Comment by trgdr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by trgdr | Hacker News Reader

As an American expat in London, I think the thing that consistently shocks me is how neither Brits nor Americans understand how much poorer Brits are than Americans. The median London wage is something like 30k GBP / 40k US. In New York (where I lived before London) that number is ~70k, and the costs of living are pretty comparable.

And as much as I love that the NHS is a thing, it's not a reasonable comparison. No one I know who has a choice uses NHS services apart from emergency medicine or surgery. Everyone I know who can afford it has private health insurance anyway.

In general, everyone I know in this country either has serious family money or is downright poor by American standards. There really isn't much in between.

TO BE FAIR: it's generally much more pleasant to be poor in the UK than it is in the US. NHS is miles better than nothing, which is what many Americans have to deal with.

Dubious evidence for rather strong claims.

> The median London wage is something like 30k GBP / 40k US. In New York (where I lived before London) that number is ~70k, and the costs of living are pretty comparable.

Couldn't be bothered to verify the numbers, but even if they're true: you've compared London to New York. The vast majority of Brits and Americans don't live in these two cities. I'd argue that these two cities are not representative of the rest of the two countries.

> Everyone I know who can afford it has private health insurance anyway.

Have you considered that your sample is biased? It's akin to looking at the top 1% of earners in the UK and concluding that nobody uses the NHS.

> It's generally much more pleasant to be poor in the UK than it is in the US.

For some definition of "poor" this means that it's much more pleasant for the _majority_ of people to live in the UK than in the US. This seems to contradict your prior claims.

US: Real median household income was $70,784 in 2021, not statistically different from the 2020 estimate of $71,186 (Figure 1 and Table A-1). [1]

UK: Median household disposable income in the UK was £32,300 in the financial year ending (FYE) 2022, a decrease of 0.6% from FYE 2021, based on estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Household Finances Survey. [2]

I think the GP’s claims are true (the UK is poorer and many people don’t realise it). It used to be a bit less obvious when GBP was strong so you needed to look at things like PPP (or like, how good the tumble driers are) to see the difference.

[1] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-27...

[2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...

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