Just a pretty standard chart. Again, note China, India and Ireland are at the top. These three have liberalized their economies more than most, pursuing pro-capitalist policies, and shucks howdy, look at that, they're growing.
Will the insane complexity of economics ever cease?
9 comments:
Hey Buck,
well a couple things that will provide a little context;
1. If it's public television doing the reporting when they say 50 cents an hour, that means "we're a bunch of lefties that didn't have the skills to make it into the private sector and thusly we don't know what the hell purchasing power partiy is."
So 50 cents an hour in the hinterlands of China is more like $4/hr here.
2. Even though China has technically the 2nd largest economy, it also has 1/5th the world's population and an income per capita of, I don't know, about $5,000. Starting from such a low level, once China started implementing free market reforms and using advances in technology, it isn't really that hard to grow at 10% per year from such a low level. For example Iraq's economy is the fastest growing economy, that's becomes it is growing from a bombed out invaded base, you couldn't help but grow.
3. All this being said, there is a reasonably large disparity between standards of living the rural Chinese have expeirenced vs urban Chinese. BUT EVERYBODY standards of living has increased. There was a report at the UN that IMMEDIATELY harped on this because it doesn't matter if EVERYBODY is better off, all that matters is that SOME people are MORE better off than OTHERS, which rationalizes socialism in the simpleton's world.
Hey "Captain Cool" or should I say "Batfink" or "Sanjay" since your profile was set up 10 minutes ago;
http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2006/02/childish-psychology-of-leftin-china.html
And to shoot your other two points;
1. 3.6 Pounds per day, DID YOU ADJUST IT FOR PPP which was my entire point.
2. GDP per capita is a great measure of standards of living and certainly beats measures purposely designed to redistribute wealth like the HDI.
Any other stupid questions or posts?
I sincerely doubt they adjusted for PPP. Mercer is looking at the wage the company has to pay. They don't care what kind of purchasing power it gives the Chinese. Trust me, it's more like $4/hr they're making there.
And as for GDP per capita, yes, Luxembourg is on top of the heap, Norway ties the US. Sadly, Luxembourg is the only real legitimate country that beats the US in standards of living.
HEre's why Norway is anywhere near the US;
http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2006/06/norway-part-2.html
You know, it's not like PPP adjusted GDP per capita is all that secretive: according to the Cia World Factbook, the average Chinaman (can't remember if that's a racist term or not. Meh.) earns the equivalent of $6,800 per year. Dividing this by 50 work weeks and 40 hours per week gives $3.25/hour, which is roughly what the Captain claimed.
Of course, assuming two weeks of vacation and a forty-hour work week may not be reasonable (especially in the rural parts of China), but even if the number of hours worked is considerably more than that, $4/hour is a pretty decent estimate: much better than 3.6 pounds ($6.61) a day.
Damn I'm good. I just guessed it based on what I've seen in various articles. I just knew intuitively 50 cents an hour wasn't adjusted for PPP.
The Department of Economics, at University of Chicago states that the PPP adjusted hourly wage in china is $0.42.
Who shall we believe the CIA and a blog? Or the BBC, an international consulting company and the University of chicago.
The figure of $6,800 per year rom the CIA fact book, is acutally GDP per capita, and not average earnings. So the calcuation outlined is actually the gdp per capita per hour. Not hourly wage.
Coolio, send me a link to that U of C site. It's becoming annoying enough now I'm going to go check the OECD.
Wait, never mind, found it.
http://economics.uchicago.edu/download/bigmac.pdf
You misread the chart.
Yes, it's 42 cents, but that was NOT adjusted for PPP. One column over, it's listed at $1.74/hr.
That was 2000, I'm sure wages have gone up since that time, now whether it's $4 or $3 or $5, ehhh, but damn I still got game.
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