The $88 Trillion World Economy Makes Clear a Lot of Facts
20 September 2020
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The U.S. accounts for one quarter of the entire world economy. It used to be said that “All roads lead to Rome”. The modern rephrasing would have to be, “All financial roads lead to the U.S.”
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The U.S. is followed by China, Japan, Germany, India, United Kingdom, France, Italy – the complete list of 8 countries with economies of $2T or more.
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Brazil and Canada lead off the sub-$2T countries, and when added to the first 8 countries, include more than two-thirds of the world economy. The others in the over-$1T group include (in declining order) Russia, South Korea, Mexico, Australia, Spain, and Indonesia.
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If you divide the economy by the population, you get the per capita amount. That would give you an estimate of average wealth per person. Obviously, the per capita in the U.S., with 300 million people, would be the highest ($71,000+); the U.S. is the good news. But dividing China’s by the 1.5 billion people there ($9,500+), or India’s by the 1 billion people there ($2,880), you would get a very low amount – poverty-level.
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The economy of little South Korea is about on par with that of Russia, which possesses about 1/7th of the Earth’s land mass. That illustrates how much the degree of freedom, and its economic extension, capitalism, that exists in a country can so greatly affect the well-being of a country’s population. Just having the resources (and labor – putting the lie to Marxism) is not a deciding factor (as Japan, with no resources, has proven since World War II).
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The same can be said for the U.S., compared to the rest of the world. Countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa have had a head-start measured in thousands of years. The upstart United States was nothing but a couple of small colonies 400 years ago. But freedom was born with the founding of the U.S. Freedom and capitalism have clearly out-performed all of the monarchies, dictatorships (Marxist or otherwise), and other variants of oppression so devastatingly that it should be obvious to anyone which is better.
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Note that in the Middle East, only Israel and two oil-producing countries are even ranked.
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Africa, with some of the most oppressive and abusive governments on the planet, as well as its endemic slavery, is glaringly absent from the list, with only South Africa, Nigeria (oil), and Egypt being stable enough to show an economic presence. No surprise: all three have been the most heavily influenced by their interaction with the greater freedom of European and American countries and civilizing cultures.
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Venezuela would have been a shining star high on the list 20 years ago. Its socialism has reduced it to abject poverty in just two decades.
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The “Rest of the World”, too small to be shown, includes about 200 countries, which altogether are just under 10% of the world economy.
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Oil-rich Iran, which is not on the chart, with its oppressive state-run economy, is according to one estimate only 0.37% of the world economy, smaller than Israel’s 0.45%. Again, oppression fails, and freedom and capitalism work better.
Call it "Western Culture" if you will, say it with disdain if you like. But freedom and its economic extension capitalism work better than anything else.
A country's politics is what makes freedom and capitalism possible or not.
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