[verbify]

I spot checked some of this and from what I can find, the median salary in London is about $12k more than Mississippi, and the median house price in London is about $100k less than California.

Bear in mind that obviously the mean salary in London is going to be far higher than the median (the finance industry will skew it), while I'm not sure that's as extreme as Mississippi. Additionally median salaries reflect a lot of service jobs and similar labour. Dubai has a lower median wage than either London or Mississippi, but people don't think of it as economically broken.

Comparing California (an extremely large state that I presume has cheaper housing outside major urban areas) to a city seems a bit of a poor comparison.

I don't disagree that the UK has high energy costs.

[lukevp]

If you’re trying to do a rebuttal, saying that wages are slightly higher than Mississippi and house prices are slightly lower than Cali doesn’t refute anything, it just serves to make the example more extreme and concrete. Look at house prices in Mississippi in relation to their income and then compare the same ratio for Cali and for London.

[verbify]

I'm not sure why we're doing states vs cities. Jackson (the largest city in Mississippi) has a population of 150k. If I find a non-commuter belt town in the UK with a size of 150k, then the house prices will be dramatically lower. An analysis of London house prices needs to take into account that major urban areas in general command a premium (for reasons other than the ability to earn more).

If you compare SF or LA to London, then you'll find:

City | Median Wage | Median House Price | Ratio SF | 104k | $1.5m | 14.42 London | 67k | $890k | 13.28 LA | 73k | $1.1m | 15.07

London ends up being slightly more affordable despite lower salaries.

The whole analogy was a bit meaningless - it wasn't an apples to apples comparison. The writer mixed geographic and demographic scales to make a point that could just as well be about the unaffordability of large cities.

[piker]

Also, taxes?

[financetechbro]

Dubai is absolutely economically broken lol. The city was built on cheap foreign slave labor. And the luxurious amenities of the city are only for the wealthy royal and foreigners. Their main export besides oil is the illusion of a thriving metropolis

[Cyph0n]

The example I like to use to demonstrate how broken labor vs. service costs are in the UAE is to compare the price of a Big Mac meal to the price of a standard manual car wash (closer to detailing tbh).

In the UAE, a Big Mac meal costs approximately 35 AED ($10). On the other hand, a manual car wash - approx. 1-2 hours of labor - can cost you around 20 AED.

In other words, you could get almost two manual car washes for the price of a Big Mac.

[maxglute]

AKA the most sensible economic model for Dubai. It's a nice enough metropolis for the desert, entices enough high end talent to live there to supplement frankly undereducated population a few generations away from nomads, and locals are comfy. What else they going to do with oil money in the desert.

They're just arbitraging cheap labour in your face instead of some farm field or factory overseas. For resource to local population ratio, it's supremely optimized - cheap migrant workforce does all the shit job locals don't want to do, don't have the numbers to do, without need for onerous social safety net of citizenship.

It's economically "fine", as in as "fine" as can be trying to pivot desert city from oil. It's morally broken because labours occasionally be slaves, even though largely everyone wins. UAE gets cheap labour, labour countries get remittance, labourers get life changing pay.

Like west already does this shit in some sectors (agri) and get cheap calories, UAE can't supply enough labour in all sectors and get cheap everything.

[SamDc73]

> Dubai has a lower median wage than either London or Mississippi, but people don't think of it as economically broken.

Dubai isn’t sold as a place to belong long-term. Most people move there knowing it’s temporary. The Bay Area is drifting in the same direction too with the increased cost of living around here. (but the same could be said about most big cities, maybe?)

[kortilla]

If this was meant to be a rebuttal, it wasn’t.

Compare the housing costs of London to the housing costs of San Francisco and then swap out those Bay Area salaries with your “slightly above Mississippi” wages and you’ll see why London looks so broken to people used to LA/SF/NY.

[verbify]

The median home price in San Francisco is $1.5m. In London it's $893,000. These are not comparable places.

San Francisco is much much more expensive, I'm not sure why that means London is "broken". It's just got a different economic dynamic.