A European's thoughts on world opinion

Jack Funk · May 2, 2003

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Laches, I understand your position completely. I ask you to please reconsider and stick around. You are one of the people here who actually debates. If you feel that it is not worth the trouble, then I understand. It is quite frustrating.

Yago, thank you for illustrating my point(s) so vividly. You are truly amazing. For a troll that is.

I'm done with this thread.

Fedja_1 · May 2, 2003

Respectable Yago! You talk that we are inclined to mixing things, but it seems to me that it is the other way round. I dont even want to question American peoples worry for their sons in war and all other things you quoted but... First, nobody and I mean NOBoDY can run a war in the name of peace. It is not moral-and already that is an understatement. And second, true bushs intentions are obvious I think. It is not making peace and throwing down Saddam-afterall, bush is not such big "peacemaker"-but it also is not the oil as many are saying-oil is just a front. So what then? May sound stupid, but one reason could be personal vendeta on Saddam becaouse he tried to murder the older bush, you must remember that. And second and the most important reason is position.Geographycal and strathegycal. Take a map in your hands and look where Iraq is....see my point?

Malaqai · May 2, 2003

Regarding me hating America and Russia winning WW2:
1.The German army (the strongest millitary might on the planet at the time) broke it's teeth on Stalingrad. Germany would have beaten the crap out of the allies if Russia wasn't so strong and persistant. If you paid attention to your history classes, more people died on "the eastern front" than in the rest of Europe during the years 44' and 45'.

2.I don't hate America. I admire the foundations upon The US is built. Freedom, brotherhood, equality. But I am convinced that the present leadership of America is not fit to do their duties and avoid hurting millions of people.

Regarding me not answering to certain replies and claims:
1.I respected what you had to say. Why debate about something you agree with (even partly)?
2.I never had the intention of hurting anybody. But, the world is cruel and dark. And I may be a bit blunt when I am angry. And now, I AM angry. Why? Because the big-scale media and propaganda employed by the US army can easily cover up any potential problems that can rise and hurt the States. I DO NOT HATE the STATES. But I do hate the fact that 250 million people living in such a country can be led to believe that Iraq should be invaded because of weapons of mass destruction. And now when none of those have been found, NOBODY talks about them any more.

To Laches...
I really doubt you are "thick" and I don't think that any real anti-Americanism exist on SP because I am a pacifist who respects intelligence, and all of you who visit SP and are from the States are pretty intelligent. Maybe you percieve me as an "America-basher" but I really am not. About the economy debate. Maybe yours and my resources aren't the same, but I think we proved the same thing. THE US IS NOT SO RICH AS TO BE VIEWED AS INVULNERABLE. Your essay seemed to give just that impression. My data is half a decade old because I didn't have time at the time to go scavenging the web for new info. I had some book right here, and I used them. And I agree that anti-Americanism is a problem to be dealt with, but you rally must ask yourself----why is this problem manifesting itself across the world? I doubt that all of a sudden a whole bunch of people decided to burn american flags just for a giggle.

About the stupid-people-from-other-countries. Ofcourse, every group of people has idiots. But I never called anyone stupid. And if you see somebody here calling anybody a "stupid American" and not calling me a "stupid Croatian", it is probably because my country doesn't do the kind of things that the US does, nor does my country have the power to do those things. I mean no offense to anyone.

[ May 02, 2003, 18:51: Message edited by: Malaqai ]

Iago · May 3, 2003

Laches wrote:

Despite the weaknesses, as the explanation indicates, GDP is the best we have. Your comparison is not of GDP. You do mention per capita GDP but your figures are incorrect (now, you state that the most recent figures you could find were a half decade old so perhaps there have been a lot of changes.
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Well, there are other economic opinions, which indicate that PPP should be used for comparison. I don't want to say Laches is wrong. I only want to point out, that other opinions exist in the giantic realm of economic science. That's science: Different opinions.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/88635.stm

A crude measure of a country's wealth is Gross National Product (GNP) per capita: the figure for GNP divided by the population.
In order to compare GNP per capita across countries there is the need to use a common currency. Most international institutions like the World Bank use the US dollar for this purpose.

But this may give a misleading picture of how much an individual in a particular country can actually purchase in his own currency. Many of the transactions which make up the income of an economy are not traded internationally.

The 1998 World Development Indicators, published by the World Bank, show that in 1996, on a PPP basis, China's GNP was $4,047 billion, making it the second largest economy in the world. The UK's GNP on a PPP basis stood at $1,173 billion in 1996. Under conventional estimates China's GNP was $745 billion and the UK's $1,152 billion in the same period.
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http://www.colorado.edu/Economics/courses/econ2020/section6/ppp.html

In order to better estimate the relative consumer purchasing power between nations, the International Monetary Foundation (IMF) revised its estimates of the comparative size of economies in the spring of 1993. Traditional benchmarks of GDP per capita convert each country's GDP into dollars using market exchange rates. The resulting figures indicate what the average resident in India or China can purchase compared to the typical inhabitant of the United States. This provided an international comparison of purchasing power but ignored differences in home markets regarding the cost of goods and market structure (the presence of barter and other nontraditional markets).

Comparing GDP per capita in dollars causes the real output of many developing countries to be underestimated, as markets are not as well defined as in developed countries. Furthermore, changes in exchange rates could help or hinder a country's GDP per capita. Countries with an appreciating currency were given a boost to GDP per capita, the opposite occurring for countries with deflating currencies. To help correct these distortions, the IMF now uses purchasing power parities (PPP). The PPP takes account of what money can buy in each country's home market, accounting for international differences in prices. It is especially useful in capturing differences in the prices of non-internationally traded goods such as housing, domestic transport, and energy, items that make up a large percentage of consumer expenditures.

Using the PPP instead of GDP as an international measure yields some eye-opening results. Overall, the share of world output consumed by the rich industrial countries drops from 73% to 54%. And given the generally higher economic growth rates of the less-developed countries (LDCs), it can be expected that by the end of this century industrial countries will account for less than half of global consumption.

Using the PPP rather than GDP per capita also leads to a revised list of the world's largest economies. With the PPP, China is the world's third largest economy in terms of overall consumption, due to a large population with increasing purchasing power (the ranking are U.S. 22.5%, Japan 7.6%, China 6%). Furthermore, using the PPP, countries with large populations and growing incomes, such as India, Brazil, and Mexico, have a much more important place in the global economy than by traditional measures.

As the PPP shows, there are alternatives to using GDP as a measure of international economic size and growth. The PPP shows what workers can actually afford in their own markets, giving a more accurate picture of domestic wealth. While used for international comparisons of consumption, the PPP is not used to compare production across national boundaries.
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http://www.dawn.com/2003/02/24/ebr6.htm

China's PPP-based GNP second to United States

By Aftab Ahmad

There are only a few countries in the world such as Japan or the Asian Tigers, which achieved spectacular economic progress within a very short period. China is on the way to becoming such a country.

At the moment, the miracle of China is in the making and economic analysts and observers, the world over, are busy calculating what the size and stature of China's economy would be after 10 to 20 years, if it continued to grow at the present rate.

China, with a population of 1.27 billion, had a Gross National Income (GNI) of $1,131 billion in 2001, as reported in the World Development Report, 2003. It would be interesting to note that the World Bank reports the GNI of respective countries in its World Development Report, in two ways. First, the GNI is worked out according to ordinary calculations, on the basis of exchange rates of respective countries' currencies vis-a-vis the US dollars.

Secondly, the World Bank has recently started calculating the GNI of respective countries, also, on the basis of purchasing power parity vis-a-vis the US dollars, showing the basket of commodities it would be able to purchase in the US. When calculated on this latter basis, China's GNI worked out (as shown in the World Development Report, 2003) to $5,415 billion, which was second only to the GNI of the US at $9,902 billion.

Calculating on this very basis, Japan's GNI stood at $3,487 billion, whereas Germany's GNI stood at $2,098 billion for 2001. However, the population of China being more than one billion, its per capita income worked out to be considerably lower than that of both Japan and Germany.

Not very long ago, China was categorised as a low income country (LIC) in the World Bank documents, just like India and Pakistan. However, today, it is included among the lower middle income countries (LMC) with a per capita income of $890, whereas India and Pakistan are still shown among the low income countries (LIC), with per capita GNI of $460 and $420 respectively.
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Llandon · May 4, 2003

Oh my god! It's like a bad acid trip. Suddenly I feel like I'm back in my college econ class.

Interesting, yet ultimately boring.

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