Real GDP (purchasing power parity)
cia.gov
cia.gov
According to Worldbank https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/icp/brief/VC_Uses and OECD https://www.oecd.org/en/data/insights/data-explainers/2024/0... this metric is a poor choice when trying to establish some sort of strict country ranking.
In very general term, you either use GPD to compare countries' "economic strenght", or GDP per capita (PPP) to compare how it translate for their potential for each citizen.
I feel like GDP per capita (non PPP) or GDP (PPP) are not very useful unless you want to make the numbers say whatever your story claims.
GDP comparisons in USD work really well when a large percentage of a country's economic activity is anchored to USD-denominated trade.
For some random heterogenous examples, if you want to look at Canada, China, or middle-eastern petrostates, comparing GDP in terms of the US dollar is probably your best metric, because their economies really are highly sensitive to changes in their currency's exchange rate to the USD, either due to the things they are reliant on buying from the USA (Canada), or the things they are totally reliant on selling to international markets (China, middle east petrostates)
On the other hand, for places like the European Economic Area, comparisons in terms of USD are quite a bit harder to justify, and this is where PPP can come in as (highly imperfect) alternative. The reason is that while they obviously are plugged into the global economy, they also do a much higher percentage of their economic activity in their own little economic bubble that's not as sensitive to their exchange rate to the USD. For example, European countries have had highly stagnant GDP in USD terms since 2008, and that does strongly affect things like multinational corporations, tech purchases, and energy prices, we're not really seeing any of the indicators on everyday life you'd expect from such a longterm stagnation, and that's because their economies really are growing, it's just that their currency is also losing ground against the USD even as they grow.
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TLDR: I'd compare Canada versus the USA in terms of USD, but I'd compare France versus the USA in terms of PPP. This decision really needs to be done on a per-comparison basis, and neither is really great, but for some comparisons one is much more appropriate than the other.
USD/EUR is pretty much where it was back in 2015 despite of the swings (in both directions) since then.
The Euro crashed in 2014 there was no real gradual decline which would explain this stagnation/growth.
even in inflation adjusted PPP, France was at around ~51k per capita back in $55. There is very little growth (of any kind) outside of Central/Eastern European EU countries and a small few pockets.
We live in a global world where no country is self sufficient. We depend on oil from a few countries, clothes from some other, electronics from some more, so on and so forth. In such an interdependent and connected world, all payments are made in global currencies and PPP in isolation doesn't really cut it.
India pays the same in $ for oil, as does let's say the UK. Similarly, when an Indian travels abroad, they pay the same in $/£/€ as let's say another globe-trotter from Europe.
PPP in such cases becomes a facade, to stoke their egos and to justify to the nationalists that their nation is doing well.
Part of an overall really nice resource: https://fx.sauder.ubc.ca/
The relevant part:
> The World Factbook is prepared by the CIA for the use of U.S. government officials, and its style, format, coverage, and content are primarily designed to meet their requirements.[3] It is also frequently used as a resource for academic research papers and news articles.[4] As a work of the U.S. government, it is in the public domain in the United States.[5]
On the less serious parts of the Internet it's only Indian and Russian nationalists who bring up GDP adjusted by PPP to cope. Less serious people reply by calling it "Poor People's Points".
Perhaps it costs x billions to build so many missiles in the US so you might think that, say, India can't afford that. But on the other hand it is much cheaper for them to build a missile so all in all they might be able to build as many as the US.
Chinese life expectancy is higher and their burden of disease is lower than the US.
So the question is - can you measure food safety from life expectancy?
Logically it seems not considering how many other factors affect life expectancy.
And can you think of the measurement of life expectancy might differ between countries making comparison challenging?
For China, I believe the government controls the exchange rate, which results in intentionally selling Chinese goods at a discount? Hypothetically, if they let the currency rise then they’d have higher GDP, measured using actual exchange rates.
For example with 500k euro in Paris Saint Germain you can afford to buy 25 square meters of poor quality apartment.
Having lived in 6+ countries (rich and poor) there is no “equivalent” across many countries.
“Shelter costs” in say the US and Laos have no equivalent. The shelter in the US is unobtainable in Laos, so saying “$30,000 spent in the US is equivalent to $1,000 spent is in Laos” is not possible.
... damn
Vladimir Putin spends big—and sends Russia’s economy soaring https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/08/11/v...
Of course having to raise interest rates to >20% while claiming that inflation is actually ~9% is not a good sign. Current account surplus is also going down and is pretty much where it was before the war.
Funnily enough the Russian government seems to be "fighting" the central bank by giving out mortgages and loans at a >50-80% discount. Which would indicate that (hopefully) their are forced to chose between inflation going our of control or most of the economy (at least the faction not directly dependant on government contracts) griding to a halt.
wartime economies are like railing a tableful of coke. it'll be super productive for a few years, but the comedown is hard.
Economically they're in very rough shape, but GDP is doing well because of that war time spending.
What does this even mean? I would have expected it to mean "can't wage war", "people are starving and storming the palace". Obviously not. So? Other than numbers, what does it really mean? If it's just "they have less luxuries", maybe it does not matter that much.
However that's mostly fuelled by Russia spending all of their reserves (effectively they are literally burning money) to fund the war. There are actual reasons why they had to raise their interest rates to 21% despite inflation supposedly being below < 10%.
When that money runs out? Who knows.. Russia can hardly borrow in international markets. They'll have to either start printing money or the economy will crash. Well hopefully before they actually "win" the war. On the bright side their economy might crash anyway if the war is over (due to extremely high government spending propping it up, a bit like the situations immediately after WW1/2 in Britain or even the US).
> What does this even mean?
It means that they have a very low debt-to-GDP ratio of 16.9%, a limited amount of natural resources (due to the small size of their country), plus they have been forced to switch to producing a lot domestically after the western sanctions in 2022.
If you think that was ever in the cards i have a bridge to sell you
Russia invaded Ukraine because (supposedly) Putin et al. believed that it will be a repeat of 2014. Quick invasion/coup and their in control of the country before US/NATO can react. As long as Winnie the Pooh doesn't think he can somehow that off in Taiwan why would he invade?
Russia will never be on US/EU's side in any conflict vs China. Maybe short-term they might make some concessions if we let them have most of Eastern Europe to...
> WW2 we allied with Russia against the greater Nazi threat
Only because the Nazi's backstabbed the USSR. Until that very moment they were affectively allied to Germany and they even bankrolled their invasions of France and Norway (Germany would have run out of oil a few months after Poland without the Soviets). France and Britain has almost serious plans to attack the USSR in Finland and Azerbaijan before the Battle of France.