How Would The Economies Of European Countries Compare With Individual States In The U.S.?

I’m an amateur economist at best. Most of what I know about the economy is self-taught by observing what goes on in the real world, keeping track of my own finances, and watching what my parents have had to go through to keep their small business afloat for the past 30+ years. So, I understand the basics – if employers have more money to spend on their businesses, the businesses grow – they can expand, hire more employees, create a better product that more people will want to buy, etc. If employers don’t have more money (say, because of government taxing them out the nose or because of punitive regulations that don’t actually help anybody), then their business shrinks – they have to shut down parts of their operations, lay off employees, and they lose focus on creating good products because they’re too worried about the government getting in the way. If government overreach does this to enough businesses, those businesses close down. Jobs are lost and the economy as a whole suffers – and people suffer as a result.

That’s my basic understanding of economics. I don’t get into the nitty-gritty of the number crunching and percentages and comparing industries and whatnot. I have a healthy respect for people who do that kind of thing, though.

So when I found this article comparing the economies of various countries – mostly Europe, but there are a few others thrown in there – to the economies of individual American states, I was fascinated. Particularly because the headline said “If Sweden and Germany Became US States, They Would be Among the Poorest States”.

My interest. You have it (no pun intended).

There are a couple of graphs that show the median income of countries and then it compares them to different states –

The red line is the United States as a whole, with the data for individual states following to the right. To the left, is median income for countries around the world (mostly in Europe, but places like Japan, Mexico, Australia, and others are included as well).

From the article –

The nationwide median income for the US is in red. To the left of the red column are other OECD countries, and to the right of the red bar are individual US states. These national-level comparisons take into account taxes, and include social benefits (e.g., “welfare” and state-subsidized health care) as income. Purchasing power is adjusted to take differences in the cost of living in different countries into account.

 

Since Sweden is held up as a sort of promised land by American socialists, let’s compare it first. We find that, if it were to join the US as a state, Sweden would be poorer than all but 12 states, with a median income of $27,167.

Median residents in states like Colorado ($35,830), Massachusetts ($37,626), Virginia ($39,291), Washington ($36,343), and Utah ($36,036) have considerably higher incomes than Sweden.

With the exception of Luxembourg ($38,502), Norway ($35,528), and Switzerland ($35,083), all countries shown would fail to rank as high-income states were they to become part of the United States. In fact, most would fare worse than Mississippi, the poorest state.

For example, Mississippi has a higher median income ($23,017) than 18 countries measured here. The Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and the United Kingdom all have median income levels below $23,000 and are thus below every single US state. Not surprisingly, the poorest OECD members (Chile, Mexico, and Turkey) have median incomes far below Mississippi.

Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, has a median income ($25,528) level below all but 9 US states. Finland ranks with Germany in this regard ($25,730), and France’s median income ($24,233) is lower than both Germany and Finland. Denmark fares better and has a median income ($27,304) below all but 13 US states.

You mean, you’re probably better off economically being a resident of Mississippi than you would be if you lived in the UK? Man, that’s going to tick off a lot of east coast liberal elites…

(Also, I’m not surprised that Utah ranks among the highest states as far as median income goes. It’s sort of the best kept secret that our economy is consistently better than most).

Another graph takes into account the purchasing power that people in different regions of the world have (known as “Regional Price Parity” or RPP). It’s one thing to have a lot of money – but what does that mean as far as buying things you need? Does your money go as far in, say, Kansas as it does in Germany? Or whatever other state/country you want to compare –

Yep. Looks like the U.S. comes out better than a majority of countries. Again. (Geez, what’s Luxembourg doing that’s so special? Just being a cookie-crumb country between France and Spain?)

See, liberals want the United States to be more like Europe. Because they’re just sooooo much more sophisticated and a lot of those countries have government-run health care and they take care of their poor and they aren’t as greedy as we EEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL Americans. But look at what it costs them to do that. And how much longer can they sustain their welfare state? I mean, seriously?

So, as crappy as our economy has been (and it has been a dump for the past 7+ years – don’t get me wrong), we’re still MUCH better off than much of the rest of the world. And I don’t know about you, but I’d like to keep it that way. Turning into Europe doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest.