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HDI is the primary metric used to compare quality of life and development between different governments.

As I shared in the comment above, HDIs of all 50 states in the US are comparable to Western Europe. The worst state, Mississippi, is comparable to Portugal, and the US average is comparable to the UK, Luxembourg, and Slovenia (on a separate note I'm very surprised by how Slovenia delevoped after the Iron Curtain fell) and well above France.

There are of course issues in the US that we need to tackle, but fetishizing European countries makes no sense when at best they are roughly middle of the pack if they would have been states in the US.

2 comments

>As I shared in the comment above, HDIs of all 50 states in the US are comparable to Western Europe. The worst state, Mississippi, is comparable to Portugal, and the US average is comparable to the UK, Luxembourg, and Slovenia and well above France.

Which goes to show how official indexes can be worth nothing!

Anybody who has been to both Mississippi and Portugal can attest to that...

I have been to both Mississippi and Portugal.

I've had a great time eating ribs in Tupelo and hiking in Peneda-Geres National Park near Porto.

Lisbon and Porto is a pretty city but Portugal as a whole has historically been an underdeveloped laggard in Europe due to political mismanagement (just like Mississippi) and only developed thanks to massive cash+infrastructure transfers by the EU, just like how Mississippi and other southern states were transformed via FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society.

Not sure what the relevance of those eras is to what we're discussing. Mississippi was also very afluent back in much darker days, but that was close to two centuries ago, and the New Deal is a century ago.

Modern day Mississippi is not even comparable with Portugal, even though the latter is still an "underdeveloped laggard in Europe".

And Mississippi has been that way (developing-worldish) for many decades.

> HDI is the primary metric used to compare quality of life and development between different governments.

It most definitely isn’t. It’s a very flawed metric which has rightfully been heavily criticised and it isn’t obvious it measures anything interesting at all. For all its flaw, a combination of GDP PPP and Gini index is a lot more interesting and trustworthy.

Jesus Christ, this is literally peak Hacker News. You realize you are saying what is the equivalent of "Big O notation is unnecessary for Computer Science".

The default HDI formula devised by the UN is a mix of GNI per Capita ADJUSTED TO THE PRICE LEVEL OF THE COUNTRY; expected years of schooling of children at school-entry age and mean years of schooling of the adult population; and life expectancy.

Literally in any Developmental Econ 101 class HDI is pointed to as the primary metric to compare regions.

Of course there are valid criticisms with weightages in HDI, but no one and literally no Economist or Policymaker worth their salt has straight ignored it.

GDP PPP per Capita and Gini are critically important as well, and are factored into modified HDI indexes as well, for example Inequality HDIs which add the GINI, and the post-tax Gini Ineqaulity HDI because the naive Gini formula didn't take taxation and income transfers into account.

>Literally in any Developmental Econ 101 class HDI is pointed to as the primary metric to compare regions.

Doesn't stop it from being useless.

>literally no Economist or Policymaker worth their salt has straight ignored it.

They should. No Economist of Policymaker has ignored the GDP either, but that's another bona fide BS metric. The job of the majority of economists and policymakers working for governments and related organizations is more as political careerists and representatives of power interests - and their predictions and results have a horrible track record.

Economists actually doing serious research look down on such metrics.

> Jesus Christ, this is literally peak Hacker News. You realize you are saying what is the equivalent of "Big O notation is unnecessary for Computer Science".

Sorry but it absolutely isn’t. Pointedly, the HDI is a composite indicator weirdly mixing together criteria with a formula which doesn’t make sense. It’s a total ass pull from the UNDP and shouldn’t be taken seriously.

> ADJUSTED TO THE PRICE LEVEL OF THE COUNTRY;

No need to all caps. As stated the issue of the HDI is that it’s a non sensical composite aggregating together correlated variables using arbitrary weights, not that it doesn’t adjust for price level.

> Literally in any Developmental Econ 101 class HDI is pointed to as the primary metric to compare regions. Of course there are valid criticisms with weightages in HDI, but no one and literally no Economist or Policymaker worth their salt has straight ignored it.

I have a degree in economics and I have yet to meet someone taking the HDI seriously.

I did appreciate your comment about ”valid criticisms”. It did remind of one of my friend mentioning his “little issue” with alcohol. I will concede that the HDI is a composite indicator for which there are valid criticisms regarding variables selection and weights and by that I mean that it is a garbage indicator.

> GDP PPP per Capita and Gini are critically important as well

Yes, it helps that they actually make sense.

Equivalently, one could also look at proper metrics for the rest of the HDI components if they wanted but most of them are tightly correlated to GDP PPP anyway.