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'The GDP gap between Europe and the United States is now 80%'
- TMWNN 3y agoFrom the Le Monde article: >In 2008, the eurozone and the US had equivalent gross domestic products (GDP) at current prices of $14.2 trillion and $14.8 trillion respectively (€13.1 trillion and €13.6 trillion). Fifteen years on, the eurozone's GDP is just over $15 trillion, while US GDP has soared to $26.9 trillion. >As a result, the GDP gap is now 80%! The European Centre for International Political Economy, a Brussels-based think-tank, published a ranking of GDP per capita of American states and European countries: Italy is just ahead of Mississippi, the poorest of the 50 states, while France is between Idaho and Arkansas, respectively 48th and 49th. Germany doesn't save face: It lies between Oklahoma and Maine (38th and 39th). This topic is muted in France – immediately met with counter-arguments about life expectancy, junk food, inequality, etc. It even irks the British, who are just as badly off, as evidenced in August by a Financial Times column wondering, "Is Britain really as poor as Mississippi?"
- notRobot 3y agoSurely quality of life for the citizens should matter more than the aggregate amount of wealth held/generated by a country, no? Whether Europe is ahead in this regard can be debated I suppose, and in some ways some forms of wealth is a means to this end, but does it really matter in the grand scheme of things that Britain might be as poor as Mississippi?
- mytailorisrich 3y agoHow do you sustain quality of life if you get poorer and poorer relatively to others?
- boxed 3y agoHow do you improve quality of life if 1% robs the 99% so they can't afford to improve their lives? GDP is a bad measure. We all know this.
- mytailorisrich 3y agoStraw man argument. This has nothing to do with the point. There us also nothing wrong with GDP as a metric. It measures something specific like all metrics and issues only arise when it is conflated or confused with other metrics (like you do in your comment). This is about GDP, i.e. production of wealth. I'm claiming that not only we need production of wealth but we also need to keep up with others in order to keep a good standard of living. Now, we also need a good distribution of wealth for everyone to benefit, but that is another issue. And 'robbing' other is completely OT.
- shortsunblack 3y agoU.S. does not use pavers for its sidewalks. Instead they concrete over the surface. Europe uses pavers (clay, concrete, whatever). Anytime the city needs to access the utilities under the concrete, they get sledgehammers and start destroying the concrete. They access their utilities, fix the stuff and order new concrete to be poured. Concrete trucks come over. City gets billed 25,000 US$ for couple square meters of fresh new concrete. GDP number gets 25,000 US$ added to it, despite no real wealth being created. Contrast this to Europe, where utilities come, grab the little pavers, move them to side, access and fix the utilities, reinstall the old pavers back in same fashion as they took it out. No 25,000 US$ concrete bill. And this is just one of the examples of inefficiency in your "wealthy" society. What we have here is broken window fallacy and misappropriation of resources, but there's also negative wealth you create. Wealth that costs more then it ever has created. Think of all the asphalt you love to create, which creates heat island effect, which requires ACs to handle. Along all the steps of the production "wealth" is being "created".
- mytailorisrich 3y agoI already called the straw man. Please don't double down on it, especially when what you wrote is not even factual.
- notRobot 3y agoWhy would that matter? I genuinely want to understand.
- db48x 3y agoI think it does matter, but on the other hand it is true that the folks in Mississippi are not really all that poor when considered globally.
- notRobot 3y agoPlease elaborate on your position so I can understand it better.
- mdrzn 3y agoArticle from 2 months ago https://archive.ph/DZxSR https://archive.ph/DZxSR
- napoleoncomplex 3y agoCan't find the tweet that dug a bit deeper, but basically, this difference entirely evaporates if you take a look at the GDP PPP, vs just GDP. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?locations=EU-US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?locat...
- mytailorisrich 3y agoThe EU's GDP lost about 3.1 trillion USD when the UK left. How is that accounted for? Indeed, the article says Eurozone, while this graph (and the one on nominal GDP from same source) says 'EU'.
- TMWNN 3y agoYou don't compare GDP by PPP. You can compare GDP per capita by PPP.