Hacker News Reader

Comment by danmaz74 | Hacker News Reader

> except maybe if you are really big, like the US or China

Or, potentially, the EU...

EU is not a unified entity in terms of defense. Thought they might try to stay away from a close tie with US under current administration, I doubt that they can or want to get rid as an ally as whole.

Not being disrespectful but the country that is a lot against unification or more EU collaboration is leaving in March next year.

So while I'm not particular pro-brexit but I do think this could have also a positive impact to the EU in regards of more unification or more EU collaborations.

It's not going to happen. The Nordics are skeptic against a more federal EU. Most of Eastern Europe is too. Italy has flipped now.

Hell, even Germany are rolling their eyes at a lot of Macron's proposals.

Unified defense usually requires a unified identity, commonly, under umbrella of a nation. EU is still quite far from getting there, maybe never

The point is that we are a long way to have a common EU intelligence service. Even if services are cooperating, every nation state wants to keep some cards in hands.

Well, the EU is just the largest economy in the wold.

Actually, the US is still the largest economy, with the EU closely behind and China a runner up. [1]

Note though that the US will have a significant lead again next year when the UK leaves.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy

Hold on a second.

Which is larger depends on if you use nominal GDP or PPP GDP. Your link has tables for both, and the US and the EU swap positions in the two tables.

Well, I to me larger means in absolute terms.

Purchase price parity is of course a valid view but not what I would consider in this context.

To elaborate a bit:

Nominal statistics take into account the current exchange rate, while PPP ignores exchange rates and instead normalizes it in terms of things like Big Macs (albeit expressed in dollar terms instead). PPP is essentially an adjustment for cost of living, and so it generally makes more sense to use PPP when you're referring to per capita statistics (since you're generally trying for a sense of cost living anyways). Conversely, for comparing the size of economies or trade, you want to use nominal, as trade is conducted in nominal terms. There are reasons to go the other way, but these choices should be your first inclinations.

Thanks for that explanation, which is much better than what I would have written. ;)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com