zlacker

In China, the social contract at least is "you give up some individual freedoms and some privacy, never dissent against the government, and in exchange the government promises you prosperity"

I wonder what the Brits get in exchange for their giving up of personal freedoms?

>>bududu+(OP)
The people who talk pretty get to keep buying nice houses for their kids. It seems like a pretty good deal.

>>bududu+(OP)
Brits already have more prosperity (=> median wages) even after adjusting for purchasing power.

Some stagnation is to be expected from high energy prices and trade disruption (brexit).

British surveillance state tolerance has always been pretty high for Europe, and is typically "sold" to the average citizen as anti-crime.

>>bududu+(OP)
It is important to note that this is a deal struck for just some ethnic groups of the citizenry. It does not apply fairly across the board to all people under Chinese governments' control so it's not even as good as it sounds for the average Chinese citizen.

>>bududu+(OP)
The difference is that the purpose of government in China is to govern effectively. They dedicate resources to producing leaders who have proven they can govern at lower levels to some degree (you always find that the corruption in China comes from leaders who came up through SOEs or similar). In terms of civil service and province-level leadership, it is just incredibly effective.

In the UK, you have leaders who are incredibly unpopular, they have no real skills, and they spend most of their time pandering to very small groups of people for various reasons. There is no real incentive to do anything relevant to voters, in fact you have seen over the last five years that political engagement has dropped significantly in a way that has generally benefitted incumbents.

To say this another way: the point of the UK system is so that people who are manifestly unfit to govern end up governing, and a small rotating group of special interests are continually pandered to (there is complete blindness to this in the UK, people often assume this is wealthy people when wealthy people are largely ignored...a politics grad working in research for a think tank will have more power in actual government than someone who gives £10m to the governing party).

>>myrmid+93
Some brits, most brits are worse off than the average Chinese in all but paper money. Restriced to Han chinese regions; PPP is on par. Overall china has much better social services and growth. Of the two I know which country I'd want to be born into in 2026

>>myrmid+93
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.

>>casey2+MQ2
What numbers are you referring to? From what I found, median full-time salary in the UK is >40k USD/year, and in urban (!) China it's ~20k USD/y.

Purchasing power adjustment is ~1.5 (in favor of China, obviously), so this should not be close no matter how you slice it.

>>9Jolly+cs3
The same is true for China, though; all the wealth is at the urbanized coast, with a somewhat poor and underdeveloped hinterland.

>>myrmid+uw3
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.

>>9Jolly+0E3
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).

>>myrmid+6S3
> but the median is IMO still the best you can do here, because it ignores outliers completely (on both sides).

Using the Median as far as I am concerned is meaningless as the South/South-East skews everything. It is quite obvious as you drive across the country. You can see it with your own eyes.

I don't really care that much about the comparison with China.