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> "China used as much concrete in just three years as United States in one century"

He wants you to think he's comparing the last 100 years. In reality he's comparing two different time periods because U.S. acceleration ruins the wow factor.

> "Chinese now consume more Guccis and Bulgaris and Louis Vuittons than the rest of the world combined."

He wants you to think Chinese consumers have a lot of buying power. They don't. They just happen to like those specific brands. Even Japan spends more than the U.S. on those specific brands, with half the population.

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> He wants you to think he's comparing the last 100 years. In reality he's comparing two different time periods because U.S. acceleration ruins the wow factor.

That's an amazingly pedantic and petulant response to what appeared like a perfectly valid comparison. The US economy became the world's largest one some time in the 1920's, which means at least 70 of the 100 years in the 20th century was when the US was the world's largest economy and growing. What's wrong in comparing that to just 3 years of China's growth, a country which is still a smaller economy than the US mind you? That's still wow factor enough for a lot of people, especially non-Americans I guess.

> He wants you to think Chinese consumers have a lot of buying power. They don't. They just happen to like those specific brands.

I'm surprised you think China isn't a major luxury market. Across product categories from handbags to watches to cars, China is absolutely the #1 focus market for most brands. In fact measured by nationality, the Chinese are the world's largest luxury consumers and also the fastest growing. [1]

[1] http://www.economist.com/news/business/21579015-life-getting...

Proportion of disposable income spent on luxury brands such as these would be a good metric to look at in dismissing or accepting his claims.

FWIW, in Japan (in the metropolitan areas at least), young professional women living with their parents and making $1,500/mo often own LV bags.

It's not pedantic or petulant. The infographic is misleading, though not dramatically so.

It looks suspicious to compare the US until the year 2000 and China only starting in 2011. There's a gap of a decade. If you assume that US use is likely increasing (a decent assumption), then the statistic could be misleading.

It turns out that the US has used about a gigaton in just the last decade. That's a bit more than twice as fast as its average during the 20th century.

During the past 3 years, China used cement about 29 times faster than the US. If you aren't careful, you might think the infographic suggests that number is 48x.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/273367/consumption-of-cem...

China has a lot of people and a lot of catching up to do. Even the misleading number isn't that surprising to me. It turns out concrete lasts a while, and US usage has been spread over a century. In the long run, the integral matters more than today's derivative.

Gates' point is that concrete usage is accelerating, not that China was funkier than the US. It's hardly 'suspicious', given that context.

>The US economy became the world's largest one some time in the 1920's,

Also two world wars which left most of Europe in shambles. And yes, I am aware that Japan was in China at the time.

>> He wants you to think he's comparing the last 100 years. In reality he's comparing two different time periods because U.S. acceleration ruins the wow factor.

> That's an amazingly pedantic and petulant response to what appeared like a perfectly valid comparison. The US economy became the world's largest one some time in the 1920's, which means at least 70 of the 100 years in the 20th century was when the US was the world's largest economy and growing

According to [1], in 1900 the US had a population of ~76M, China ~496M. And according to [2] the US reached 200M in 1967, 300 2006. In In 2012 China is estimated to have a population of ~1351M, the US: ~318M in 2014.

So lets say the numbers are for 200M people * 100 ~ 20000 "M person years" for the US, and 1300M * 3 ~ 3900 "M person years" for China. So that's 6.6/3.9 "megatons/M person-years" ~ 1.7 for China and 4.5/20 "megatons/M person-years" ~ 0.225 for the US. Now I'm not sure how the original article uses the sources[3], but being conservative, it lists production numbers for US cement in 1997 and 2001 as 75 mega ton and 85 mt respectively. Now, if we take 80 * 3 * 33 we get 7.4 gt, rather more than the 4.5 gt number -- so it would appear most of the US cement was produced in later years, and so multiplying by 100 years might not be correct (and 200 M might be too low wrt population).

All in all, I'd say they're interesting numbers, but rather meaningless without more data.

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

[2] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-17-popula...

[3] http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/mcs/

>The US economy became the world's largest one some time in the 1920's

I believe it was 1890 or 1891, when it took over from England.

Britain

Former LVMH director here.

The Chinese luxury market is insane and has been popping for the past ~10 years. It's not just LV (and child companies) but across the board, with Richemont and others doing quite well. LV just happens to be very good at a) encouraging mobility in its staff so that the "experience" is consistent b) grabbing a great spot of real estate and building monstrous stores in which you could fit an Apple store or ten and c) selling product that advertises the financial status of its owner.

I'm sure you could run a similar metric with Rolex or other "conspicuous consumption" brands.

And no, it's not the poor kids sewing Nikes who are buying the top kit. The average purchasing power is very low.

Apparently the Chinese are also now consuming more French wine than the French are.

Another market that's exploded in the Far East is scotch whisky. Scottish producers are struggling to keep up with demand in markets like China, Japan and Taiwan.

That is expected, as explained by the Alchian-Allen effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchian%E2%80%93Allen_effect

If you look at the link syncerr posted elsewhere in the thread* it's still pretty much just as mindboggling, because for 2011, 2012, and the 2013 estimated value, China used 29.6 times as much cement as the US did in those three years. That's about 90 years of US worth even using current consumption, so the wow factor isn't ruined for me.

As an unrelated point, considering what things were like in most of the US in 1900, it's rather startling that the overall usage in that century in the US still seems to line up pretty closely with the current US's pace. There must've been several years of much-higher-than-current consumption (probably even than the peak in 2005, I'd guess). Would be very interesting to see a 100-year breakdown for the US.

*http://www.ficem.org/boletines/ct-2013/presentaciones2013/1-...

> "China used as much concrete in just three years as United States in one century"

I'm sorry, maybe something was changed in the article, but that quote doesn't appear there.

The quote from the (current?) article is:

"China used more cement in the last three years than the U.S. used in the entire 20th century"

Which seems like a perfectly valid comparison to understand how much the world has changed, which is what the quote was all about.

What's the issue?

>> "Chinese now consume more Guccis and Bulgaris and Louis Vuittons than the rest of the world combined."

> He wants you to think Chinese consumers have a lot of buying power. They don't. They just happen to like those specific brands. Even Japan spends more than the U.S. on those specific brands, with half the population.

I read somewhere (now forgotten where) that the U.S. is notoriously disinterested in premium/luxury brands.

That is why Apple charges ~170 USD more for the base iPad Air in Denmark than it does in the US (3699 DKR ~= 671 USD; 499 USD in US); some places, people are simply willing to pay more for a premium/luxury product. Same goes for the debate over Adobe product pricing in Australia (it was cheaper to fly to the US, buy Photoshop and fly back, than it was buying it locally).

While I have no idea about how China works in this regard, the US is clearly the outsider when it comes to comparing luxury goods consumption.

Does the 3699DKR price include Denmark's 25% VAT? Prices in the USA are quoted before sales tax. In Europe, advertised consumer prices generally include VAT.

Also, I think you meant 'uninterested' (not interested) rather than 'disinterested' (free of bias).

There is also a passage about the difference in weight of aluminum cans saving the equivalent of aluminum used in 3400 Boeing 747s, but when we hear this I think we instinctively think of the total weight of 3400 jets rather than just the aluminum in those jets. I thought that was pretty deceptive.

Isn't most of the weight of the 747 airframe Aluminum? I know newer planes use lighter-weight composite materials, but the 747 is a pretty old design.

When we imagine the 747 in our minds, I suspect that most of us picture it fully loaded with the engines, electronics, hydraulics, seats, etc since that is what we have experience being inside and "feeling" the weight as it accelerates and decelerates.

I'm not sure what fraction of the total weight the aluminum accounts for, but the phrasing I believe is intentionally misleading.

Sure, a plane consists of more than aluminium.

But since the topic of the post was aluminium usage, I think the 3400 planes number is exactly spot-on. Nobody cares how much a complete Boeing weights, because that's not the topic.

I don't think that's misleading, because I don't know many people who instinctively, as you say, have any idea what the true total weight of 3400 jets is, or of anything else that uses massive amounts of aluminum. I think the illustration is used precisely because we have so little experience with such large values.

I think I agree it's not misleading, just not informative nor helpful. A bit like saying that my car weights as much as 10 average elephants' bones combined. Is it a lot or not so much ? who knows.

So... you're saying that the effective reduction in jet-equivalent weight means that you're no longer swayed by the argument?

Given that the maximum, fully loaded take-off weight of a 747 is 400 tonnes and the aluminium makes up 200 tonnes of that, this means that even with the worst revised numbers, you're still 'saving' 1700 jets.

Are you saying that the magical number from which your opinion on the subject changes is somewhere between 1700 and 3400? Because if not, you really haven't got much call to classify it as 'pretty deceptive'.

It's not an on/off switch. Still, he's fudging numbers and images to bolster his point when, by your very point, he has no real need to. It's distasteful.

Well, maybe. But when you picture in your mind's eye the weight of a soft drink can, do you do it as an empty can or as a full one? I generally think of cans as full, not as empty.

It's just a qualitative comparison dressed up as a quantitative one. I don't think it's all that misleading - it's just "Wow! That's a lot of aluminium!"

also, weight per can in 2010 (12g) is displayed higher then the weight per can in 1980 (19g)? but at this point I don't even think I can trust the can weights... is that really from Bill Gates? Very deceiving article...

They are pictured on a set of scales. A heavy can will depress the scales more and be lower.

People seem to be trying to go out of their way to read deception into Gates' article. Can't we accept it as slightly fuzzy figures, just like all real world figures are?

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