5 ms·

What data would you use to substantiate this claim? What's your criteria for a continent to be wealthy?

by steve_adams_86 1y ago

gruez 1y ago
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank
- jacquesm 1y ago
  You are making the common mistake of comparing countries and continents.
  - gruez 1y ago
    >per capita
    - jacquesm 1y ago
      Yes, per capita per country versus per capita per continent. The two simply are not comparable. You keep arguing in bad faith, please stop doing that, it is degrading the level of discourse here.
      - gruez 1y ago
        >Yes, per capita per country versus per capita per continent. The two simply are not comparable As opposed to comparing a country of 340M with countries with populations anywhere between 33k to 143M?
        jacquesm 1y ago
        Yes, because then you'd see that the EU is not the homogeneous entity that you seem to think it is. You could compare the USA to Switzerland or the Netherlands on a per-capita basis or you could pick Romania or Bulgaria and come away with a completely different impression. The main difference is that countries that have been living under the Russian boot for 50 odd years are still recovering and the remainder is far wealthier than the USA and has a smaller wealth gap between rich and poor. This goes in particular for Germany which is still to this day spending large amounts of money to fund the recovery of the eastern part of Germany, but fortunately, unlike Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and the Baltics they have a large enough industrial base to be able to do so. To lump that all together makes zero sense and shows a lack of appreciation of both history and statistics.
        gruez 1y ago
        >You could compare the USA to Switzerland or the Netherlands on a per-capita basis or you could pick Romania or Bulgaria and come away with a completely different impression. You can make the same granularity arguments at the country level as well, for instance Germany vs California or Missouri. Does that mean cross country comparisons are bunk as well? What makes "country" the level of subdivision that's acceptable compared to neighborhood, city, county, state, country, or continent?
        jacquesm 1y ago
        I think we all know what the definition of a country is. If you decide to compare continents and countries as though they are one and the same that is on you. But EU countries are closer to US states, except that any two US states are still far more homogeneous than any two EU countries are. One good basic principle for arguing about stuff is to agree on the meaning of certain words. If you want to compare countries then do so. If you want to compare states with countries, you're welcome to do so too, but you have to take into account the whole range then. But you can't just lump 27 countries on a pile, compute an average and draw a conclusion when comparing it to a single continent sized country. Besides that, if you take out California the US picture skews downwards considerably, so on that scale other US states have their work cut out for them. No need to compete with Switzerland or the Netherlands for GDP, compete with California first. And that whole discussion still ignores massive wealth generated in China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and other places. The whole idea that you can just collapse a very complex comparison to a single number and call it a day is fatally flawed.
        gruez 1y ago
        >But EU countries are closer to US states, except that any two US states are still far more homogeneous than any two EU countries are. >... >The whole idea that you can just collapse a very complex comparison to a single number and call it a day is fatally flawed. So you reject being able to compare EU member countries to either US (as a whole) or US states?
- piva00 1y ago
  Still plenty rich in comparison to the rest of the world while providing richer lives to common people than most places in the USA can provide to their citizens. Leaning on GDP as this all-encompassing metric is rather absurd, GDP was adopted because it's an easy metric to calculate, not because it provides the most insights on how life is at some place on Earth.

What data would you use to substantiate this claim? What's your criteria for a continent to be wealthy?

gruez 1y ago

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank

jacquesm 1y ago
You are making the common mistake of comparing countries and continents.
- gruez 1y ago
  >per capita
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    Yes, per capita per country versus per capita per continent. The two simply are not comparable. You keep arguing in bad faith, please stop doing that, it is degrading the level of discourse here.
    - gruez 1y ago
      >Yes, per capita per country versus per capita per continent. The two simply are not comparable As opposed to comparing a country of 340M with countries with populations anywhere between 33k to 143M?
      - jacquesm 1y ago
        Yes, because then you'd see that the EU is not the homogeneous entity that you seem to think it is. You could compare the USA to Switzerland or the Netherlands on a per-capita basis or you could pick Romania or Bulgaria and come away with a completely different impression. The main difference is that countries that have been living under the Russian boot for 50 odd years are still recovering and the remainder is far wealthier than the USA and has a smaller wealth gap between rich and poor. This goes in particular for Germany which is still to this day spending large amounts of money to fund the recovery of the eastern part of Germany, but fortunately, unlike Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and the Baltics they have a large enough industrial base to be able to do so. To lump that all together makes zero sense and shows a lack of appreciation of both history and statistics.
        gruez 1y ago
        >You could compare the USA to Switzerland or the Netherlands on a per-capita basis or you could pick Romania or Bulgaria and come away with a completely different impression. You can make the same granularity arguments at the country level as well, for instance Germany vs California or Missouri. Does that mean cross country comparisons are bunk as well? What makes "country" the level of subdivision that's acceptable compared to neighborhood, city, county, state, country, or continent?
        jacquesm 1y ago
        I think we all know what the definition of a country is. If you decide to compare continents and countries as though they are one and the same that is on you. But EU countries are closer to US states, except that any two US states are still far more homogeneous than any two EU countries are. One good basic principle for arguing about stuff is to agree on the meaning of certain words. If you want to compare countries then do so. If you want to compare states with countries, you're welcome to do so too, but you have to take into account the whole range then. But you can't just lump 27 countries on a pile, compute an average and draw a conclusion when comparing it to a single continent sized country. Besides that, if you take out California the US picture skews downwards considerably, so on that scale other US states have their work cut out for them. No need to compete with Switzerland or the Netherlands for GDP, compete with California first. And that whole discussion still ignores massive wealth generated in China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and other places. The whole idea that you can just collapse a very complex comparison to a single number and call it a day is fatally flawed.
        gruez 1y ago
        >But EU countries are closer to US states, except that any two US states are still far more homogeneous than any two EU countries are. >... >The whole idea that you can just collapse a very complex comparison to a single number and call it a day is fatally flawed. So you reject being able to compare EU member countries to either US (as a whole) or US states?
piva00 1y ago
Still plenty rich in comparison to the rest of the world while providing richer lives to common people than most places in the USA can provide to their citizens. Leaning on GDP as this all-encompassing metric is rather absurd, GDP was adopted because it's an easy metric to calculate, not because it provides the most insights on how life is at some place on Earth.