A Different Political View

For a minute let's look at the most powerful economies on earth. As it is my blog, and I am Canadian, I will make it a top-eleven list.

These are, (GDP)
1 USA $15.68 trillion
2 China $8.36 trillion
3 Japan $5.96 trillion
4 Germany $3.4 trillion
5 France $2.61 trillion
6 UK $2.44 trillion
7 Brazil $2,25 trillion
8 Russia $2.01 trillion
9 Italy $2.01 trillion
10 India $2.01 trillion
11 Canada $1.82 trillion

How does that work out on a per-capita basis? Of course, I am only talking about the countries on the list of economic big players.

1 Canada $52.218
2 USA $49,965
3 Japan $46,720
4 Germany $41,514
5 France $39,771
6 UK $38,514
7 Italy $33,048
8 Russia $14,037
9 Brazil $11,339
10 China $6,188
11 India $1,489

What these two tables tell us is interesting. The gross GDP list tells us who the big players seem to be, and the second tells us which ones are too poor to really present a powerful competitive threat to anybody else on the list.

For example, India makes the tally of economic giants only if the first list is considered. They have an impressive $2.01 trillion dollar GDP, but that only works out to $1,489 per person.

Should the number one country on list one (the USA) need to worry about the economic threat posed by India. I wouldn't think so. Should they worry about China as a competitor, or Brazil, or Russia?

These countries really don't fill the same kind of niche that the USA does, or that the USA wants to fill.

Who then, are the competitive economic super power?

Let's drop the poor nations off. This leaves;

1 USA
2 Japan
3 Germany
4 France
5 UK
6 Italy
7 Canada

The idea should be competition between these nations.

Right-wing people in North America (Canada and the USA) think the way to compete is to cut social programs. This is quite ridiculous.

All except the USA have universal health care, and by not having it has not allowed the USA to pull ahead.

Let's say one of these countries decides to ditch all social programs. For argument, let's make that country be Canada.

We would become a nation of unprotected workers, old people needing to work until they drop, no consumer protection, or environmental programs, or job security. It doesn't sound like a very pleasant place to live or to work. Countries without social programs do not exist on the top 7 list at all. They are all much, much farther down the list, and are relatively insignificant.

I took both of my lists from nationmaster.com, which gets all of their information from the CIA World Fact-book.

You can keep going down the list of top GDP countries, and match that with the list for GDP per capita. You will not find any country that is both significant overall, and on a per-person basis without strong social programs.

Perhaps both left and right-leaning people should adopt some sort of level-playing-field view of social programs.

Let's say one of those countries decides to give every citizen a summer home in the tropics, they should say to themselves, "this is out of line with what our competitors are doing, and will likely hurt us." A country resisting universal health care should also say, "this is out of line, and will hurt our people, and hurt our ability to compete as result."

Welfare? Same test. Giving the needy $1,000,000 a year is out of line and is too much, just as providing the poor with nothing is also out of line, and too little.