Hacker News Reader

Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

China has the second largest GDP of any nation in the world. I think it's safe to say they are not poor.

China presents itself as a rich nation when it suits its purposes.

China presents itself as a poor nation when it suits its purposes.

what does it mean to be poor? Economic output of an entire country? Or per capita. When measured by the latter, I can ensure you, China has a shit ton of poor people... greater than the population of the U.S.

Even measured per capita, they're about a third of a way from the top of the list. They have lots of high tech industry, nuclear weapons, etc. They can definitely afford to keep the rivers clean, it's a policy choice not an economic one. They are not poor in any meaningful sense of the word, being taken advantage of by the US and EU to dump our trash on.

China is spending trillions in foreign aid.

I don't know where you heard that at man, but China is not poor. At all. I mean that place is the opposite of poor.

I've been to poor countries. Cuba is poor for instance. Or Guinea. China? Not so much.

Why do you think GDP is a good measure of wealth?

What would you propose that is better? In any measure they're above the median in wealth. Poorer than the most advanced Western nations, yes. Too poor to keep their rivers clean? Hardly.

Depending on what you are actually trying to find out, you may also need to look into how that wealth is distributed. GDP doesn't mean much for most if 99.9% of that wealth is just owned by .01% of the population. Cost of living is also significant. Plus there are other externalities. How much use is it being rich if you can't step outside because the air is so polluted? Does the population have to work on average 80 hours a week to achieve that GDP? How much corruption is there? etc..

But of course, if you are trying to find out if they can afford to clean up their rivers, GDP is probably a fairly good measure..

GDP tells you precisely nothing about where a country's wealth is going, who it is going to or even anything about the well-being of its people.

GDP may as well be simply a measure of how much richer the rich are getting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com