]

Given how volatile fx has been, you would get completely different results another month.