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With cherry-picking, you can prove anything. Norway is the world's fifth largest oil exporter and third largest natural gas exporter, but has a population of 4

by cstross 16y ago

With cherry-picking, you can prove anything. Norway is the world's fifth largest oil exporter and third largest natural gas exporter, but has a population of 4.8 million. With petrochemical exports accounting for 20% of GDP on top of a western model economy, of course per-capita GDP is going to be high. A more interesting comparison would be with the other leading first world countries that don't have gigantic petrochemical industries to skew the figures and don't share the same governmental system. UK would be one option (constitutional monarchy); France would be another (republic, but not based on the US model). (Hint: both the UK and France beat the US into a cocked hat on healthcare; the UK is significantly ahead on unemployment, and France is way ahead on GINI.)

qw 16y ago
ok, let's take Denmark as an example. They are ranked as number 32 in net exports of crude oil, so it's a much smaller part of the GDP. GDP: $56,115 (better) GNI: 24.7 (much better) HDI: 0.955 (the same) Unemployment: 6.3% (better) If we are talking about advantages, let's not forget that there are 310 million citizens (56 times more than Denmark) who all share the same continent, language, currency and government. The home market is huge, which certainly gives companies a significant advantage compared to other countries. This is something that can be seen when companies starts competing internationally. Even a medium sized US company (relative to the home market) has a lot of muscle compared to the average Danish company. My point is that we can't state that the US political system is superior by design. We have to consider other factors such as the large home market and the political influence that comes with a larger economy and military.
- Goladus 16y ago
  First, you're right to assert that the US system of government is not the be-all, end-all of good governmental systems and it certainly has its share of problems. I'm not really arguing that. However, going down the path of ad hoc comparisons with other countries never ends and and certainly never ends well. The logic of "government causes everything good or bad about a nation's economy" is implicitly assumed and severely flawed. Also, where are you getting your numbers? According to the CIA factbook Denmark's GDP is actually in the $36,000 range, which is less than Connecticut and Massachusetts, which are similar in population and culturally more diverse. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html?countryName=Denmark&countryCode=da&regionCode=eu&rank=31#da https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts
  - qw 16y ago
    Sorry about that. I copied the number from Wikipedia, but picked the nominal GDP by mistake. I agree that comparing political systems based on numbers directly is a bad idea. It was just a reaction to the many posts I see where the citizen of one country automatically assume that their system is the best as it was a fact.

by cstross 16y ago

qw 16y ago

ok, let's take Denmark as an example. They are ranked as number 32 in net exports of crude oil, so it's a much smaller part of the GDP. GDP: $56,115 (better) GNI: 24.7 (much better) HDI: 0.955 (the same) Unemployment: 6.3% (better) If we are talking about advantages, let's not forget that there are 310 million citizens (56 times more than Denmark) who all share the same continent, language, currency and government. The home market is huge, which certainly gives companies a significant advantage compared to other countries. This is something that can be seen when companies starts competing internationally. Even a medium sized US company (relative to the home market) has a lot of muscle compared to the average Danish company. My point is that we can't state that the US political system is superior by design. We have to consider other factors such as the large home market and the political influence that comes with a larger economy and military.

Goladus 16y ago
First, you're right to assert that the US system of government is not the be-all, end-all of good governmental systems and it certainly has its share of problems. I'm not really arguing that. However, going down the path of ad hoc comparisons with other countries never ends and and certainly never ends well. The logic of "government causes everything good or bad about a nation's economy" is implicitly assumed and severely flawed. Also, where are you getting your numbers? According to the CIA factbook Denmark's GDP is actually in the $36,000 range, which is less than Connecticut and Massachusetts, which are similar in population and culturally more diverse. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html?countryName=Denmark&countryCode=da&regionCode=eu&rank=31#da https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts
- qw 16y ago
  Sorry about that. I copied the number from Wikipedia, but picked the nominal GDP by mistake. I agree that comparing political systems based on numbers directly is a bad idea. It was just a reaction to the many posts I see where the citizen of one country automatically assume that their system is the best as it was a fact.