When Paul Krugman said “Europe’s economic success should be obvious even without statistics. For those Americans who have visited Paris: did it look poor and backward? What about Frankfurt or London? You should always bear in mind that when the question is which to believe — official economic statistics or your own lying eyes — the eyes have it.” I had roughly the same reaction that Matt Welch did: having lived in London for intermittent (short) periods, I found it noticeably poorer than the United States.
It is not noticeable to tourists, mind you. London, like any
European city that wasn’t actually flattened in the war, is rich in
architectural assets that make it feel very posh–low rise buildings
older than thirty or forty years are a luxury in most American cities.
Walking around a European city, the diversity and beauty of the
architecture is dazzling.
But the standard of living in any
given profession is much lower. Preserving London’s dazzling antique
architecture has meant that most of the people I knew had much longer
and more expensive commutes than their American counterparts would.
They lived in smaller quarters that were hotter in summer and colder in
winter. At any given professional level, you found British people
doing things that only much poorer Americans would do, like bringing
lunch, hanging their clothes to dry, or going without cable (though the
Americans I knew said the cable wasn’t worth it anyway). People in
Britain are not poor. But they have a noticeably lower standard of
living than Americans do. If they were doing it in 1960’s vintage
apartment buildings and tract homes, it would be quite obvious. When I
lived there, I literally could not afford to eat meat regularly or take
the tube to work, and as a consequence wore holes in my shoes. (In
fairness, I was being paid in dollars and the exchange rate was
awful–but I wasn’t the only one walking to save money.)
I
don’t want to sound as if I’m saying Britain’s a terrible place–it’s
lovely, and I miss it. But the amount that people are able to consume
is much less than the amount Americans are able to consume, and many of
the things they forego make real difference in things like personal
comfort. (Based on my admittedly limited sample of British mattresses,
they must be unimaginably hardy sleepers). Consumption isn’t
everything. But it is something, and that is what’s being captured in
the GDP differences.
