Thank you for all the number crunching! Very interesting to see how your index placed each state/province. I wonder if further data could be extracted regarding unemployment showing E.I. payments as well as provincial handouts (Ontario Works, as an example) and the burden it hangs on the working person? Do any of the states have 2 tiered unemployment systems?
I would be surprised if many states did *not* have some kind of second (or third) tiered support. Entitlement systems tend to be copied between jurisdictions.
Having said that, Ontario Works apparently deducts EI payments dollar-for-dollar from assistance amounts so recipients can't actually get both at the same time.
Both Canada & US "unemployment" rates are grossly underestimated because they only capture those 'able & willing' to work, not those who can't or have already given up. See Gene Ludwig's LISEP reports for good analysis on calculating the true unemployment rate of the US. And it's hard to find anything here credible after reading "BC, where renters spend 10.73 percent of their income on housing..." Not in this universe. If anyone anywhere across Canada was spending ONLY 11% on housing we would not have over 100,000 homeless in Canada on any given night (also probably an underestimate), and would be 'fine' in general. We're not fine.
Those percent of income spent on housing numbers were just as surprising to me. But what can I do? I have no choice but to rely on official statistics.
My gut is that is that Mississippi ISN'T richer than Canada, but statistics like mortality, unemployment and poverty (measured using different yardsticks) don't get at it. The fact that lifespans in the US are lower than elsewhere has nothing to do with Americans being poor and everything to do with us eating too much, driving too fast and shooting each other. All relevant, but not to the question at hand.
There's no question that medians will give us different results. But for large populations (which is what we're comparing here), median does, in many ways, give us a cleaner view than, say, averages. And both of those will more accurately represent true personal wealth than GDP per capita which mostly measures economic activity. I'm comfortable that median gives us the closest approximation of wealth that's available, but I acknowledge that no measure will be perfect.
Thank you for all the number crunching! Very interesting to see how your index placed each state/province. I wonder if further data could be extracted regarding unemployment showing E.I. payments as well as provincial handouts (Ontario Works, as an example) and the burden it hangs on the working person? Do any of the states have 2 tiered unemployment systems?
I would be surprised if many states did *not* have some kind of second (or third) tiered support. Entitlement systems tend to be copied between jurisdictions.
Having said that, Ontario Works apparently deducts EI payments dollar-for-dollar from assistance amounts so recipients can't actually get both at the same time.
Both Canada & US "unemployment" rates are grossly underestimated because they only capture those 'able & willing' to work, not those who can't or have already given up. See Gene Ludwig's LISEP reports for good analysis on calculating the true unemployment rate of the US. And it's hard to find anything here credible after reading "BC, where renters spend 10.73 percent of their income on housing..." Not in this universe. If anyone anywhere across Canada was spending ONLY 11% on housing we would not have over 100,000 homeless in Canada on any given night (also probably an underestimate), and would be 'fine' in general. We're not fine.
Those percent of income spent on housing numbers were just as surprising to me. But what can I do? I have no choice but to rely on official statistics.
My gut is that is that Mississippi ISN'T richer than Canada, but statistics like mortality, unemployment and poverty (measured using different yardsticks) don't get at it. The fact that lifespans in the US are lower than elsewhere has nothing to do with Americans being poor and everything to do with us eating too much, driving too fast and shooting each other. All relevant, but not to the question at hand.
So good. You must have thoughts on how using medians affects differences between these results from headline “gdp per capita” or other gross metrics?
There's no question that medians will give us different results. But for large populations (which is what we're comparing here), median does, in many ways, give us a cleaner view than, say, averages. And both of those will more accurately represent true personal wealth than GDP per capita which mostly measures economic activity. I'm comfortable that median gives us the closest approximation of wealth that's available, but I acknowledge that no measure will be perfect.