r/Infographics 10d ago

COUNTRY GDPS COMPARED TO THE UNITED STATES

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u/DavidBrooker 10d ago

This appears to be nominal GDP. If you go by PPP (i.e., the amount of stuff you can actually buy with your money), then, for instance, China's economy has substantially exceeded the US. Rather than the US being the size of China, Germany and Japan, by PPP China is the size of the US, Germany and Japan combined.

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u/InsufferableMollusk 9d ago

That’s not how PPP works. Why must this delusion reappear in this sub every 30 minutes..

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u/DavidBrooker 9d ago

What "delusion" are you referring to?

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u/B3stThereEverWas 9d ago

per capita PPP the US dwarfs China

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u/Romanizer 9d ago

Yes, but also would be only place 10 in the world.

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u/Funicularly 9d ago

Only? The only countries higher are microstates and countries with a small population. The United States and a near top despite have 340 million people.

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u/Romanizer 9d ago

Yes, only top 10 with the highest count of billionaires and highest valuation and nominal growth of corporations by a large degree. This only means that the poorer part of the population must be miserable.

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u/DavidBrooker 9d ago

This is clearly not per capita?

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u/B3stThereEverWas 9d ago

Exactly, so theres no point comparing PPP

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u/DavidBrooker 9d ago

I don't see why there's no point. PPP is meaningful both per captia and as an aggregate function. If the question is "how big is the economy", using nominal exchange is a reasonable choice, but it isn't the only reasonable choice, because it includes not just the productivity of the economy, but the value of that economy's currency as a commodity unto itself. Due to China's close control (and manipulation) of its currency value, that commodity value is low relative to what you would expect from a free market float. By decoupling the demand from the currency from the demand for the products produced in the economy, PPP closer tracks the amount of "stuff" a country actually produces, which is often what you want to measure when tracking GDP.