When China only catches up to 25% of the US GDP per capita (where Brazil and Russia are), it will overtake the US. The the US will have to boast about its per-capita GDP, which really isn't that good (compared to many other OECD countries, most importantly Canada).
I get the impression that a lot of US things go unchallenged (by most Americans) because they are "number 1", so they are obviously doing everything right.
It would help your argument to get your facts right. The only OECD countries ahead of the US in GDP per capita are Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland. Canada's is about 85% of the US (source http://stats.oecd.org/). It's true that many things go unchallenged by most Americans and there's no question to this American that we don't do everything right, but facts need to be respected.
Obviously, if you have a few billionaires and a lot of peasants the GDP PPP will be high. You'll have a low cost of living (due to low labor costs, and plenty of supply), and a high average GDP (due to the billionaire).
Median GDP (PPP or otherwise) won't be so great, though.
I'm not saying the US sucks, just that once you stop looking at aggregate GDP you actually have to start thinking.
I agree with you entirely that if you're trying to measure how well off the majority of Americans as opposed to, say, Swiss, you should look at median income statistics as a much better measure. However, well-off-ness isn't what GDP per capita (PPP or otherwise) is trying to measure.
On a side note the best measure of income inequality is the GINI index. The US GINI index is an abysmal 45, contrasted to 33.7 for Switzerland. But, China's is 48 which is staggeringly high for a nominally socialist country.
I don't quite get it. Why should we pretend Warren Buffett et al. don't exist in this context? If these billionaires are a part of the US economy, they contribute to its strength.
In some sense, many billionaires stop being a citizen of their home country and become a "citizen of the world." This also goes for multinational corporations.
Warren Buffett is a notable exception to this, however, being "bullish on America."
> remember Bobby Kennedy (or his speechwriter): "The Gross National Product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes, and ambulance to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and jails for the people who break them. GNP includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and missiles and nuclear warheads... And if GNP includes all this, there is much that it does not comprehend. It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, or the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials... GNP measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile; and it can tell us everything about America - except whether we are proud to be Americans."
Your point is valid. This is why I (an American) generally prefer the social choices that have been made in Europe to those that have been made in the US.
Las Vegas has long been considered the world’s top gaming destination. Is that still true? Gaming revenue in Macau [China] this year probably will exceed $20 billion, which is a little over three times the size of Las Vegas ... Las Vegas still has more diversity in its various offerings, but it’s hard to say that it’s king of the hill in gambling.
But what matters most is quality of life per capita. In that aspect, the US is IMHO slightly behind most of western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zeland, etc. Mostly because of wealth inequality.
Duly noted, but "precision" in this sense is a red-herring. The point of the Macau example is 3x. In 2006 it was 1x. I will trade you $20B for $6B, and then worry about PPP. :D
> When China only catches up to 25% of the US GDP per capita (where Brazil and Russia are), it will overtake the US. The the US will have to boast about its per-capita GDP, which really isn't that good (compared to many other OECD countries, most importantly Canada).
Here's a game-plan for China. Catch up to 30-35% of US GDP per capita. This will give them a huge operating margin for competition in space colonization. Be the civilization to colonize Mars. The expansion of human civilizations into the solar system will be analogous to the western nation's era of exploration and colonization. The new civilization on Mars will incubate new ideas and cultures in the 21st century much as the "new world" did centuries before.
As custodians of Chinese civilization, I don't see a better move for the Chinese government.
Discovering the New World certainly propelled Europeans to wealth, what with looting silver from Peru, the Atlantic slave trade, opening the Mississippi river basin, the US taking control of the ocean's chokepoints in WW2. But it's hard to see how colonizing Mars will help "the Chinese government". A better move for advancing "Chinese civilization" would be to encourage Chinese people to immigrate to other nations, such as the US, Australia, South Africa, Chile, rather than Mars or the Moon.
But that's already happening... from 1990 to 2010, the ethnic Chinese population of the USA rose from 1 million to 3m, now 1% of Americans. It's already 5% of Canada, and 3% of Australia. Many individual regions and cities around the world have much higher percentages, e.g. Northern California, Vancouver. The diasporas of Singapore, Malaysia, and elsewhere in S.E.Asia advance Chinese civilization, but not the Chinese government much.
> Discovering the New World certainly propelled Europeans to wealth, what with looting silver from Peru, the Atlantic slave trade, opening the Mississippi river basin, the US taking control of the ocean's chokepoints in WW2. But it's hard to see how colonizing Mars will help "the Chinese government".
Do you think any of those things were easy to see for Europeans before the fact?
Colonizing Mars probably won't directly help the Chinese Government. I never said that it would; you are putting words in my mouth here. However, colonizing Mars would certainly help Chinese Civilization gain ascendancy in a pan-solar civilization.
Mars will probably become the economic center of such a solar-system spanning civilization. One can grow crops there. (A workable amount of insolation in a 24 hour cycle.) There are resources there that can support many industrial processes we already base our civilization on. The gravity is low enough that getting from the surface of Mars to Orbit won't stretch the bounds of a materials technology based on molecular bonds. (Whereas the gravity well of Earth is just large enough to make this really obnoxious.) Given these and other factors, Mars will be well positioned as the largest population center, and largest agricultural and industrial power other than Earth. At the same time, it will be several times more accessible than Earth for most of the solar system.
> colonizing Mars would certainly help Chinese Civilization gain ascendancy in a pan-solar civilization.
Different presently-recogized civilizations, such as Western, Muslim, Indian, and Chinese civilizations, will be indistinguishable by the time a pan-solar civilization arises.
> Mars will be well positioned as the largest population center, and largest agricultural and industrial power other than Earth
I believe people who grow up in one gravity zone can live for a long time in a weaker gravity zone, but can't adapt at all to a stronger gravity. People born on Earth could move to Mars to live, but people born on Mars couldn't live on Earth. If true, that gives support to your argument. But perhaps Titan or some asteroid would also become a large industrial power.
> Different presently-recogized civilizations, such as Western, Muslim, Indian, and Chinese civilizations, will be indistinguishable by the time a pan-solar civilization arises.
I very much doubt it. We will have distances where lightspeed comms are delayed by minutes or hours. It will take longer than a century for the differences to dissolve, and there will be enough accelerated cultural change to produce more differences with more distance to preserve them.
The economics of agriculture combined with the smaller gravity well will ensure Mars has the highest population. I agree that Titan, with local access to the energy wealth of Saturn, may well be a major power also.
I'm not sure how relevant GDP per capita is in measuring the fortunes of states if a company in one state may be heavily invested in another (i.e. a US-based company may be investing more heavily in China than the US).
$15 Trillion GDP, 312 Million people.
When China only catches up to 25% of the US GDP per capita (where Brazil and Russia are), it will overtake the US. The the US will have to boast about its per-capita GDP, which really isn't that good (compared to many other OECD countries, most importantly Canada).
I get the impression that a lot of US things go unchallenged (by most Americans) because they are "number 1", so they are obviously doing everything right.