Quote:
Originally Posted by bizaro86
I mean, how else would you compare economic performance across countries? GDP per capita seems like the best way to do that, doesn't it?
Otherwise you're not adjusting for the size of different countries, which is obviously ridiculous.
Eg the GDP of India is ~70% larger than the GDP of Canada, but India is a much poorer country. Once you adjust for the 35X larger population that becomes obvious (and would match the lived experience of the average person in both places).
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Sure, but it is a gross tool that doesn't take into account individual differences. Yes it can give a quick snapshot and it is easy to compare India to Canada, but when you talking about tenths of a percent difference between peer countries, it doesn't take enough information to give a clear conclusion that one is truly not keeping up.
For example, opendoor's post about debt to GDP increasing as a way to increase GDP per capita. Or if you take into Fuzz's immigration point, I don't know how our peers are doing workforce wise, but Canada has been losing its working % of population as it increases immigration of students and families. If Germany's population grows 2% with 1.8% being working age people, and Canada's grows 2% but only 1% is working age people, that does effect how I would look at GDP/capita.
I don't have those specific figures, but I also want to look at more recent data than a FI report showing numbers for the past 25 years.
GDP is great at showing increase in overall capital, but it doesn't do a good job at describing the strength of the economy. And adding a per capita doesn't suddenly make it better for comparison, it takes a whole lot of aggregated data to give any indication of how an economy is doing.
Trump won on the economy because the average person in America as struggling, but if you look at the GDP then the economy has been rolling along great.