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.

There are differences, but this is oversimplified, and market is “mostly” working. You need more money in California, for transportation, for health care. The standard is bigger houses (bigger everything) in Cali. Life might be richer, in some ways more pleasant, in London (it’s not weather though), including shorter flights to many interesting places.

From my experience the ratio of savings was similar, but the ppp of course favored US for absolute numbers.

House prices are out of wack anywhere desirable because the local income is irrelevant when non-locals are allowed to scoop up the local supply.

Nobody will admit that the housing is overpriced, so they would have to be forced to do so.

This is terrible for normal people, and slightly bad for the investors, but only a crisis or organized government action can reset the damage done by decades of investment in already existing buildings.

The former is much more likely to happen.

London doesn't have the income level of Mississippi, although that might be true for the UK average. I'd say that the UK may be "seriously broken", but not more so than other post-industrial countries, including the US (or France, or Japan). It's just broken in different ways. E.g. life expectancy in the UK is significantly higher than in America even though they were the same in the '80s. Education levels (and measures such as literacy profficiency and skills etc.) are also significantly better in the UK than in the US. Somewhat tongue in cheek, Americans are richer but they don't seem to be putting their money to good use, as Brits are better educated and live longer.

Yes but London isn't in America so there's that.

Have you lived in the UK at all, or at least spent considerable time there?

I've lived in the UK and America, and America seems far more broken to me.

Income and wealth inequality! I don’t see a way out for the UK

> while in the US you see automated car washes, in the uk most car washes are Albanians n other immigrants etc

Er what? I moved away from the UK in 2007 but even then the only place I or my parents washed a car was the ubiquitous petrol station automated car wash.