Today's discussion about the news

There is more nuance in this report than Ricks "you idiots won't get it" approach would suggest.

Unlike transport and healthcare, it is difficult to minimise the UK’s disadvantage in housing consumption. The UK spends a similar amount of money on housing as the US in nominal terms – $6,600 vs. $7,630 – but the extremely high cost of housing in the UK turns a 16% gap in nominal spending into a nearly 60% gap in real consumption. The way housing PPPs work involves finding the rent price for housing that is equivalent in terms of floor space and amenities like central heating, electricity, etc. Some of the difference is caused by differences in the cost of utilities – though the gap in energy prices was much smaller in 2017 than it is today – but effectively this means that Britons have much less floor space per person than Americans. Looking at the English Housing Survey and the HUD American Housing Survey from 2021, we can indeed verify that this is the case. Regardless of tenure, the average American dwelling has about 60% more floorspace per resident than the average English dwelling. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if it reflected different preferences between Britain and the US, but the available evidence suggests this is not the case. Britons devote a higher share of their overall consumption spending to housing than Americans (21% vs. 17%) and face much higher housing costs than Americans (2.34 times the global average vs. 1.7 times the global average).  

Are you honestly trying to claim that you can't summarise all of the salient information into a Tweet?

When MAGA is very much a big issue and the solution to all the woes is Donald Trump then I suspect the grass ain't all that green.

There's a slight "English" and "UK" conflation going on, incidentally. Think Scotland and perhaps Wales would skew the averages a bit in terms of price per sq ft. And the comparison between the UK and the whole US in that respect is about as fair as comparing the UK and Singers.

I would be genuinely interested in comparisons between the UK and some of the individual states, e.g. New York.

And similarly, between the US and the entirety of the EEA.

My point is it's close and rjsterrys assertion that American's are "pissed off" (implying more pissed off than Brits) doesn't hold much water

What's the average house size in Denmark?

Agree with your last paragraph.

I think the reason Rick gets so much flak on this (and I suspect he does it deliberately to have an argument) is that what that article was saying, and what most of us were saying the other week, is that you can’t simply compare salaries and use that as a guide to wealth without considering cost of living (or how hard you have to work to earn that money). When you take that into account the gap is a lot smaller albeit it still in the favour of the US.

it’s like earning more for working in London but then not being able to afford to live there because housing costs more than the extra salary.

No, that's the point everyone else was making.

RC said the US is a bazillion times richer, oh woe is me.

Quite curious to know what the difference in quality is between mortgages

Do their bailiffs have good manners?

I'm not sure I implied that; certainly not intentionally. I was just observing that for all their additional wealth, they don't appear to be on average healthier or happier. I don't deny that people in the UK aren't equally disappointed with their relative wealth compared with large parts of the world.

It’s not just Evan Davis schooling Laura Trott on her poor numbers:

It would appear that Henry Staunton has kept receipts.

Have noticed a bit of a pattern with Badenoch jumping straight for spiteful character assassination as soon as someone publicly disagrees with her.

I suspect she isn't very bright. She seems to be trying to raise her profile at the moment for some reason, she was also in the news for criticising Michael Sheen for criticising the Government yesterday. I'm not sure now is a good time for a Tory politician to be trying to make themself more visible. You'd think they'd be hiding behind the parapet and hoping to emerge unscathed after the election.

I have a feeling there is a self-justifying 'I sometimes break the rules to get results' inner monologue.