GDP/PPP

[mindstalk]

A quick sloppy post because it's late. I've been involved in libertarian/liberal/soc dem debates again recently, which prompts the matter of comparative economics, and how well various countries do. If you look at the CIA World Factbook, there's a big gap in GDP/capita (Purchasing Power Parity adjusted): US at $44,000, Norway even higher, but almost everyone else I'd be comparing us to in the $30-35,000 range. Big gap! Why?

data links:
GDP/capita
PPP

Possibilities:
US workers are that much more productive as they work.
US workers work that many more hours.
American empire: corporate exploitation of other countries, and Hollywood's cultural imperialism, brings in a lot of extra GDP money, possibly manifesting as extra millionaires and billionaires.
Bias: PPP calculations heavily weight something the US is particularly good at, like cheap oil or real estate.
Egalitarian backlash: higher base wages in other countries means that anything labor dependent is more expensive there. The middle American has access to cheap Americans and immigrants that the middle Swede doesn't. Upside, no cheap Swedes, downside more expensive products. Upside for Americans: servants. Downside: someone has to be the servant.

There's probably data to be found on all of this, but it's late. I think that European vacation time isn't *that* much greater or hours worked that much less, but I could be wrong.

One thing I could test easily: CIA gives raw GDP numbers and population, though not raw GDP/capita, but I can divide. Result: Sweden and Denmark look a lot more comparable to the US, while Norway soars to $57,000. France doesn't change that much. Canada gets worse.

The point of that number is how much power the consumer has on the world market. Locally, Swedes are at a disadvantage, perhaps because other Swedes are more expensive, or because Sweden is so far north. When it comes to imports, they're a lot more equal to us -- which speaks to socdem's competitiveness vs. American capitalism.

Comments or data tips from other readers (james pompe dsgood) welcome!

Comments

[pompe.livejournal.com]

...indeed, googling a bit I see that there might be problems with PPP-GDP comparisons for welfare states. Basically the basket-of-goods do not reflect the more intangible things a welfare state might focus on.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Looking at Nationmaster PPP, it confirms my CIA impression -- a big bloc of non-US countries gets squished together. In fact they're even closer together than in raw GDP. Big drop from Norway to Switzerland but then a very flat plateau until maybe NZ.

OTOH, good -- First World countries are First World countries. But then why's the US ahead like that -- along with Ireland? Are the Irish 4/3 as wealthy as the British?

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Going by Wikipedia, a lot of the income is multinational, and probably funneled out of the country. Ireland doesn't tax copyrighted stuff -- meant for artists, exploited by software.

Health care system seems semi-public in structure (though WHO says nearly 80% of funding is public.) I added data to my health page http://mindstalk.net/socialhealth/
suggesting Ireland isn't doing too well there -- it underperforms the UK, and even the US in healthy years from age 60.

[mazarinade.livejournal.com]

There's something to what you say. Some years ago, when I was in the top bracket for income tax purposes in the UK, I did a comparison between my tax position here and my tax position in the US. I'd have been paying slightly less tax in the US, but on top of that I'd have been paying for healthcare. I got prices for NHS equivalent health insurance in the US, and found that I was effectively being paid several hundred pounds a year not to emigrate to the US.