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Comment by cromwellian | Hacker News Reader

As Andrew Yang has pointed out, GDP is a pretty poor measurement, and at least in China's case, not transparent and most likely inflated by localities self-reporting to meet central government targets.

GDP is proportional to population, so if you have a larger population, your GDP can be proportionately larger. The question is, what's GDP per capita or GDP per capita PPP? China per capita GDP is 1/7th-1/8th of the US, and India per capita GDP is 1/30th of the US, will they make it up in 10 years? China could, if they can keep up their growth and not experience a major recession or depression, which seems unlikely.

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But if current dominant country A has GDP of 100 units and rival country B is poised to get to 150 units, then won't country B be able to wield more economic power than country A even though country B's GDP/person is lower?

It's sort of like a company that has 100 units of revenue and 20 units of costs versus a company with 150 units of revenue and 90 units of cost, the one with greater revenue may still have more economic power (e.g. ability to leverage suppliers, etc) despite having lower profit margin.

Agreed, if you want some idea of quality of life, GDP probably isn't the best.

If you want to measure who has the most resources either to potentially trade with them, or decide if you have the resources to fight them, GDP becomes more useful.

If you look at it this way, there is no real measure to see which is a better place to live.

The only thing one can agree from this article is that some countries are expected to grow at a higher rate than others only due to a larger population. I think this only makes sense if everyone is educated and the unemployment rate is low.

> a company with 150 units of revenue and 90 units of cost

and this company isn't able to pay the employees with much compared to company A (read: country is poor even if GDP is high). But, with smart re-investment or debt structure, a country with high GDP low per-capita can rise out of poverty. But company A isn't just gonna sit idly by and let it happen.

Luxembourg and Macao have much higher GDP per capita than the US. But I don't think they are more economically influential than the US or China.

It depends on what you are measuring, if you are comparing national power and influence then GDP is still an alright metric, while internally something like Andrew Yang's quality of life metrics or GDP per capita makes more sense.

By GDP per capita, Liechtenstein and Qatar is number 1 and 2

OK, but can't China or India take x% of GDP and built their military with it? Go ahead and fight someone spending 2x as much as you

why did this get downvoted, my first thought was exactly along these lines. does anyone have an answer?

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