The Numbers Speak 1

GDP

I know it is slightly odd but I have always liked facts and therefore numbers that are both correct and correctly interpreted and as a Scot I am more particular about anything to do with my homeland. Now if I had a pound for every time that I have heard, notably emanating from South of the Border that the English economy, indeed the English, is/are subsidising the Scottish equivalent I would be, if not exactly rich, at least slightly better off than I am now.

And as a trained economist, albeit one who has gone a bit feral, I also still have a predilection for indexing according to inflation and unitising. So the question is how do the two combine in this case. The best measure of productivity is GDP, Gross Domestic Product. It is not perfect but its defects are universally applicable. But it is enough on its own. Product will always reflect the producers, notably their number so GDP per person, per head per capita has to be the ultimate measure of choice. 

So in the case of England/Scotland what does this all look like? In 2022 it was thus, or at least Government sources maintain it was. In England GDP per head was £33, 497, one figure overall. Scotland had two figures, £34,457 for on-shore and £38,622 including off-shore. Now I am aware that numbers wobble and these will be no different but on the fact of it I do not think I am wrong in deducing that according to the measure every Scots is producing just under 3% more than his/her English equivalent by the lower measure and just over 15% by the higher.  

In the latter case the gap is really quite significant. But do not get too exited for there are two major caveats. The first is that public spending per head in Scotland is 18% greater per head in Scotland than in England, so Scotland now seems 3% ahead. The second is that public expenditure in Scotland includes items that are not counted in in England, water being the most obvious example so effectively 3% gap is reduced to, let us say, virtually nothing. In fact, if English people still want to get angry it might better be directed at London. There without the inclusion/non-inclusion adjustments expenditure was in the same period £14,486 per person or slightly higher than Scotland even, 18.5% higher than the English average and almost 30% higher than the least funded, English region, the poor old East Midlands. So English people outwith London get angry with Westminster and not us, please.

And in any case we are all due a little envy. The highest GDP in Europe is enjoyed by the Monegasques and then the Liechtensteiners. Then comes perhaps Norway, perhaps Ireland, yes, little old Ireland, that impoverished country that achieved full independence from, who was it, yes, England, just seventy five years ago, and sixth is Switzerland. The United Kingdom is unlucky 13th, which makes Scotland nominally 11th, above Belgium, below Finland, which quite by chance has a population, as do Norway and Ireland, almost exactly the same as ours and with each of the trio, to quote many, unequivocally "too small a country to be viable". Tell that to the Russians, Swedes and British and know your history.