5 ms·

WOW... If you add up the population of the "similar GDP" countries its well over a a BILLION people.

kiliantics 8y ago
That's what free movement of capital without free movement of people does. Military and economic dominance means USA has a lot of the capital and keeps out a lot of the people. That money is coming from somewhere, like e.g. Africa where you see the opposite trend: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/africa-subsidises-world-billions-a-year-say-campaigners-a7754041.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/africa-subsi...
- classicsnoot 8y ago
  In regards to both your's as well as u/returnUD 's comments, i never cease to be amazed at the insidious spread of the thoroughly debunked Dependency Theory. For a primer on how the developing world can get stuck in a poverty cycle, look into the history of Ghana and the utter moron Nkrumah. More damage is done by humanities majors pretending to understand economics than ebbil capitalists stealing magical resources from noble savages.
ReturnUD 8y ago
Well, of course. It is us, "developing" nations' populace that gets the shortest end of the stick with no hope and redemption in sight. Honestly, injustice is just too great to bear. All you ever discuss is things like 10% gender-gap in payouts for the people within your arbitrary borders, yet the horrible exploitation inflicted on us by yourself is never ever discussed.
- adventured 8y ago
  Developing nations benefit from the US dramatically more than the US benefits from developing nations. They get a massive, free technology transfer. Or, see: China's several trillion dollar trade surplus with the US over the last 20 years. 25% of Vietnam's entire economy is currently made up of US imports from their nation, and it's almost all trade deficit for the US. Their economy is being constructed by US capital and US consumers, enabling them to dramatically lift their standard of living, exactly as China has. Then we get to the free technology transfer, which enabled countries like China to rapidly leap forward without having to invent much of anything new. They get to focus on implementing things that are already known to work. The US invented nearly all the modern tech infrastructure, the list is hilariously long, here's the short version: Internet, transistor, router, microprocessor, computer graphics, fiber optics, ram, most operating system tech, Unix, computer networking, the mobile phone, the smart phone, the hard drive, SSDs, the LCD, the LED, the laser, tcp/ip, hypertext, C/C++/Java/JavaScript/Basic/etc., the digital camera, qwerty keyboard, cable modem, the spreadsheet, the relational database, the fax machine, the GPU, 3D graphics cards, ethernet, hypertext, the mouse, streaming media, email, GPS, ecommerce. Then we can go further back in time to all the older industrial technology invented by the US and Western Europe, which developing nations have been able to free ride over the last 50+ years. And that's before we get to vaccines, medtech, biotech, pharma, genetech, aerospace, vast free research & data, process knowledge, and on and on. Oh the exploitation, make it stop.
  - ReturnUD 8y ago
    Thank you for your unbiased analysis - I was absolutely wrong about being exploited and offered zero sensible opportunities, silenced, devalued. Go USA!!! Thank you for being such an ubermensch and inventing all that stuff. We are obviously too stupid here to invent anything, I wonder why.
    - adventured 8y ago
      The hole in your sarcastic premise, is the fact that the US was once a developing nation, dealing with vastly more powerful colonial powers. It was the colonial powers and their capital that provided the seed capital for the US to become what it is. Just as China was / has been a developing nation and is graduating from that status, built up by foreign developed nation capital. Just as South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada were all developing nations at one time. Japan and Germany had to rebuild themselves from complete obliteration. Eastern Europe had to rebuild itself from decades of Soviet occupation and forced impoverishment: Czech took their GDP per capita from $2,800 in 1991, to $22,000 by 2008. Lithuania took its GDP per capita from $2,100 in 1995 to $15,000 by 2008; Estonia went from $3,000 to $18,000 over the same time frame. I guess you can either whine about the wealth and power of other nations, or you can turn yourself into a successful nation like all of those examples have done.
      - ReturnUD 8y ago
        Wow, what a wonderful idea. Let me just roll my sleeves and create a successful nation. Germans, Czech, etc. were obviously so much smarter and hard-working than us - that's exactly the reason why they created a successful nation. I have no words.
        classicsnoot 8y ago
        They were (probably are) and they did. One becomes smarter and more effective through learning and application, not whining and recrimination. S. Korea was demonstrably worse off than Ethiopia as well as many other sub-Saharan countries in the 1950s and look at them now. Did they achieve this through colonization, exploitation, and slavery?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

That's what free movement of capital without free movement of people does. Military and economic dominance means USA has a lot of the capital and keeps out a lot of the people. That money is coming from somewhere, like e.g. Africa where you see the opposite trend: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/africa-subsidises-world-billions-a-year-say-campaigners-a7754041.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/africa-subsi...

classicsnoot 8y ago
In regards to both your's as well as u/returnUD 's comments, i never cease to be amazed at the insidious spread of the thoroughly debunked Dependency Theory. For a primer on how the developing world can get stuck in a poverty cycle, look into the history of Ghana and the utter moron Nkrumah. More damage is done by humanities majors pretending to understand economics than ebbil capitalists stealing magical resources from noble savages.

ReturnUD 8y ago

Well, of course. It is us, "developing" nations' populace that gets the shortest end of the stick with no hope and redemption in sight. Honestly, injustice is just too great to bear. All you ever discuss is things like 10% gender-gap in payouts for the people within your arbitrary borders, yet the horrible exploitation inflicted on us by yourself is never ever discussed.

adventured 8y ago
Developing nations benefit from the US dramatically more than the US benefits from developing nations. They get a massive, free technology transfer. Or, see: China's several trillion dollar trade surplus with the US over the last 20 years. 25% of Vietnam's entire economy is currently made up of US imports from their nation, and it's almost all trade deficit for the US. Their economy is being constructed by US capital and US consumers, enabling them to dramatically lift their standard of living, exactly as China has. Then we get to the free technology transfer, which enabled countries like China to rapidly leap forward without having to invent much of anything new. They get to focus on implementing things that are already known to work. The US invented nearly all the modern tech infrastructure, the list is hilariously long, here's the short version: Internet, transistor, router, microprocessor, computer graphics, fiber optics, ram, most operating system tech, Unix, computer networking, the mobile phone, the smart phone, the hard drive, SSDs, the LCD, the LED, the laser, tcp/ip, hypertext, C/C++/Java/JavaScript/Basic/etc., the digital camera, qwerty keyboard, cable modem, the spreadsheet, the relational database, the fax machine, the GPU, 3D graphics cards, ethernet, hypertext, the mouse, streaming media, email, GPS, ecommerce. Then we can go further back in time to all the older industrial technology invented by the US and Western Europe, which developing nations have been able to free ride over the last 50+ years. And that's before we get to vaccines, medtech, biotech, pharma, genetech, aerospace, vast free research & data, process knowledge, and on and on. Oh the exploitation, make it stop.
- ReturnUD 8y ago
  Thank you for your unbiased analysis - I was absolutely wrong about being exploited and offered zero sensible opportunities, silenced, devalued. Go USA!!! Thank you for being such an ubermensch and inventing all that stuff. We are obviously too stupid here to invent anything, I wonder why.
  - adventured 8y ago
    The hole in your sarcastic premise, is the fact that the US was once a developing nation, dealing with vastly more powerful colonial powers. It was the colonial powers and their capital that provided the seed capital for the US to become what it is. Just as China was / has been a developing nation and is graduating from that status, built up by foreign developed nation capital. Just as South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada were all developing nations at one time. Japan and Germany had to rebuild themselves from complete obliteration. Eastern Europe had to rebuild itself from decades of Soviet occupation and forced impoverishment: Czech took their GDP per capita from $2,800 in 1991, to $22,000 by 2008. Lithuania took its GDP per capita from $2,100 in 1995 to $15,000 by 2008; Estonia went from $3,000 to $18,000 over the same time frame. I guess you can either whine about the wealth and power of other nations, or you can turn yourself into a successful nation like all of those examples have done.
    - ReturnUD 8y ago
      Wow, what a wonderful idea. Let me just roll my sleeves and create a successful nation. Germans, Czech, etc. were obviously so much smarter and hard-working than us - that's exactly the reason why they created a successful nation. I have no words.
      - classicsnoot 8y ago
        They were (probably are) and they did. One becomes smarter and more effective through learning and application, not whining and recrimination. S. Korea was demonstrably worse off than Ethiopia as well as many other sub-Saharan countries in the 1950s and look at them now. Did they achieve this through colonization, exploitation, and slavery?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]