6 ms·

> In fact, Kazakhstan has become an example of how even a vast and still-developing nation like this Central Asian country can achieve a remarkable public healt

by aleyan 9y ago

> In fact, Kazakhstan has become an example of how even a vast and still-developing nation like this Central Asian country can achieve a remarkable public health success. > Even moderate deficiency, especially in pregnant women and infants, lowers intelligence by 10 to 15 I.Q. points, shaving incalculable potential off a nation’s development. > All of them — Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrghzstan — saw their economies break down with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yes, Kazakhstan is a developing country according to the IMF and those who have seen Borat. Using it as an example of the public health success going on in Central Asia is disingenuous however because Kazakhstan is remarkably wealthy compared to its neighbors[0]. It's GDP PPP per capita at $25,263 is only a little behind the digital darling Estonia's at $29,364. Kazakhstan's neighbors like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have theirs at $3,551 and $2,980 respectively. A lay western reader not knowing is particularities of Central Asia could easily make assumptions and walk away from this article with erroneous ideas. The article, in my reading and without the context, suggests a iodine->health->wealth causality. In Kazakhstan's case oil->wealth->health would be more apt. [0] https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gnp_pcap_pp_cd&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_pcap_pp_cd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:EST:KAZ:KGZ:TJK:UZB:TKM&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
adventured 9y ago
PPP is a laughably bad approach to measuring the economics and well-being of a nation. If you go by PPP, you'll be falsely led to believe Iraq is on par with Iran and just a little behind Turkey. Iraq is a barely functioning, destroyed nation, in the midst of a full rebuild. According to PPP, in 2016 Puerto Rico was just barely behind Japan. New Zealand is below Puerto Rico. According to PPP, Equatorial Guinea is approximately on par with Finland, France, Canada, Japan, UK, Belgium. Oman and Saudi Arabia are above Belgium. Saudi is above the Netherlands and Sweden. Is PPP aware of the actual living conditions in Saudi Arabia at the median? What the median income is in Saudi Arabia? Nope. Like I said, it's laughable. PPP purports to enable a better comparison stick. It fails entirely in all cases. Belgium & Denmark are below Saudi? The only proper response to that is: bullshit. PPP is not only universally wildly inaccurate, it leaves out dozens of critical economic factors that are derived from objective economic capability rather than what the price of a hamburger is from one nation to the next. PPP is a subjective measurement, and a particularly bad one. Who is on the ground doing the perfectly objective comparisons in every nation simultaneously, living there for a decade to really get a sense of things across the whole economic landscape? Nobody. PPP leads to mediocre guess-work, which gets you to New Zealand being below Puerto Rico. What is your military capable of defense wise? Try basing that on subjective economic relativism, see how it works out for you in a war. What kind of medical technology can your nation afford? What's the level of medical technology that your people have access to at the median? That collapses under PPP, because the best and latest medical equipment is expensive. Can you buy a BMW or a $4,000 poorly made car that is guaranteed to fall apart and have far more problems than eg a Lexus? While simultaneously, who would confuse the standard of living impact of driving an extraordinarily mediocre $4,000 vehicle vs a Mercedes or BMW? If your GDP per capita (non-PPP) is eg $35,000, then I can stack you right up against Japan or New Zealand and immediately have a good idea of what your national income potential is far more often than not, and I can tell a lot more about your nation's real capabilities at the median. The medtech & car examples are representative concepts, they apply to pretty much everything else that defines standard of living. PPP is a dumb (its simplistic nature ignores almost everything that's actually important to the standard of living of actual humans) economic concept in the best of cases; in most cases, it's entirely worthless.
- cgmg 9y ago
  You raise some good points. What's a better measure, in your opinion?
  - adventured 9y ago
    The foundational problem of PPP, is contained in that it attempts to do something remarkable and then doesn't actually do it at all. Is it a really great idea to have an accurate comparison of the standard of living and economic capabilities (both have a high correlation to non-PPP GDP), on a relative basis, between nations? Yes! Ten times over, yes. Do the annually published PPP numbers actually do anything like that? No, not even close. PPP is a nice idea, that's all it is unless you want to expend extraordinary sums of money and labor to be on the ground, with extremely objective and well trained experts doing the comparisons in an extremely scientific manner (rather than a clown at the IMF throwing darts based on hamburger prices). What's a better measure? This is where the laziness of common PPP numbers comes into play. The better measure is to get into the mud and get really dirty, in volumes of accurate data, tracking, observation, experience. In reality we don't even have mediocre access to accurate, detailed economic data for the majority of the 195 nations. On that single fact, PPP collapses as it is. How accurate is the economic data that we have for eg Brazil (207 million people), and how intricate can we get while maintaining that accuracy? In this case, Brazil is reasonably representative of the global median. We have low quality vague guesses at best. Below Brazil, it just gets that much worse. It's extremeley difficult and expensive to do a nation to nation comparison which is then adjusted subjectively to measure relative condition. So many things would inherently come into play that can't be easily measured. It would require immense on the ground effort and measurement, on a constant basis, along with ideally at least semi-accurate wider economic figures from the national/regional/local government structures inside a given nation (only a few dozen nations have anything like that).
  - credit_guy 9y ago
    A better measure is the straight GDP/capita. Here's the numbers for the 3 countries mentioned, to which I added the US, China and Estonia (source World Bank [1]): US: $57.6k Estonia: $17.6k China: $8.1k Khazakhstan: $7.5k Kyrgystan: $1.1k Tajikistan: $0.8k GP's argument stands with the straight GDP/capita, except for the comparison to Estonia, which was a side remark anyway. [1] https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_pcap_cd&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_pcap_cd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:EST:KAZ:KGZ:TJK:USA:CHN&ifdim=country&tstart=535352400000&tend=1482123600000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
supercanuck 9y ago
>In neighboring Turkmenistan, President Saparmurat Niyazov — a despot who requires all clocks to bear his likeness and renamed the days of the week after his family — solved the problem by simply declaring plain salt illegal in 1996 and ordering shops to give each citizen 11 pounds of iodized salt a year at state expense It appears that Turkmenistan is growing at the same rate according to your Charts, does not have the GDP of Kazakhstan and yet had a higher Iodized Salt Intake. It started at 75% Iodized Salt Consumption where as Kazakhstan started at 29% circa 2000. This is the Health Success they are referring to. Even though Kazakhstan was wealthier and flush with money, their Ionized Salt intake was lower than their poorer neighbors. https://knoema.com/WBWDIGDF2017Sep/world-development-indicators-wdi?tsId=3789710 https://knoema.com/WBWDIGDF2017Sep/world-development-indicat...
g09980 9y ago
The Borat village scene was actually filmed in Romania, not even Kazakhstan
- oblio 9y ago
  Shhh, don't tell them!
cma 9y ago
Not to take away from your point about those other nations, but GDP per capita isn't always great for this kind of thing due to the marginal utility of money. Median income (though income isn't exactly GDP) often differs heavily from mean income. There's purchasing power parity too, but I don't know how much it would impact this stuff with salt.
- ChrisLomont 9y ago
  The PPP in his comment means Purchasing Power Parity.
oh_sigh 9y ago
What's the average income of a Kazakh? I suspect that GDP figure appears inflated because a lot of oil wealth is generated and goes to only a small portion of the society
volgo 9y ago
GDP per capital is a terrible measure of average wealth. Qatar's GDP Per Capital is $59,330 per person, and alternates between oil billionares and people who live on $10 a day.
- wavegeek 9y ago
  > GDP per capital is a terrible measure of average wealth. Suggest you google "average" and "median".
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Suggest you google it and observe that “average” has several meanings, including “typical” and “median.”

by aleyan 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

adventured 9y ago

PPP is a laughably bad approach to measuring the economics and well-being of a nation. If you go by PPP, you'll be falsely led to believe Iraq is on par with Iran and just a little behind Turkey. Iraq is a barely functioning, destroyed nation, in the midst of a full rebuild. According to PPP, in 2016 Puerto Rico was just barely behind Japan. New Zealand is below Puerto Rico. According to PPP, Equatorial Guinea is approximately on par with Finland, France, Canada, Japan, UK, Belgium. Oman and Saudi Arabia are above Belgium. Saudi is above the Netherlands and Sweden. Is PPP aware of the actual living conditions in Saudi Arabia at the median? What the median income is in Saudi Arabia? Nope. Like I said, it's laughable. PPP purports to enable a better comparison stick. It fails entirely in all cases. Belgium & Denmark are below Saudi? The only proper response to that is: bullshit. PPP is not only universally wildly inaccurate, it leaves out dozens of critical economic factors that are derived from objective economic capability rather than what the price of a hamburger is from one nation to the next. PPP is a subjective measurement, and a particularly bad one. Who is on the ground doing the perfectly objective comparisons in every nation simultaneously, living there for a decade to really get a sense of things across the whole economic landscape? Nobody. PPP leads to mediocre guess-work, which gets you to New Zealand being below Puerto Rico. What is your military capable of defense wise? Try basing that on subjective economic relativism, see how it works out for you in a war. What kind of medical technology can your nation afford? What's the level of medical technology that your people have access to at the median? That collapses under PPP, because the best and latest medical equipment is expensive. Can you buy a BMW or a $4,000 poorly made car that is guaranteed to fall apart and have far more problems than eg a Lexus? While simultaneously, who would confuse the standard of living impact of driving an extraordinarily mediocre $4,000 vehicle vs a Mercedes or BMW? If your GDP per capita (non-PPP) is eg $35,000, then I can stack you right up against Japan or New Zealand and immediately have a good idea of what your national income potential is far more often than not, and I can tell a lot more about your nation's real capabilities at the median. The medtech & car examples are representative concepts, they apply to pretty much everything else that defines standard of living. PPP is a dumb (its simplistic nature ignores almost everything that's actually important to the standard of living of actual humans) economic concept in the best of cases; in most cases, it's entirely worthless.

cgmg 9y ago
You raise some good points. What's a better measure, in your opinion?
- adventured 9y ago
  The foundational problem of PPP, is contained in that it attempts to do something remarkable and then doesn't actually do it at all. Is it a really great idea to have an accurate comparison of the standard of living and economic capabilities (both have a high correlation to non-PPP GDP), on a relative basis, between nations? Yes! Ten times over, yes. Do the annually published PPP numbers actually do anything like that? No, not even close. PPP is a nice idea, that's all it is unless you want to expend extraordinary sums of money and labor to be on the ground, with extremely objective and well trained experts doing the comparisons in an extremely scientific manner (rather than a clown at the IMF throwing darts based on hamburger prices). What's a better measure? This is where the laziness of common PPP numbers comes into play. The better measure is to get into the mud and get really dirty, in volumes of accurate data, tracking, observation, experience. In reality we don't even have mediocre access to accurate, detailed economic data for the majority of the 195 nations. On that single fact, PPP collapses as it is. How accurate is the economic data that we have for eg Brazil (207 million people), and how intricate can we get while maintaining that accuracy? In this case, Brazil is reasonably representative of the global median. We have low quality vague guesses at best. Below Brazil, it just gets that much worse. It's extremeley difficult and expensive to do a nation to nation comparison which is then adjusted subjectively to measure relative condition. So many things would inherently come into play that can't be easily measured. It would require immense on the ground effort and measurement, on a constant basis, along with ideally at least semi-accurate wider economic figures from the national/regional/local government structures inside a given nation (only a few dozen nations have anything like that).
- credit_guy 9y ago
  A better measure is the straight GDP/capita. Here's the numbers for the 3 countries mentioned, to which I added the US, China and Estonia (source World Bank [1]): US: $57.6k Estonia: $17.6k China: $8.1k Khazakhstan: $7.5k Kyrgystan: $1.1k Tajikistan: $0.8k GP's argument stands with the straight GDP/capita, except for the comparison to Estonia, which was a side remark anyway. [1] https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_pcap_cd&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_pcap_cd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:EST:KAZ:KGZ:TJK:USA:CHN&ifdim=country&tstart=535352400000&tend=1482123600000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

supercanuck 9y ago

>In neighboring Turkmenistan, President Saparmurat Niyazov — a despot who requires all clocks to bear his likeness and renamed the days of the week after his family — solved the problem by simply declaring plain salt illegal in 1996 and ordering shops to give each citizen 11 pounds of iodized salt a year at state expense It appears that Turkmenistan is growing at the same rate according to your Charts, does not have the GDP of Kazakhstan and yet had a higher Iodized Salt Intake. It started at 75% Iodized Salt Consumption where as Kazakhstan started at 29% circa 2000. This is the Health Success they are referring to. Even though Kazakhstan was wealthier and flush with money, their Ionized Salt intake was lower than their poorer neighbors. https://knoema.com/WBWDIGDF2017Sep/world-development-indicators-wdi?tsId=3789710 https://knoema.com/WBWDIGDF2017Sep/world-development-indicat...

g09980 9y ago

The Borat village scene was actually filmed in Romania, not even Kazakhstan

oblio 9y ago
Shhh, don't tell them!

cma 9y ago

Not to take away from your point about those other nations, but GDP per capita isn't always great for this kind of thing due to the marginal utility of money. Median income (though income isn't exactly GDP) often differs heavily from mean income. There's purchasing power parity too, but I don't know how much it would impact this stuff with salt.

ChrisLomont 9y ago
The PPP in his comment means Purchasing Power Parity.

oh_sigh 9y ago

What's the average income of a Kazakh? I suspect that GDP figure appears inflated because a lot of oil wealth is generated and goes to only a small portion of the society

volgo 9y ago

GDP per capital is a terrible measure of average wealth. Qatar's GDP Per Capital is $59,330 per person, and alternates between oil billionares and people who live on $10 a day.

wavegeek 9y ago
> GDP per capital is a terrible measure of average wealth. Suggest you google "average" and "median".
- mikeash 9y ago
  Suggest you google it and observe that “average” has several meanings, including “typical” and “median.”