Many contributors bemoan UK’s inability to distribute wealth fairly and provide world-class public services (Owen Jones, 24 November). We are repeatedly informed that the UK is one of the richest nations on earth. But when wealth statistics are used, they almost always refer the UK’s ranking of sixth in GDP tables, while omitting to define it correctly as GDP (nominal). While this is correct, UK is ranked sixth (2013 figures), it is also misleading, implying that we are richer than we really are. To put the UK’s relative wealth in a better perspective, you should consider GDP (PPP) – purchasing power parity – and more pertinently, GDP (PPP and nominal) per capita.
For GDP (PPP), UK is ranked 10th (World Bank and IMF figures 2013). For GDP (PPP) per capita, UK is ranked 28th (IMF) and 26th (World Bank), with a figure of approximately $36,200 per person. For GDP (nominal) per capita, UK is ranked 23rd (IMF) and 26th (World Bank), with a figure of approximately $39,300 per person. It is GDP (PPP and nominal) per capita, that represent the monetised productive output per head of the nation, and which largely generates the wealth to distribute and spend on our private and public services. Ignoring the tiny tax havens and oil states that lie above UK, we are still behind Norway, Switzerland, Australia, Denmark, Sweden, Singapore, US, Canada, Netherlands, Finland, Austria, Ireland, Belgium, Iceland, Germany, France and New Zealand. It is this relatively poor productivity and productive output in UK that leaves us struggling to match world-class standards of affluence, fairness, health, education, social services etc), most of those countries listed above have fairer distributions, higher overall living standards and better public services. The UK economy, and it’s workforce, needs to increase productivity if it is to generate the wealth necessary to compete with the countries that rank above us in GDP per capita, and hence provide the greater equality and better services most of them provide.
David Pugh
Bristol
• Owen Jones’s generous views about bankers would not have been shared by JM Keynes, who said after the Wall Street crash of 1929 that he was rather in favour of the huge sums of money paid to financial people. He’d noticed that many of these individuals were by nature domineering, if not downright psychopathic, so by paying them big money you tied them into Wall Street or the City and this stopped them drifting off into their natural habitat of organised crime.
David Redshaw
Gravesend, Kent
