Sunday, June 19, 2011

Economies: Europe Could Aspire to be Mississippi

I'm listening to the radio, the BBC is reporting on the anti-austerity protests in Madrid and I come across the following at Prof. Mark Perry's blog, Carpe Diem:
In a New York Times editorial last year titled "Learning from Europe" Paul Krugman wrote:

"The story you hear all the time about Europe — of a stagnant economy in which high taxes and generous social benefits have undermined incentives, stalling growth and innovation — bears little resemblance to the surprisingly positive facts. The real lesson from Europe is actually the opposite of what conservatives claim: Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works. The European economy works; it grows; it’s as dynamic, all in all, as our own."...MORE
Here's a different view, the latest state numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis with the national figures inserted into the leaderboard by Dr. Perry. My comment follows:

GDP per Capita: U.S. States vs. Europe, Japan and Canada, 2010
 
RankGDP per Capita, 2010
District of Columbia$168,327
Luxembourg$81,383
1Alaska$70,814
2Delaware$69,880
3Wyoming$68,162
4Connecticut$66,022
5New York$59,596
6Massachusetts$58,339
7New Jersey$55,715
8Virginia$53,113
9Colorado$52,205
Norway$52,013
10California$51,905
11North Dakota$51,882
12Minnesota$51,238
13Maryland$51,224
14Washington$50,912
15Illinois$50,581
16South Dakota$49,741
17Texas$49,119
18Nebraska$48,708
19Hawaii$48,697
20Oregon$48,590
21Louisiana$48,068
22Iowa$46,791
23Rhode Island$46,688
24New Hampshire$46,295
25Nevada$46,136
26Kansas$44,621
27North Carolina$44,568
28Pennsylvania$44,471
29Wisconsin$43,446
30Indiana$42,266
31Georgia$41,720
Switzerland$41,663
32Utah$41,528
33Vermont$41,290
34Ohio$41,240
Netherlands$40,765
35Missouri$40,515
36Tennessee$40,239
37Florida$39,988
38Arizona$39,910
39Oklahoma$39,724
Austria$39,634
40New Mexico$39,475
Canada$39,057
41Michigan$38,959
42Maine$38,623
Ireland$38,550

Sweden$38,031
43Kentucky$37,209
44Denmark$36,450
45Idaho$36,113
Belgium$36,100

Germany$36,033
46Montana$35,895
47Arkansas$35,161
48South Carolina$35,034
United Kingdom$34,920

Finland$34,585

France$34,077

Japan$33,805
49West Virginia$33,738
50Mississippi$32,764
European Union$32,700
Spain$29,742

Israel$29,531

Italy$29,392

Greece$28,434

Portugal$23,223


Remember, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) refers to the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country. Gross State Product does the same at the subnational level. Thus GDP per capita is a measure of how economically productive a population is.

There are two approaches that a cohort or even a generation can take toward funding their lifestyle:

1) They can borrow, thus stealing from the unborn by saddling them with debt.
2) They can produce.

In the U.S. we do both.
That may be why we were able to get away with it for two generations, 1946-2006.