Noah Smith: How do we measure whether China's economy is "ahead" of America's?

This also gets to my criticism with inflation. The basket-of-goods used to measure inflation can have wildly different outcomes based on what we’re trying to measure. Bread may be 10% more, but health-care might be 500% more but a computer might be 25% cheaper, while being higher quality.

The military measurement Noah is describing here is a different independent variable but just as valid as any other cost variable, putting a nuclear-armed North Korea and Israel in a global stage, likely causing other countries to do the same.