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One thing to remember is that a country where one person makes $120,000 and nine others make $20,000 has the same per-capita GDP as a country where ten people m
by jdburdette 17y ago
One thing to remember is that a country where one person makes $120,000 and nine others make $20,000 has the same per-capita GDP as a country where ten people make $30,000 each. Also, as m_eiman points out, PPP does not account for social costs such as increased greenhouse emissions or declining infrastructure.
- tptacek 17y agoIt's not obvious to me that the infrastructure in Mississipi would be declining faster than the infrastructure in, say, Italy. At the very least, Mississipi is bound to have a much better road system.
- davidw 17y agoItaly's roads aren't that bad, actually (at least in the north). The problem is that they are covered with Italian drivers, and there are an awful lot of them: 60 million in an area a bit smaller than California. (Well, 60 million inhabitants - not all of them drive, but more drive than they ought to)
- tptacek 17y agoI wasn't trying to imply that Italy's roads were bad, just pointing out that US roads are unusually excellent. I picked Italy instead of Germany to avoid a pointless message board argument comparing Germany's often-excellent roads to Mississipi's.
- toretore 17y agoPeople (and by that I mean Americans, sorry) seem to think Germany's roads are an exception. While this may have been true 20 or 30 years ago, in reality they're pretty much the same as or even a little worse than the rest of Europe. An exception might be the EU10, but they're catching up really fast. Also, 20-lane motorways through the centre of a city is not a sign of excellency but rather that of poor planning.
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago> Mississipi is bound to have a much better road system Which brings us to "increasing greenhouse gas emissions". Also, there's rather more to both infrastructure and living standard than the number, size and quality of roads.
- tptacek 17y agoI'm not sure what your point is. Mississipi has many, many problems, but smog isn't one of them.
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoI'm not sure what your point is. Greenhouse gas emissions (chiefly carbon dioxide and methane) don't cause smog (caused by ground level ozone and nitrogen oxides). Edit 2 Moved reply into reply.
- tptacek 17y agoFine, Ryan. s/smog/air quality. The air quality in Jackson is not detectably poorer than that in most of Germany.
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoGreenhouse gas emissions are not smog, and they're not air pollution in the normal sense of hurting people in their immediate vicinity. Greenhouse gas emissions contribute to global climate change, and the per capita GHG emissions of Mississippians are more than twice as high as the per capita GHG emissions of Europeans, regardless of the local air quality. Also, that was only one part of my comment. The other part is that most Europeans enjoy all kinds of public infrastructure intricately related to living standards that Mississippians do not. The US has decided that impeccable road infrastructure is the sine qua non of public nonmilitary expenditure, but there is an enormous opportunity cost tied into a national land use and transportation model based on ubiquitous motoring and related low densities. See, for example: * http://www.newsweek.com/id/76929 http://www.newsweek.com/id/76929 * http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime Total car dependence plus industrial food and big box retail minus actual neighbourhoods, family farming or even gardening equals an ecological and public health disaster in slow motion.