I Just Love The Greenback

[unomi]

but that phenomenon will last only a limited time (i have no freaking idea how long, so don't ask me). when the fat lady finally sings everybody will realise that the presently crowned emperor is "nekkid" and does not possess any clothes. till then we ride the wave, howl with the wolves and try to make a buck (or two). as simple as that

Hmmm, maybe because the US net worth(PPP) "PER CAPITA"trounces the EU. Yes, we do have much debt, but we also produce vast amounts of goods and services. Net worth is more important than debt. Basically we are substantially more wealthy than the EU per capita.

One of many sources to confirm the above fact.

http://www.finlandforthought.net/2006/12/0...old-eu-by-alot/

Not really sure how you got that idea, certainly the CIA factbook claims that the US is ranked 12th by GDP (PPP) and Nominal per capita.

There are only a few counties in the EU that are even remotely comparable to the US in financial strength. Tiny Luxembourg is the only one I think that has a higher GDP per capita than the US.

Apart from Qatar, all the 11 countries surpassing the US by GDP per capita lie within Europe. 

The US GDP growth also has trounced the EU countries over the last 10 years, 20 years, 30 years...

No doubt as studiously researched as your other claims. 

People need to start looking at the real numbers and even take it a step further and look at them relative to other factors such as GDP. Does Microsoft have more debt than the local book store? Numbers and relativity in most cases tell the real story and too many ignore this fact.

You do realize that GDP incorporates government spending as well? That means that the bill for the various wars the US is waging these days is factored into the GDP as 'profit' since you seem to think it means relative wealth. 

Simon Kuznets the inventor of the GDP, in his very first report to the US Congress in 1934 said[2]:

...the welfare of a nation [can] scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income...

In 1962, Kuznets stated[3]:

Distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth, between costs and returns, and between the short and long run. Goals for more growth should specify more growth of what and for what.

further reading: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product

http://www.econstats.com/weo/V002.htm

http://www.econstats.com/gdp/gdp__q1.htm

http://bea.gov/national/index.htm#gdp

 

[siamamerican]

Not really sure how you got that idea, certainly the CIA factbook claims that the US is ranked 12th by GDP (PPP) and Nominal per capita.

Apart from Qatar, all the 11 countries surpassing the US by GDP per capita lie within Europe.

 

The US GDP growth also has trounced the EU countries over the last 10 years, 20 years, 30 years...

No doubt as studiously researched as your other claims. 

 

This post ignores reality. You use the the CIA factbook itself to make your point. What are you looking at. Only two countries are ahead of the US in the EU (My post explicitly made comparisons to the EU, not all countries). Ireland has roughly the same per capita GDP.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/th...r/2004rank.html

Not only are we third, look where the EU economic powers are located on the list. 11 countries(lol) Get your facts right!!!

The gap between EU and the US is huge. A Swedish based report showed that if the EU was a state it would rank as one of the poorest states in the US. Germany, Italy, Great Britain have lower per capita GDPs than all but 4 US states. Source below:

http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2007/11/update-eu-vs-usa.html

Net worth in the US far surpasses EU net worth. It isn't even close. Source below:

http://www.finlandforthought.net/2006/12/0...old-eu-by-alot/

If you are going to criticize my claims take a reality pill before doing so! The funniest caim made was that 10 EU countries surpass the US in per capita GDP. What cave have you been living in or are you just a nut case.

[Sakeopete]

I don't know anything about investments (good thing I have no stocks) or currencies etc. The only things that come to my mind are: Europe doesn't seem to produce much (I work in the UK BTW). Asia's trade is very dependent on the USA or markets that are also dependent on trade with the USA and don't have much of a domestic market. Russia and the middle east only have oil (no one in their right mind would make many investments in Russia tooo risky). Most people in the world know little of about whats happening deep in the worlds financial centers ( me included) but do believe the USA is still powerful on all fronts, If not the US dollar what currency is set to take over and as entrenched globally? people don't like to change. Honestly the USA may not be perfect and may be to blame for the financial crisis but nobody forced other countries/investors to buy their financial products. They have always led the world in innovations and this time their innovated financial packages have kicked them and the world in the backside but they have been down in the past and have gotten up again to lead the world to recovery, hope they do it again. Unlike Europeans they don't sit around and moan all day about their problems they take action (sometimes good, other times not). Anyways to summarize my ramblings I wouldn't count the USA down and out just yet.

Edited October 27, 2008 by Sakeopete

[Naam]

If you are going to criticize my claims take a reality pill before doing so! The funniest caim made was that 10 EU countries surpass the US in per capita GDP. What cave have you been living in or are you just a nut case.

Siam-A, your claim is based on GDP per capita which is an irrelevant calculated average without any true meaning (except for eggheads teaching eggheads-to-be in universities). the same goes for GDP per se which contains irrelevant data. a good example for my claim is that GDP data contains salaries of soldiers, the production of weapons and the working "value" a hamburger flipper. i could go on adding another few hundred points but i prefer to rest my case

[PeaceBlondie]

Siam-A, your claim is based on GDP per capita which is an irrelevant calculated average without any true meaning (except for eggheads teaching eggheads-to-be in universities). the same goes for GDP per se which contains irrelevant data. a good example for my claim is that GDP data contains salaries of soldiers, the production of weapons and the working "value" a hamburger flipper. i could go on adding another few hundred points but i prefer to rest my case

Naam, I do not argue against you. But if GDP includes all those things (and as unproductive as those jobs are, they do contribute to the national economy), then what does measure a nation's productivity? Or are these just silly measures that are far, far overemphasized? Thailand is struggling to have GDP growth when it needs something else, lots else.

[unomi]

This post ignores reality. You use the the CIA factbook itself to make your point. What are you looking at. Only two countries are ahead of the US in the EU (My post explicitly made comparisons to the EU, not all countries). Ireland has roughly the same per capita GDP.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/th...r/2004rank.html

Not only are we third, look where the EU economic powers are located on the list. 11 countries(lol) Get your facts right!!!

If you are going to criticize my claims take a reality pill before doing so! The funniest caim made was that 10 EU countries surpass the US in per capita GDP. What cave have you been living in or are you just a nut case.

Yes, that is a bit odd: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count...nal)_per_capita

[BEENTHEREDONETHAT]

Using unomi list (CIA) and comparing it with the EU countries, it appears the following countries have a larger GDP than the US.

Luxemborg

Denmark

Sweden

Finland

Netherlands

U.K.

The following post seems to be in error.

Quote "This post ignores reality. You use the the CIA factbook itself to make your point. What are you looking at. Only two countries are ahead of the US in the EU (My post explicitly made comparisons to the EU, not all countries). Ireland has roughly the same per capita GDP"

[siamamerican]

Using unomi list (CIA) and comparing it with the EU countries, it appears the following countries have a larger GDP than the US.

Luxemborg

Denmark

Sweden

Finland

Netherlands

U.K.

The following post seems to be in error.

Quote "This post ignores reality. You use the the CIA factbook itself to make your point. What are you looking at. Only two countries are ahead of the US in the EU (My post explicitly made comparisons to the EU, not all countries). Ireland has roughly the same per capita GDP"

[siamamerican]

Using unomi list (CIA) and comparing it with the EU countries, it appears the following countries have a larger GDP than the US.

Luxemborg

Denmark

Sweden

Finland

Netherlands

U.K.

The following post seems to be in error.

Quote "This post ignores reality. You use the the CIA factbook itself to make your point. What are you looking at. Only two countries are ahead of the US in the EU (My post explicitly made comparisons to the EU, not all countries). Ireland has roughly the same per capita GDP"

Are you kidding me. Provide the link to the CIA factbook that provides this. How about this- go to my post and click on the CIA factbook link I provided. Thanks for making my point - most people ignore reality.

Most the countries you listed don't even compare to the US per capita GDP.

Provide the link to support your data. If you google EU vs US per capita GDP, you might get to the truth, but I fear that is not your objective.

[siamamerican]

This post ignores reality. You use the the CIA factbook itself to make your point. What are you looking at. Only two countries are ahead of the US in the EU (My post explicitly made comparisons to the EU, not all countries). Ireland has roughly the same per capita GDP.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/th...r/2004rank.html

Not only are we third, look where the EU economic powers are located on the list. 11 countries(lol) Get your facts right!!!

If you are going to criticize my claims take a reality pill before doing so! The funniest caim made was that 10 EU countries surpass the US in per capita GDP. What cave have you been living in or are you just a nut case.

Yes, that is a bit odd: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count...nal)_per_capita

The link (wiki) doesn't use PPP as you wrongly claim in your prior post. There is a link to PPP data listed though and go figure it doesn't verify your claim. To top it off the wiki data doesn't match what is listed at the CIA Fact book site that they claim to gotten the data from.

Just do some real Internet research and hopefully you might get to the truth. Show me where the CIA fact book lists the US per capita GDP worse than 10 EU countries. You can't!!!! Stop posting complete crap and try to make a factual post.

[siamamerican]

If you are going to criticize my claims take a reality pill before doing so! The funniest caim made was that 10 EU countries surpass the US in per capita GDP. What cave have you been living in or are you just a nut case.

Siam-A, your claim is based on GDP per capita which is an irrelevant calculated average without any true meaning (except for eggheads teaching eggheads-to-be in universities). the same goes for GDP per se which contains irrelevant data. a good example for my claim is that GDP data contains salaries of soldiers, the production of weapons and the working "value" a hamburger flipper. i could go on adding another few hundred points but i prefer to rest my case

No argument here. GDP is just one data point and it is far from perfect. For that matter the US is far from perfect. We are far from bankrupt though like many posters have stated. We still have an enormous net worth compared to all other countries in the world.

We have a negative savings rate and I've seen data supporting that the EU has had higher growth in labor productivity the last 10 years. I guess the point I am trying to make is that we are all in this together and the US has strengths and weaknesses. People need to look at their own countries economic data and come to their own conclusions, in lieu of following the herd.

[PeaceBlondie]

How come nobody is bashing the GDP of Somalia or the PPP of Honduras? Why all this focus on the USA if it is so insignificant?

[unomi]

Believe everything I say at face value and accept my links as gospel for I am infallible

Right

Lets have a look at what we want to see. You want to use GDP as a measure of economic clout, not particularily sophisticated or even correct but alright.

Lets at least agree on which measure of GDP we want to use, I would say that PPP is useless in that instance as pricing tends to follow what the market will bear. So lets use current currency exchange rate, this ofcourse leaves itself open to exchange rate fluctuations at the time of print but so be it, unless you volunteer to do some of your own legwork, rather than link to dubious urls regarding finland, 2006 and not much in the way of sources.

I must admit that I've never done much in the way of these calculations, so please, let me know where I go wrong.

Lets have a look at the unassuming yet phallic european country of Denmark.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/th...ok/geos/da.html

2 stats become important here : population and GDP

pop : 5,484,723 (July 2008 est.)

(official exchange rate): $311.9 billion (2007 est.)

so thats roughly 5.5million and 312billion

As these are most likely american billions we are dealing with that translates into

312,000/5.5 or 56,727 $

now lets have a look a the US!

GDP (OER) : $13.84 trillion

pop: 303,824,640

again assuming american trillions:

13840 *10^9 / 0.303 * 10^9

45676 $

Now seriously?

[aslimversgwm]

Strong $ is good for the world, and I think we have just seen the beginning of $ run like we haven't seen before. (Let the bulls have their day, week, month, and years)

by the way Brit my late mother has taught me not to use dirty and abusive words when i am forced to listen to bullshit. so i refrain to comment on your statement "a strong dollar is good for the world"

How about if we reword that statement to be "a US$ that doesn't collapse is good for the world", does it ring more true then?

YES, it does!

[Mattchu9999]

it is quite interesting how people demonstrate their ignorance and stupidity in this thread

As always, your addition to these threads is noting short of......well....nothing.

I say if you can benefit from the rising dollar go for it, and good for you.

Everything is cyclical...life, economies, nature.... So the chance comes and you take. The wind changes and you adjust the sails.

Trying to predict the markets without inside knowledge is an exercise in futility. A monkey picking stocks by throwing darts at the newspapers stock section can out pick the best analyst.

[barcelonatio]

The post that said "America is Great, that is why I live in Thailand" is similiar to me... America is great, that is why I live in Spain! America is a very cool country in many ways... but has lost it's sparkle partly because Bush is a dumbass and has run the country into the ground. But I think America still has potential and Obama has the skill and the charm to turn the country around and get the world respect back. Financially the US blows and will get way worse before it gets better. The new America (after even more financial chaos) will be less materialistic, less pro big business, less war hungry, less greedy, and a better nation as a result.

Don´t count the US out yet!

[lannarebirth]

it is quite interesting how people demonstrate their ignorance and stupidity in this thread

As always, your addition to these threads is noting short of......well....nothing.

I say if you can benefit from the rising dollar go for it, and good for you.

Everything is cyclical...life, economies, nature.... So the chance comes and you take. The wind changes and you adjust the sails.

Trying to predict the markets without inside knowledge is an exercise in futility. A monkey picking stocks by throwing darts at the newspapers stock section can out pick the best analyst.

No need for disparagements. I think you and Herr Naam (and me) probably see things more similarly, than not. It's important to see things (to the extent that we can), as they are. Not how they might be or how we wish they were.

[lannarebirth]

The post that said "America is Great, that is why I live in Thailand" is similiar to me... America is great, that is why I live in Spain! America is a very cool country in many ways... but has lost it's sparkle partly because Bush is a dumbass and has run the country into the ground. But I think America still has potential and Obama has the skill and the charm to turn the country around and get the world respect back. Financially the US blows and will get way worse before it gets better. The new America (after even more financial chaos) will be less materialistic, less pro big business, less war hungry, less greedy, and a better nation as a result.

Don´t count the US out yet!

Hard to say. Yours is a nice possibility, but the truth is Americans are PRO corporatism because that's where they've placed most of their bets. This possible rebirth you speak of, could only come after markets have traded much much lower. That's possible.

[vagabond48]

it is quite interesting how people demonstrate their ignorance and stupidity in this thread

A monkey picking stocks by throwing darts at the newspapers stock section can out pick the best analyst.

Come here Cheeta, I have some darts for you to play with?

PS:

Yes I know chimps are not monkeys.

[unomi]

This post ignores reality. You use the the CIA factbook itself to make your point. What are you looking at. Only two countries are ahead of the US in the EU (My post explicitly made comparisons to the EU, not all countries). Ireland has roughly the same per capita GDP.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/th...r/2004rank.html

Not only are we third, look where the EU economic powers are located on the list. 11 countries(lol) Get your facts right!!!

If you are going to criticize my claims take a reality pill before doing so! The funniest caim made was that 10 EU countries surpass the US in per capita GDP. What cave have you been living in or are you just a nut case.

Yes, that is a bit odd: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count...nal)_per_capita

The link (wiki) doesn't use PPP as you wrongly claim in your prior post. There is a link to PPP data listed though and go figure it doesn't verify your claim. To top it off the wiki data doesn't match what is listed at the CIA Fact book site that they claim to gotten the data from.

Just do some real Internet research and hopefully you might get to the truth. Show me where the CIA fact book lists the US per capita GDP worse than 10 EU countries. You can't!!!! Stop posting complete crap and try to make a factual post.

I had actually not noticed this post the first time around.

You are absolutely correct, the wiki does NOT use PPP (more on that later), that might be why this text is in the link : GDP_(nominal)

I realize that I had made some erroneous statements regarding relative GDPs using PPP, but on reading more about GDP I've come to the conclusion that PPP is pretty useless for what you want to show.

I think you will agree that nominal / Official Exchange Rate GDP is better suited to do comparisons of 'economic clout'.

PPP is takes into account the relative cost of goods, hence countries wherein goods are cheaper have relatively higher GDP per capita, I doubt that is usefull for you in this case.

You are also correct in stating that the wiki data is not a straight copy from the CIA factbook, there is an important reason for that; The CIA factbook only contains GDP per capita in PPP form. If you look at the source for the CIA column you will see how they have gotten those strange numbers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count...ita#cite_note-2

I double dare you to go thru the list of european countries and do the simple arithmetic of dividing nominal or Official exchange Rate GDP by population and comparing it to the US.

Should you be too lazy or if the idea of division makes you dizzy, fear not!

http://www.economist.com/countries/USA/pro...ofile-FactSheet

The ever poignant and delightful Economist has done some of the dirty work for you. Granted you still have to click around a bit to get to the countries but I guess if it were easy it wouldn't be fun :|

US:GDP per head (US$; market exchange rate) 45,851

UK:GDP per head (US$; market exchange rate) 45,338

DK: GDP per head (US$; market exchange rate) 57,206

You might be interested in your friend, Finland home of Nokia that lives the Finnish dream of developing from a company that produced toilet paper to designer handsets.

FI: GDP per head (US$; market exchange rate) 46,704

I am sure you get the idea, please feel free to check for yourself, you might also want to send angry emails to the Economist regarding their patently wrongheaded data and Anti-American bias etc. etc.

I would love to know which basket of goods they used to calculate their PPP weights. But that is for another day.

What I will share with you are my thoughts on the discrepancy between PPP and Nominal GDP.

(if you are tired of reading you may substitute reading this part with imagining me whispering into your ear these words of wisdom : 'you suck')

In the cases where there is high discrepancy between PPP and Nominal GDP (and Nominal is higher) It indicates higher costs of goods, there are I think 2 major reasons for this, the most important part is probably that in the case of especially the nordic countries the income gap is relatively small, the outliers are few and most are snugly curled up in the middle of the bell.

This means that goods are able to be priced higher and still reach the majority of the market. You compare this to the US where there pricing threshold for basic necessities such as food is quite lower due to the sea of underpaid consumers that constitute if not a viable market then atleast an unfortunate necessity.

from the CIA factbook: Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households.

Another reason is ofcourse the nastiest 3-letter word in existence: Tax.

Denmark for example has 25% value added tax on most goods and then luxury tax on top of that on a host of things notably cars have an 180% import tax.

However that does seem to pay for things like free university and universal health care.

To what degree that is actually factored into GDP is not known to me.

This might also be of interest to you:

Statisticians have also criticized the validity of international statistical comparisons using national accounts data, on the ground that estimates are not compiled in a uniform way. For example, Jochen Hartwig provides evidence to show that "the divergence in growth rates [of real GDP] between the U.S. and the EU since 1997 can be explained almost entirely in terms of changes to deflation methods that have been introduced in the U.S. after 1997, but not - or only to a very limited extent - in Europe".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNSNA

As to the mention of 'does microsoft owe more money than the local bookstore'

uhm well you mean relative to its income surely?

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/th...r/2186rank.html

The US is the 27th most indebted country relative to GDP at 60.8% of annual GDP with no surplus in sight.

Much love and all the best,

unomi

[Naam]

the nastiest 3-letter word in existence: Tax

posting obsceneties repeatedly is against forum rules and will invoke a ban!

[Naam]

Siam-A, your claim is based on GDP per capita which is an irrelevant calculated average without any true meaning (except for eggheads teaching eggheads-to-be in universities). the same goes for GDP per se which contains irrelevant data. a good example for my claim is that GDP data contains salaries of soldiers, the production of weapons and the working "value" a hamburger flipper. i could go on adding another few hundred points but i prefer to rest my case

Naam, I do not argue against you. But if GDP includes all those things (and as unproductive as those jobs are, they do contribute to the national economy), then what does measure a nation's productivity? Or are these just silly measures that are far, far overemphasized? Thailand is struggling to have GDP growth when it needs something else, lots else.

PB, look at the two pairs of GDP per capita and do some logical thinking:

Germany $34,100

Luxembourg $79,400

Thailand $8,000

Iceland $40,400 = bankrupt country!

conclusion: GDP per capita = bullshit²

for posting my views on GDP i have to search for a paper which i wrote years ago.

[siamamerican]

Believe everything I say at face value and accept my links as gospel for I am infallible

Right

Lets have a look at what we want to see. You want to use GDP as a measure of economic clout, not particularily sophisticated or even correct but alright.

Lets at least agree on which measure of GDP we want to use, I would say that PPP is useless in that instance as pricing tends to follow what the market will bear. So lets use current currency exchange rate, this ofcourse leaves itself open to exchange rate fluctuations at the time of print but so be it, unless you volunteer to do some of your own legwork, rather than link to dubious urls regarding finland, 2006 and not much in the way of sources.

I must admit that I've never done much in the way of these calculations, so please, let me know where I go wrong.

Lets have a look at the unassuming yet phallic european country of Denmark.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/th...ok/geos/da.html

2 stats become important here : population and GDP

pop : 5,484,723 (July 2008 est.)

(official exchange rate): $311.9 billion (2007 est.)

so thats roughly 5.5million and 312billion

As these are most likely american billions we are dealing with that translates into

312,000/5.5 or 56,727 $

now lets have a look a the US!

GDP (OER) : $13.84 trillion

pop: 303,824,640

again assuming american trillions:

13840 *10^9 / 0.303 * 10^9

45676 $

Now seriously?

You have grasped basic math – congrats!!! I would have never believed you could divide. Now, having shown us all your arithmetic prowess, how about surprising us all. First, what is the point of your above post??? I really doubt it is above my intellect, considering the messenger..

What figure(s) would a person of your superior intellect use to determine a countries economic strength. How about the number of dogs and cats per capita. You're grasping and reality seems to be out of reach.

[siamamerican]

The post that said "America is Great, that is why I live in Thailand" is similiar to me... America is great, that is why I live in Spain! America is a very cool country in many ways... but has lost it's sparkle partly because Bush is a dumbass and has run the country into the ground. But I think America still has potential and Obama has the skill and the charm to turn the country around and get the world respect back. Financially the US blows and will get way worse before it gets better. The new America (after even more financial chaos) will be less materialistic, less pro big business, less war hungry, less greedy, and a better nation as a result.

Don´t count the US out yet!

Hard to say. Yours is a nice possibility, but the truth is Americans are PRO corporatism because that's where they've placed most of their bets. This possible rebirth you speak of, could only come after markets have traded much much lower. That's possible.

Sounds like barcelatio is describing a new America that looks much like Spain. Maybe it would be a better place - no idea. I just can't see Americans taking siestas and being comfortable making much less.

IMO, Obama will get ellected and he won't be as ratical as the repubs are making him out to be. America's rich will pay even more taxes and the middle class will pay even less ( now less than 15% of taxes). The world might stop hating us, but I doubt it. It stinks to be on top -LOL

[siamamerican]

This post ignores reality. You use the the CIA factbook itself to make your point. What are you looking at. Only two countries are ahead of the US in the EU (My post explicitly made comparisons to the EU, not all countries). Ireland has roughly the same per capita GDP.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/th...r/2004rank.html

Not only are we third, look where the EU economic powers are located on the list. 11 countries(lol) Get your facts right!!!

If you are going to criticize my claims take a reality pill before doing so! The funniest caim made was that 10 EU countries surpass the US in per capita GDP. What cave have you been living in or are you just a nut case.

Yes, that is a bit odd: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count...nal)_per_capita

The link (wiki) doesn't use PPP as you wrongly claim in your prior post. There is a link to PPP data listed though and go figure it doesn't verify your claim. To top it off the wiki data doesn't match what is listed at the CIA Fact book site that they claim to gotten the data from.

Just do some real Internet research and hopefully you might get to the truth. Show me where the CIA fact book lists the US per capita GDP worse than 10 EU countries. You can't!!!! Stop posting complete crap and try to make a factual post.

I had actually not noticed this post the first time around.

You are absolutely correct, the wiki does NOT use PPP (more on that later), that might be why this text is in the link : GDP_(nominal)

I realize that I had made some erroneous statements regarding relative GDPs using PPP, but on reading more about GDP I've come to the conclusion that PPP is pretty useless for what you want to show.

I think you will agree that nominal / Official Exchange Rate GDP is better suited to do comparisons of 'economic clout'.

PPP is takes into account the relative cost of goods, hence countries wherein goods are cheaper have relatively higher GDP per capita, I doubt that is usefull for you in this case.

You are also correct in stating that the wiki data is not a straight copy from the CIA factbook, there is an important reason for that; The CIA factbook only contains GDP per capita in PPP form. If you look at the source for the CIA column you will see how they have gotten those strange numbers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count...ita#cite_note-2

I double dare you to go thru the list of european countries and do the simple arithmetic of dividing nominal or Official exchange Rate GDP by population and comparing it to the US.

Should you be too lazy or if the idea of division makes you dizzy, fear not!

http://www.economist.com/countries/USA/pro...ofile-FactSheet

The ever poignant and delightful Economist has done some of the dirty work for you. Granted you still have to click around a bit to get to the countries but I guess if it were easy it wouldn't be fun :|

US:GDP per head (US$; market exchange rate) 45,851

UK:GDP per head (US$; market exchange rate) 45,338

DK: GDP per head (US$; market exchange rate) 57,206

You might be interested in your friend, Finland home of Nokia that lives the Finnish dream of developing from a company that produced toilet paper to designer handsets.

FI: GDP per head (US$; market exchange rate) 46,704

I am sure you get the idea, please feel free to check for yourself, you might also want to send angry emails to the Economist regarding their patently wrongheaded data and Anti-American bias etc. etc.

I would love to know which basket of goods they used to calculate their PPP weights. But that is for another day.

What I will share with you are my thoughts on the discrepancy between PPP and Nominal GDP.

(if you are tired of reading you may substitute reading this part with imagining me whispering into your ear these words of wisdom : 'you suck')

In the cases where there is high discrepancy between PPP and Nominal GDP (and Nominal is higher) It indicates higher costs of goods, there are I think 2 major reasons for this, the most important part is probably that in the case of especially the nordic countries the income gap is relatively small, the outliers are few and most are snugly curled up in the middle of the bell.

This means that goods are able to be priced higher and still reach the majority of the market. You compare this to the US where there pricing threshold for basic necessities such as food is quite lower due to the sea of underpaid consumers that constitute if not a viable market then atleast an unfortunate necessity.

from the CIA factbook: Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households.

Another reason is ofcourse the nastiest 3-letter word in existence: Tax.

Denmark for example has 25% value added tax on most goods and then luxury tax on top of that on a host of things notably cars have an 180% import tax.

However that does seem to pay for things like free university and universal health care.

To what degree that is actually factored into GDP is not known to me.

This might also be of interest to you:

Statisticians have also criticized the validity of international statistical comparisons using national accounts data, on the ground that estimates are not compiled in a uniform way. For example, Jochen Hartwig provides evidence to show that "the divergence in growth rates [of real GDP] between the U.S. and the EU since 1997 can be explained almost entirely in terms of changes to deflation methods that have been introduced in the U.S. after 1997, but not - or only to a very limited extent - in Europe".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNSNA

As to the mention of 'does microsoft owe more money than the local bookstore'

uhm well you mean relative to its income surely?

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/th...r/2186rank.html

The US is the 27th most indebted country relative to GDP at 60.8% of annual GDP with no surplus in sight.

Much love and all the best,

unomi

Your economic ignorance is amazing. PPP is used because exchange rate GDP is hard to measure. Your Exchange rate GDP #s don't have any significance today.

The Euro has lost over 25% of its value relative the dollar the last six months. Take all your silly exchange rate GDP #s and take 25%+ off of EU countries and you get a new picture.

I'm sure after doing the above you then will want to use PPP. Just because you dream of a weak US, doesn't make it a fact. Really, play your nonsensical financial games with other idiots.

Edited October 28, 2008 by siamamerican

[siamamerican]

Siam-A, your claim is based on GDP per capita which is an irrelevant calculated average without any true meaning (except for eggheads teaching eggheads-to-be in universities). the same goes for GDP per se which contains irrelevant data. a good example for my claim is that GDP data contains salaries of soldiers, the production of weapons and the working "value" a hamburger flipper. i could go on adding another few hundred points but i prefer to rest my case

Naam, I do not argue against you. But if GDP includes all those things (and as unproductive as those jobs are, they do contribute to the national economy), then what does measure a nation's productivity? Or are these just silly measures that are far, far overemphasized? Thailand is struggling to have GDP growth when it needs something else, lots else.

PB, look at the two pairs of GDP per capita and do some logical thinking:

Germany $34,100

Luxembourg $79,400

Thailand $8,000

Iceland $40,400 = bankrupt country!

conclusion: GDP per capita = bullshit²

for posting my views on GDP i have to search for a paper which i wrote years ago.

Naam,

I don't think the GDP #s you listed show GDP isn't a good measure. Luxembourg (tiny population) is in great shape financially and Iceland made risky financial decisions that are now reeking havoc.

It's is just one of the means to measure economic strength. IMO, it is the far from perfect, but the single best source to measure a countries financial strength. If possible, I would rather measure happiness being the peacenic that I am.

[Pib]

We Americans should not confuse patriotism with sound fiscal policy, nor think that most Republican congressmen are fiscally conservative.

You got that right!!! The political party of George W. Bush (a.k.a., fiscal conservatives according to their hype) has spent money like a drunker sailor! They have also been asleep at the wheel for the last 8 years in regulating U.S. financial markets which impact most other world markets. Or should I say, intentionally applying very little regulation as their train of thought is little to no regulation is very good thing. I think we have found out that train of thought is a train wreck! As an American, that's my humble opinion.

[unomi]

You have grasped basic math – congrats!!! I would have never believed you could divide. Now, having shown us all your arithmetic prowess, how about surprising us all. First, what is the point of your above post??? I really doubt it is above my intellect, considering the messenger..

Why thank you I am also very proud of myself. But it is easy really, you should try it sometime..

To cater to the nonexistance of your attention span, the point is that it relates to this:

Hmmm, maybe because the US net worth(PPP) “PER CAPITA”trounces the EU. Yes, we do have much debt, but we also produce vast amounts of goods and services. Net worth is more important than debt. Basically we are substantially more wealthy than the EU per capita.

One of many sources to confirm the above fact.

http://www.finlandforthought.net/2006/12/0...old-eu-by-alot/

There are only a few counties in the EU that are even remotely comparable to the US in financial strength. Tiny Luxembourg is the only one I think that has a higher GDP per capita than the US. The US GDP growth also has trounced the EU countries over the last 10 years, 20 years, 30 years...

People need to start looking at the real numbers and even take it a step further and look at them relative to other factors such as GDP. Does Microsoft have more debt than the local book store? Numbers and relativity in most cases tell the real story and too many ignore this fact.

I was merely trying to give you the 'real' numbers. Better yet, give you some tools where you might be able to work them out yourself rather than rely on sites like www.finlandforthought.net (i wonder how you found that site, and wonder more how you could think to use it to back up anything at all)

What figure(s) would a person of your superior intellect use to determine a countries economic strength. How about the number of dogs and cats per capita.

That is a truly interesting question and so is the idea that you present, one of your better.

These guys should have thought of that:http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/T...:408050,00.html

According to them the US still plays second fiddle to Denmark.

Honestly I have yet to read the whole thing but the 2nd Appendix has an overview of wealth as measured by them.

The whole question is a bit silly really, I mean its all about what you do with what you've got right? I answered simply because you were such a mark and I let my sense of play get the better of me. Who knows, perhaps debt really is the new wealth. Perhaps having 12.5% of your population under the poverty line is a sign of economic prowess.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_economy

[unomi]

Your economic ignorance is amazing. PPP is used because exchange rate GDP is hard to measure. Your Exchange rate GDP #s don't have any significance today.

The Euro has lost over 25% of its value relative the dollar the last six months. Take all your silly exchange rate GDP #s and take 25%+ off of EU countries and you get a new picture.

I'm sure after doing the above you then will want to use PPP. Just because you dream of a weak US, doesn't make it a fact. Really, play your nonsensical financial games with other idiots.

So somehow it is harder to do currency conversion than it is to decide on a an average of prices of items in a basket that may or may not be directly transferable between economies?

PPP is used to purport measure 'standard of living' whereby they mean (apparently) the power of an individual consumer to make purchases in the national market.

It cannot by any means be used to compare the Wealth of Nations, apart from perhaps by the artifacts I outlined in an earlier post.

Yes, the world is not static, that is true for PPP as well as nominal GDP, yet somehow you were happy to use an incomplete table showing GDP measured some time before 2006 as incontrovertible proof of how powerful the US economy *is*.

It may not make sense to you. Such is life, I hope that you enjoy the ride regardless, and please be positive, don't call yourself an idiot :|

Edited October 28, 2008 by unomi

[jfchandler]

Politics and nationalistic diatribes aside, all I know is this...

When I walked past the local exchange booth today, I saw the baht to U.S. dollar rate displayed at 34.6 to $1 -- which is, as best as I can recall, the best $ exchange rate of the past year at least????