I predict this story is going to become another "voyager leaving the solar system" type of thing. By one measure or another this is going happen once or twice a year for the foreseeable future.
Chinese economy overtakes the U.S.’s to become the largest
91–100 of 141 posts
Re: Chinese economy overtakes the U.S.’s to become the largest
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obviously you have never met a drunk kiwi.
Kiwi fruit are actually from northern China and weren't introduced to New Zealand until the 20th century.
Kiwi is slang for New Zealanders[1]. It is also a bird native to New Zealand[2].
[1]: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Kiwi&defid=20...
Re: Chinese economy overtakes the U.S.’s to become the largest
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obviously you have never met a drunk kiwi.
Kiwi fruit are actually from northern China and weren't introduced to New Zealand until the 20th century.
Not sure if that's just compounding the joke, but if not - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi
Re: Chinese economy overtakes the U.S.’s to become the largest
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So, it's not entirely clear if China is really the biggest economy, or just by using an accounting trick called PPP GDP. There is no objective way of measuring the size of an economy. Imagine some hyper-simplified economies where the only asset produced is computers. Economy A sells 1000 Apple IIs* per year at $3k each. That means it has a nominal GDP of $3m. Economy B sells 1000 Retina Macbook Airs at $1k each, fo…
Your example is exactly comparing the economies by PPP, without taking into account the exchange rates. The point is that if you establish trade between economies A, B, and C, people in A would figure out they can get a better deal by buying computers from B, hence the exchange rate would rise, and B$ will be worth A$10 or so. And $C will inflate rapidly, with the government eventually going effectively bankrupt.
Point taken, but you could imagine a state of affairs where the costs of trade are so high that the imbalanced prices do actually represent equilibrium, e.g. imagine tariffs are 100,000% and well-enforced. In the real world non-zero exchange costs are the reason why price differences across countries for identical goods aren't just immediately arbitraged away.
Re: Chinese economy overtakes the U.S.’s to become the largest
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly if you put in the cliche American free market priorities (jobs, income high, safety, work life balance, environment low, everything else in the middle) the US does come out top (as opposed to high but not top on a more even measure). The same things seems to happen if you put in the sort of priorities other countries are generally believed to hold (so put in the environment, satisfaction, work life bala…
> Australia being a great place to live - they don't have a slider for "Deadly animals" Australia has poisonous snakes and America has grizzly bears -- only New Zealand can claim no deadly animals.
Grizzly bears don't hide in relatively short grass and are very rare and limited to certain areas, and nor does America have spiders that bite your ass when you are trying to poo. Well, we might, but they aren't deadly.
Re: Chinese economy overtakes the U.S.’s to become the largest
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly if you put in the cliche American free market priorities (jobs, income high, safety, work life balance, environment low, everything else in the middle) the US does come out top (as opposed to high but not top on a more even measure). The same things seems to happen if you put in the sort of priorities other countries are generally believed to hold (so put in the environment, satisfaction, work life bala…
> Australia being a great place to live - they don't have a slider for "Deadly animals" Australia has poisonous snakes and America has grizzly bears -- only New Zealand can claim no deadly animals.
Australia also has crocodiles, box jelly fish, sharks, lethal spiders...
I don't think that I'm imagining that Australia has more species of lethal animals than any other country.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not saying Australia isn't a great place to live. I've only been to Melbourne and then only for three weeks but it seemed great. There are just lots of things which can kill you there (though the Australian's have naturally got very good at stopping that happening).
Re: Chinese economy overtakes the U.S.’s to become the largest
#97For comparison, using the more traditional measure of an economy's size, nominal GDP, the US economy is about 2x the size of China's. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
... and the EU is number one!
Re: Chinese economy overtakes the U.S.’s to become the largest
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly if you put in the cliche American free market priorities (jobs, income high, safety, work life balance, environment low, everything else in the middle) the US does come out top (as opposed to high but not top on a more even measure). The same things seems to happen if you put in the sort of priorities other countries are generally believed to hold (so put in the environment, satisfaction, work life bala…
As an Australian the thing that makes Australia a great place to live is the same that makes it suck - distance. It does have California's weather without the risk of earthquakes which is hard to beat :)
But does it have California's Jobs? :)
Re: Chinese economy overtakes the U.S.’s to become the largest
#99This is a ranking about PPP. There are about five Chinese persons for every American. The sum of their income will keep getting larger and so will their economy. GDP and economic output don't automatically relate to how well people live but they do relate to the influence a country has over the world. If we care about how happy people are in their country then maybe we should look at http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.or…
PPP is supposed to be about "how well people live" by material measures. But, as you point out, material measures don't always accurately reflect quality of life.
Other people who posted here claim nominal GDP is how you compare nations, but that's got problems, too: Is US overspending on health care really adding to GDP? Is military spending, Homeland Security, cops, prisons, adding to GDP, or those costs and drags on our wealth? Is financialization adding slushy numbers to GDP?
Look at the US productivity numbers. Impressive! But is our spending on health care really productive? Military? Etc. There is a ton of fudge in US economic numbers.
I'm sure China's numbers, with the state enterprises, have a lot of squish to them, too. But the US is overtly fooling itself in many ways.
Re: Chinese economy overtakes the U.S.’s to become the largest
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice. Maybe not in China, but some countries force McDonald's to lower their BigMac price to hack that index. The Wikipedia page mentions countries doing this, and, seeing the quality and price of Big Macs in some places compared to other Mc burgers, it's not surprising. E.g. the Argentinian one was half price of everything else, it was an awful burger, meat covering half the bun. And it was never advertised, only co…
The bigmac in China is about the same in quantity to the states, it's normal price is just slightly cheaper than the USA version. Now if they would just give me a second packet of ketchup for the fries and ice in the drink, I might not feel like I'm in a third world country.
Try going into a Greek owned restaurant in the US. They give you the greasiest food possible and don't want you to have any napkins.