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imomusTwo things Click Opera is always banging on about -- how money doesn't equal happiness, and how life in the Anglosphere sucks (largely because money doesn't equal happiness) -- were underlined this week by two reports about the quality of life in Britain and America. First, on Wednesday, U-Switch released their European Quality of Life Index, a survey of life in ten European countries ranking them according to 19 variables, including income, tax, the cost of essential goods and services, and the weather. Despite having the highest household incomes in Europe, Britain and Ireland were ranked lowest for quality of life, at 9 and 10 respectively. France and Spain came highest.
Life in Europe's two English-speaking countries -- which both saw huge market-driven economic booms over the last decade -- was rendered miserable not just by poor weather (Britain gets 17% less sunshine than the European average) but by diesel prices 18% above average, Europe's second-highest unleaded fuel prices and its third highest gas (49% higher than the European average) and electricity prices, as well as by Europe's highest food and property prices. So although British families earned £35,730 (more than £10,000 above the European average of £25,404) per household per year, high prices ended up putting them way behind the lower-earners on the continent in terms of quality of life. Winning the money race, it seems, isn't at all the same thing as winning at life.
Of course, how you spend your money is key. Britain spends less on health and education than its European neighbours; just 8.1% of British GDP goes on health, compared with over 10% in France and Germany. As a result, Britain has only 2.5 doctors per 1000 residents, compared with 3.4 in France and 3.5 in Germany. As for education, Britain puts 5.5% of GDP towards that; the Danes, for instance, spend 8.6%. British people retire later than anyone else in Europe and get fewer holidays (just 28 days a year, compared with Spain's 36). They live shorter lives -- life expectancy in the UK is 78.9 years, compared with 80.9 in France and 80.7 in Spain.
So there it is. Britain and Ireland have the highest average incomes in Europe, but come bottom in terms of quality of life. British households earn £35,730 but are miserable. Spanish households earn on average just £16,800 a year, but low taxation and cheaper prices make that money go a lot further, and other factors -- sunshine and a whole different approach to priorities, let's call it l'art de vivre -- make life much better in the Latin countries. "Clearly, when it comes to the good life, income is less important than free time, sunshine and cheap commodities," concluded one report of the findings.
America also scored poorly this week, this time in a report entitled The Measure of America funded by Oxfam America, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Conrad Hilton Foundation. In a piece entitled US slips down development index, the BBC summarised the report: "Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed nation... the US ranked 42nd in the world for life expectancy despite spending more on health care per person than any other country." The US has a life expectancy of 78 (the same as Britain's), but vast inequality between its richest and poorest groups. It has more children (15%) living in poverty than any other advanced nation, and the most people in prison. One in four Americans are now officially obese. They also underperform educationally: "25% of 15-year-old students performed at or below the lowest level in an international maths test -- worse than Canada, France, Germany and Japan".
"Some Americans are living anywhere from 30 to 50 years behind others when it comes to issues we all care about: health, education and standard of living," wrote Sarah Burd-Sharps, the report's author. Asian-American males have the best quality of life and black Americans the lowest. The place with the highest human development index in the US is Manhattan, the place with the lowest is Mississippi -- which also happens to be the state with the highest obesity levels.
The exact relationship of money to the problem is ambiguous. For American website ZDNet Healthcare "the bottom line is that in the U.S. your lifespan is closely correlated with your bank balance". For UK newspaper The Independent, "despite an almost cult-like devotion to the belief that unfettered free enterprise is the best way to lift Americans out of poverty, the report points to a rigged system that does little to lessen inequalities".
What the newspaper reports didn't go into is the wider question of how philosophy has shaped these results -- specifically the philosophy underpinning Anglo-Saxon capitalism. For that, you need to turn to Tristram Hunt's BBC Radio 3 Sunday Feature about Adam Smith, Ideas -- The British Version: The Free Market. Standing in front of Bank station and the Bank of England, Hunt describes "a landscape of commerce and enterprise -- high end restaurants, chic retail boutiques, corporate HQs, and the sense of money at work. What this landscape is about is the free market.... The wheels of commerce are at work; a de-regulated process of exchange and contract that's creating wealth all around me." It's also creating poverty, and not just the financial kind.
Life in Europe's two English-speaking countries -- which both saw huge market-driven economic booms over the last decade -- was rendered miserable not just by poor weather (Britain gets 17% less sunshine than the European average) but by diesel prices 18% above average, Europe's second-highest unleaded fuel prices and its third highest gas (49% higher than the European average) and electricity prices, as well as by Europe's highest food and property prices. So although British families earned £35,730 (more than £10,000 above the European average of £25,404) per household per year, high prices ended up putting them way behind the lower-earners on the continent in terms of quality of life. Winning the money race, it seems, isn't at all the same thing as winning at life.
Of course, how you spend your money is key. Britain spends less on health and education than its European neighbours; just 8.1% of British GDP goes on health, compared with over 10% in France and Germany. As a result, Britain has only 2.5 doctors per 1000 residents, compared with 3.4 in France and 3.5 in Germany. As for education, Britain puts 5.5% of GDP towards that; the Danes, for instance, spend 8.6%. British people retire later than anyone else in Europe and get fewer holidays (just 28 days a year, compared with Spain's 36). They live shorter lives -- life expectancy in the UK is 78.9 years, compared with 80.9 in France and 80.7 in Spain.
So there it is. Britain and Ireland have the highest average incomes in Europe, but come bottom in terms of quality of life. British households earn £35,730 but are miserable. Spanish households earn on average just £16,800 a year, but low taxation and cheaper prices make that money go a lot further, and other factors -- sunshine and a whole different approach to priorities, let's call it l'art de vivre -- make life much better in the Latin countries. "Clearly, when it comes to the good life, income is less important than free time, sunshine and cheap commodities," concluded one report of the findings.
America also scored poorly this week, this time in a report entitled The Measure of America funded by Oxfam America, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Conrad Hilton Foundation. In a piece entitled US slips down development index, the BBC summarised the report: "Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed nation... the US ranked 42nd in the world for life expectancy despite spending more on health care per person than any other country." The US has a life expectancy of 78 (the same as Britain's), but vast inequality between its richest and poorest groups. It has more children (15%) living in poverty than any other advanced nation, and the most people in prison. One in four Americans are now officially obese. They also underperform educationally: "25% of 15-year-old students performed at or below the lowest level in an international maths test -- worse than Canada, France, Germany and Japan".
"Some Americans are living anywhere from 30 to 50 years behind others when it comes to issues we all care about: health, education and standard of living," wrote Sarah Burd-Sharps, the report's author. Asian-American males have the best quality of life and black Americans the lowest. The place with the highest human development index in the US is Manhattan, the place with the lowest is Mississippi -- which also happens to be the state with the highest obesity levels.
The exact relationship of money to the problem is ambiguous. For American website ZDNet Healthcare "the bottom line is that in the U.S. your lifespan is closely correlated with your bank balance". For UK newspaper The Independent, "despite an almost cult-like devotion to the belief that unfettered free enterprise is the best way to lift Americans out of poverty, the report points to a rigged system that does little to lessen inequalities".
What the newspaper reports didn't go into is the wider question of how philosophy has shaped these results -- specifically the philosophy underpinning Anglo-Saxon capitalism. For that, you need to turn to Tristram Hunt's BBC Radio 3 Sunday Feature about Adam Smith, Ideas -- The British Version: The Free Market. Standing in front of Bank station and the Bank of England, Hunt describes "a landscape of commerce and enterprise -- high end restaurants, chic retail boutiques, corporate HQs, and the sense of money at work. What this landscape is about is the free market.... The wheels of commerce are at work; a de-regulated process of exchange and contract that's creating wealth all around me." It's also creating poverty, and not just the financial kind.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-18 07:57 am (UTC)marvelous night for a moondance
Date: 2008-07-18 08:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-18 08:27 am (UTC)Many of us, for whatever godforsaken reason, have either chosen to live here or have no choice other than to live here. Some of us think it's lovely. Some of us suffer from fleeting anxiety and depression that might well be brought on by the fact that it's shit. Then again, some of us might suffer from fleeting anxiety and depression if we were in Berlin, Tokyo or f#cking Never-Never Land.
But the main reason we end up feeling annoyed, angry or even ashamed of where we live is purely because everyone keeps going on about the fact that it's shit. It's relentless. Believe it or not,
The papers can't stop. Yesterday's Mail headline: "KNIVES: NOW NO PART OF BRITAIN IS SAFE". To which I replied with devastating wit on
The [right-wing] "Broken Society" rhetoric just wouldn't mean anything in Ireland. Nobody in Ireland wants to be told that their society is broken. Fine Gael tried to run a "God, isn't it all AWFUL?" campaign for the election last summer, but it just didn't ring any chords at all. But for some reason, British people just lap it up, and it'll probably win the Tories the next election.
And:
The papers are negative because the public are cynical, and the public remain cynical because the papers remain negative. The business model of the cynical media reinforcing the public negativity in a way that allows them to never challenge public perceptions while at the same time portraying themselves as righteous campaigners for truth, is a safe and unchallenging one.
Everyone's telling us that it's shit. It most certainly is not shit. I went to Denmark, once. Jesus.
Despite being an apparently whiny, miserable sod, my life's terrific. I don't earn much, but I don't have to work too hard to keep a roof over my head, and I've not been properly skint since about 1995. I live in a fairly grotty corner of London (Tooting) but have never once felt threatened when walking home a bit pissed at 1am. There are thousands of magnificent people doing offbeat, unusual, magnificent things. Oh, and we grow excellent peas.
So lay off,
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-18 09:04 am (UTC)Immigration does have costs - it drives up property prices even more, increases the demand on services like health and education, and arguably depresses the wages of poor Brits, by making them compete in the jobs market with even poorer workers from overseas.
It's a tricky balance.
I wonder if the virtuous, low-Gini society you advocate has to be, like Japan, a monoculture. It will be interesting to see if increased ethnic and cultural diversity in places like Sweden makes them less socialistic and more selfish.
I want both - the gentler, kinder socialistic politics, and the dizzying 24-hour excitement of the global bazzar. Is that possible?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-18 09:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-18 09:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-18 09:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-18 09:28 am (UTC)I also think that this would make a magnificent postcard. I laughed out loud when I saw it.
It sums the glory of British life almost as magnificently as this:
Time to die
Date: 2008-07-18 09:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-18 09:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-18 09:36 am (UTC)Re: Time to die
Date: 2008-07-18 09:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-18 09:45 am (UTC)NO WAI!!!!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-18 09:51 am (UTC)And guys, I really find it ridiculous to be bickering over whether one *should* enjoying living in a certain place. The real reason one likes a place or not is always personal and psychological, rooted in one's life experiences and history and unalterable by reason alone. I live in Taipei, Taiwan, and I have all the objective, quantifiable data to show you what a fucked-up third world s**thole this is, but I still have all the reasons to find it preferable to live here than in Toronto, which according to many "quality of life" indexes is one of the best cities on the freaking earth.
No index can measure everything everyone finds important to his or her own life; value judgments are unavoidably implied in in what way the measurements are slanted. Indexes are "objective" in that they are "quantifiable," not that they are "True." The uSwitch report is just one way to draw the picture. It's not the whole picture. And neither is "Anglo philosophy sucks" the whole picture.
What I've said is strictly kindergarten banality, but perhaps you are too old and sophisticated for kindergarten rationality?
And if the UK is such a wonderful, multicultural place, don't Britons have better tolerance for different opinions? Like, allowing others to hate what you like?
For goodness's sake.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-18 10:29 am (UTC)Low Absolute Poverty vs "Equality"
Date: 2008-07-18 10:34 am (UTC)Britain's absolute poverty level is extremely low, and for that I think we should be thankful. I genuinely feel lucky to be born British.
That's not to say I think wealth shouldn't be redistributed in certain circumstances, but the problem is trying to decide what someone's manpower or skills are worth to a society.
I don't believe everyone should be equal in terms of wealth purely because not everyones input into a society is of equal measure. How can it be fair that someone who has spent their whole lives toiling and grafting should have an income no higher than someone who's had their wealth pretty much handed to them on a plate? there will always be lazy good-for-nothings, and for this reason there will always be poverty, even in a Utopian society where everyone has perfectly equal opportunity to better their lives. Thats not to say all poverty is the result of idleness, but in countries like Britain where we have free education and a benefit system, I think a large part of it is down to that.
In terms of absolute poverty, Britain's population live very good lives.
The Gordon Brown Death Toll is Incalculable
Date: 2008-07-18 11:00 am (UTC)Get tough on deserting black fathers = bury the guilt of providing the worst childcare in the western world.
Get tough on welfare scroungers = bury the guilt of adding to a society built on monarchy and aristocracy with a generation of lazy buy-to-let psychopaths.
Getting tough with immigrants = bury the guilt of kicking people in the face, screwing them over and then telling them that the good times are coming to an end – all from the safety of a second home in Tuscany.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-18 11:06 am (UTC)"Sorry, Scott, but the message I'm getting from this is "Read lurid, exceptional stories in the newspapers and tremble! Let the reign of fear continue!" And the people who are trying to battle this spectre down to normal, everyday experience are getting SHOUTED AT."
To which Scott replied: "I can see your side, Nick. I just disagree--though maybe that's because I'm so saturated in America's sensationalist news culture that I don't notice anymore."
I'm not about whipping up irrational fear, though, and I wasn't talking about knife or gun crime anywhere in this piece. I was talking about quality of life and cost of living, and simply relaying stats about exactly how much more British people pay for basic services, and how much less their government pays for basic social provision. I then connected this to the errors of Adam Smith's philosophy (an "invisible hand" shaping everything for the greater good of all).
The logic of the whole piece seems pretty clear: vote as socialist as you possibly can. The unbridled market will not make you happy, nor improve your quality of life, nor your longevity, your health, your education level. If you want things to get even more Anglo-capitalist-shitty, though, and life to get even more unpleasant, vote Tory.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-18 11:11 am (UTC)Because you've elected to ignore what he wrote and rant about your perspective instead. using tangents and things that seem related to his points, until actually examined.
What you've done here is a clear example of what's wrong in america. and if you're doing it then maybe it's part of what's wrong in england too. people claim to disagree and then talk about different things that seem connected but aren't. This is no better than word association.
Re: Time to die
Date: 2008-07-18 11:15 am (UTC)Step into this chariot (we've replaced the Spirit of Ecstasy with a statue of Boadicea and unscrewed the Rolls Royce logo because everyone knows they belong to BMW) and let us wend our way to your new office, avoiding congestion charge zones!
Re: The Gordon Brown Death Toll is Incalculable
Date: 2008-07-18 11:16 am (UTC)Re: Low Absolute Poverty vs "Equality"
Date: 2008-07-18 11:19 am (UTC)Re: The Gordon Brown Death Toll is Incalculable
Date: 2008-07-18 11:20 am (UTC)Please don't come here
Date: 2008-07-18 11:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-18 11:23 am (UTC)And if that means irritating some people who think that commenting on blog posts somehow has to follow some kind of academic rigour, so much the better. Whoop!