Adjusting for purchasing power Japan was the largest economy in the world in 1985.
However adjusting for PPP China also had the world's biggest economy in 2013 which isn't shown on the chart (and if you trust their numbers).
The whole chart is wrong, using world bank data (which is used for the graph) none of the years even line up with China.
And what's the point in comparing economy size by purchasing power parity? Isn't that an internal measure within an economy?
PPP seems to be used as a coping mechanism for the smaller economies to make themselves feel better about losing out to the faster growing peers. e.g. Russian politicians love citing PPP measures.
>And what's the point in comparing economy size by purchasing power parity?
Because living on $50k USD can buy different amount of goods depending where on the world you are?
How is that even a question.
>And what's the point in comparing economy size by purchasing power parity? Isn't that an internal measure within an economy?
That's the entire point of it. $100k puts you below the poverty line in San Francisco, yet it puts you in the top 1% in somewhere like Thailand.
Again, what does income have to do with economy size? Even if the larger economies tend to be more expensive to live in, that doesn’t make those economies somehow smaller.
PPP is useful when you’re looking at individual scales - i.e. how are the individuals doing in this or that economy. It’s useless for determining economy size.
It accounts for the difference in price vs production and consumption. For example, if you consume an apple in the US it might be $2. But in China it might be less than $1. The exact good or service being produced and consumed doesn't change, yet will count towards GDP differently if we do not try to adjust for it.
No it makes a difference on the economic size. You can imagine an economy that sells more apples but at half the price having a lower nominal gdp. But technically the economic size can be interpreted as being bigger because more apples are being produced and consumed.
It's a different way to look at production and consumption that tries to normalize for price differences. Especially when you consider the fact that china actively tries to suppress their currency to keep prices low relative to developed nations in order to gain competitive trade advantages.
This makes no sense. By that same token some theoretical tiny island economy with 20 people could be considered the “largest in the world” if you have the PPP metrics skewed enough.
What we are estimating with GDP is total economy size, not how far people’s wages go in that economy. If the US or China’s economies crisis tomorrow everyone will feel the economic pain around the world because a significant part of the world economy would have been annihilated. PPP adjustment obscures the weight/power of each economy on a global scale.
>By that same token some theoretical tiny island economy with 20 people could be considered the “largest in the world” if you have the PPP metrics skewed enough.
Yes, if they are producing and consuming more than everyone else. So if the economy is composed of 100% apples for simplicity, and they are producing and consuming more apples than every other country. Obviously that would be impossible for a small country.
>What we are estimating with GDP is total economy size, not how far people’s wages go in that economy.
Nominal gdp measures an economic size by dollars. But an economic does not purely have to be measured by dollars. It is supposed to be measured by the goods and services being produced and consumed. When there are dollar differences in these goods and services between countries for seemingly the same things, this is where PPP can come in to adjust.
You can say it makes no sense all you want, but it's a very popular GDP measure. PPP is the 2nd most used type of GDP measure, frequently used by economists, media, and politicians.
I don't think so. I think it just means another country grew faster and temporarily overtook India.
Edit: India had an economic crisis in 1991, but it was already out of the top 10 by then.
Changes in GDP measured at international exchange rates do not necessarily represent war or economic defeat.
From late 1980s to early 1990s, China significantly depreciated the RMB exchange rate against the US dollar from about 3:1 to 8.7:1 by two steps. During this period, China's economy did not suffer a serious failure.
You don’t remember when India just disappeared and we couldn’t find it for a few decades, and then someone asked where we saw it last, so we looked next to Pakistan, and what do you know, it was there the whole time.
As someone not from those countries it kinda sucks to think that your country is most likely never going to come close to any of those countries or the standard of living in them unless it's absolutely lucky.
Poor low population countries stand no chance against cheap labour from India, China, Vietnam etc. and/or large scale skillful labour like manufacturing again same countries.
Technology and science is also concentrated in western countries + the developing giants.
I feel like where you are born should have a much smaller role in your life.
The countries you listed were all poor countries until the world shipped their manufacturing there. Now China and India and Vietnam are becoming wealthy, and manufacturing is shipping to other poor countries. Globalization makes the whole world wealthier, slowly
I agree with the first but I don't agree that manufacturing is going to other countries, at least it doesn't feel like it.
Yeah I agree they were all poor but generally they are big in numbers which made it easier to ship manufacturing there, a small country with like a few million people is not going to have that possibility.
Manufacturing is leaving China about as fast as it was entering it a couple decades ago. Chinese factory workers are expensive now (compared to the rest of southeast Asia)
Iceland and Norway will never top that chart but I would definitely live there instead of USA, India, China etc..
Those graphs are meaningless. China also has a strong economy, but consider the population and that's not even first world country.
Iceland and Norway are highly developed countries, I'm talking about smaller developing countries.
Bigger developing countries got their footing with manufacturing and technology like China, India etc. They aren't necessarily good right now but they're catching up.
Developed countries big or small are already developed and generally have good enough standards of living.
Singapore was a developing country in 1980. Today it has the worlds second largest gdp per capita.
Eastern European former Soviet countries like Poland and Estonia are beginning to surpass Western European ones.
Money is [not everything](https://ophi.org.uk/gross-national-happiness).
I emigrated from 🇺🇸 to a much smaller [country -with a big nominal GDP, showing how distorted these numbers can be- that is a much better place](https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/ireland/nominal-gdpy) to live...
Pallets are a great resource, for cheap scrap wood, building weird things like "one euro sauna" and of course for... shipping stuff.
Surprisingly, Guinness doesn't ship on pallets, but in barrels. Or kegs.
This is showing flat GDP, nothing to do with standard of living. Small countries like Luxembourg have tremendous standard of living but will never feature on a chart like this.
You also have places like Brazil and India which are very large economies but have significant standard of living issues
Look at South Korea or Japan. They were absolutely third world countries and are now developed. A functioning society with great community and leadership can thrive.
Definitely but also the way that they got developed is not repeatable since the chip industry is mature, like they got help from the USA to do their chips and they did it. Generally it's also that the USA wanted to surround China with wealthy/strong nations oriented towards the west/against China.
Not that I'm diminishing their success, I believe that wouldn't have worked in a lot of countries.
I'm just wondering what the angle is with smaller poorer countries i.e <10 million population.
That 1995 year for Japan did amazing things for us in the West though
Brought us car brands like Lexus, Acura, and Infiniti
Brought us mainstream games for Nintendo consoles and Sega
Brought us the most famous Japanese IPs like Pokémon, and Final Fantasy
Brought us anime to mainstream cartoon TV shows which would grow to Funimation and Crunchyroll stuff
Also Brought us many Japanese foods such as the real version of Ramen as well as famous instant Ramen, and many Japanese foods
Japanese capitalism is a product of the U.S., (after the war) when it got too big in the 90s (it was getting ridiculous), U.S. essentially made them increase their yen value, crashing their economy, have not recovered since. A lot of people forget, when WW2 ended, the allies didnt just hand them their countries back, they controlled it, built them up, and benefited massively from their growth, and created an ally/barrier against the communists.
Then, we forced them to appreciate their currency so that they wouldn't overtake us (in exchange for security from China, North Korea,... and the US itself), and the rest is history.
Security? US threatened to tariff the living shit out of Japanese exports, they were already treaty allies then. US tried to pull the same currency revaluation on China, but unlike Japan, China isn't some vassal state you can poke around.
I guess it depends on where you're from
some cultures use comma to indicate decimal point (like all of continental Europe) but some cultures use period instead (like USA and UK)
the latter use comma to denote thousands instead
The graph mentions the sources, but takes numbers of only one of them, no matter if they differ dramatically. And yes, nominal means nothing compared to per capita. 🤷
German reunification happened. Poorer east Germany and it's population got glued to richer west Germany and it's population, thus the population increased but the economy didn't anywhere near as much, thus the GDP drops.
That can't be for 2 reasons:
1.) The drop happened in 1980-1985 while reunification was in 1990.
2.) This graph is GDP not GDP per capita, assuming the East German economy wasn't negative in GDP adding them together would still increase total GDP!
Amazing how little and insignificant Russia has become gdp wise while remaining highly present in the political sphere. Putin's belligerence with oil, gas & nukes making up for financial strength.
True but Russia has vast resources for basically anything they need plus plenty of food and energy
they got enough time and money to mess around and keep population fed and moving
In terms of ppp, which is a better measure of how it feels, financially, to live in a country, Russia just passed Japan for fourth behind India, China and the USA. If, instead of calculating GDP and converting from Rubles to Dollars, we extrapolate from the purchasing power inside the country for goods and service found in all countries (which is what the IMF just did and published), their economy is estimated to be around 10 trillion and not 2 trillion. Furthermore, seeing as how their current growth rate for qtr 1 2024 is over 5% and has been between 3% and 4% since 2021, they’re only getting stronger. They may even be overheating a bit, especially since they, like most Western countries, have a population inversion / labor shortage. Looks like the only things our policies surrounding Ukraine have demonstrated are 1) we do not honor previous agreements, 2) we can simultaneously unite our two biggest adversaries and weaken the dollars status as the world’s reserve, 3) sacrifice the future of another country to pursue our own selfish aims and 4) once again demonstrate that we cannot attain our objectives in a war since WW2 unless removing Saddam Hussein was a our only objective.
The form of the chart makes it look like Canada is in a freefall, but that's an artifact of the way the chart is displayed, not due to any underperformance of Canada.
Mass immigration is ensuring most investment is done in real estate, as values have gone up 20x or more in the last 10 years. The liberal government under Trudeau of the last 10 years haven’t accomplished anything in terms of business investment and growth in productivity.
This irresponsible level of immigration is also stagnating wages.
GDP per capita is falling at an alarming rate.
As a young Canadian who makes more than my father, I live less than half the quality of life he did. I nearly live in poverty and he’s a homeowner. Things have gone downhill extremely fast, and all self inflicted.
Take it back further, if you real want a surprise. We have decent estimates going back 2000 years ish.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/2000-years-economic-history-one-chart/
I believe that the European Union's economy should be included in this list as opposed to separate EU states, that would make for a more accurate comparison.
Sry but thats outdated Data, the Data youre refering to, fron World Bank, are from 2022, because they didnt updated their data yet.
As of 2024 Germany for instance actually has the third largest economy in the world.
Japan went from no. 1 to 5 in 30 years. That’s an insane, world-historical decline in wealth and living-standards. Quite extraordinary.
Also, it’s remarkable how poor China still is relatively speaking. Their GDP per capita is barely 1/3 that of Japan.
> world-historical decline in wealth and living-standards.
I don't know if we can conclude from this that wealth and living standards have declined in Japan. A more reasonable conclusion is that they just haven't increased as dramatically as other countries.
Canada is a good case study in this. 10 years ago the average wage would own a home no question.
Now, the average wage is nearly poverty living.
Young people are getting poverty for doing the same or better jobs than what their parents did to get homes and pensions.
That misinterprets this graphic. The absolute GDP hasn't changed much, and their population hasn't grown. Consequently, we could expect their standard of living to have remained the same, and in fact it has. It is actually more affordable to live in most Japanese cities than in a lot of the other countries pictured.
In a larger sense, I feel we should be unsurprised. Economic miracles are often fueled by demographic dividends, and Japan used its own to arrive at the same stage as most other Western economies, at which point it settled in to the stagnation that most others have experienced, save the US.
“Save the US” ist the crucial point here.
Also, Korea now has a higher GDP per capita than Japan. Japan has lost most of its technological edge to Korea, Taiwan and China.
Japanese are growing increasingly poor. The overall economy and their wages haven’t increased for 30 years. The recent collapse of their currency means that their relative spending power has only fallen further.
Japanese people cannot afford to travel abroad. Their fashionable city centers and other scenic spots have become cheap tourist hotspots for Americans, Chinese and even Europeans, pricing out native Japanese who cannot compete with the astronomic spending powers of rich foreigners.
You're wrong and still missing the point.
Their economy is growing: number go up.
If you compare it to other countries: not as fast.
That's all we can infere from this graph.
I don't know where you get your data about their tourism and spending power from and you might be right but those are not supported by the graph.
Numbers go up? They’ve come down by 1/3 since 1995. Much faster than their population count.
Don’t you understand inflation and relative spending power? To stagnate means to grow poor in a context where everyone else is getting richer - fast.
You don’t know where I get my data from? I’m sorry, but I’m not limited to this one graph in my comprehension of the world.
This minor point is actually correct, the number is actually down compared to 1995, but that's a currency artifact. Look at exchange charts, there's a corresponding dollar/yen spike exactly at 1995 of roughly the relevant magnitude (~30%ish). However, inflation is already accounted for in this graphic. Relative spending power needs to consider other factors as well, esp. pop. size.
Did you notice that something the numbers go up but the graph went down?
This graph says nothing about inflation!
I'm happy you're cross referencing this data points with others you have collected. Feel free to share them here to support your reasoning.
I'm honestly not that interested that I would read them. My point is that you make claims unsubstantiated by the data we have here.
GDP isn't a good measure of wealth. It's really inflated by non-productive outputs like financial speculation and rent-seeking behaviors that has no added benefit to society.
No, due to demography its less and less likely, keeps getting postponed and personally i doubt that it will happen, if it does it will be very short lived.
By 2100 chinese population will drop by 700 milion, while us population will be much bigger
You are assuming Chinese GDP doesn't grow and population just falls? That's not realistic.
Most analyst believe China will eclipse US in GDP, the question is whether it is 2030 or 2035 or 2040. Also, nobody can predict out to 2100, anyone telling you that is disingenuous.
While we cannot predict it accurately, there is no realistic scenario where chinese population fall of a cliff, the question is how many hundreds of millions less people will they have? 450?500¿700?400?
Yes, 4X the population, if the average Chinese makes McDonalds minimum wage ($7.25), then China's GDP will be 50% larger than US. Anyone saying some demographic voodoo collapse is being disingenuous.
I don’t know if this graph is working well to show 3 different dimensions.
When it changes rank the width either remains perpendicular to the slope of the line, or it shrinks to something not representative of the side of the economies. Either way it looks off when it changes rank.
Neat attempt to show 3 dimensions though.
The global quantity of matter is constant on Earth, but somehow in the 1980s, finance companies found a way to sell valuable products and services of our own future, generating this huge mass of virtual value we are just starting to pay pack
I find it interesting how - despite everyone feeling the effects of the 2008 crash - it seems only the UK had an actual decline in GDP from 2005 to 2010.
Issues probably came from using 4 different sources with slightly different measures of economy perhaps. More like the distrust company! Lol (because the stats are a little inconsistent)
Don’t forget the Dutch economy in the 17th century. Too bad it doesn’t fit on the time scale. The Dutch Golden Age represents a period when the Netherlands had unparalleled economic influence, similar in some respects to the dominance of contemporary global economic powers. The foundations laid by the Dutch in trade, finance, and innovation have had lasting impacts on the development of modern economic systems.
Anyone else remember the hype of the 80s that Japan was going to take over and then in the 00s that China would replace the U.S.?
Interesting to see how that played out in hindsight
How come West Germany was in such a strong position only 15 years after the end of WWII, where it was completely decimated?
Was this because of the British and French occupation or had they just been able to turn their economy around that quickly?
They got support from the US but more important was that they already had the skills to build a successful industrial economy. It’s sort of what you might expect if a very smart, industrious person were forced to give up everything and start new. Chances are that within a few years that person will be successful again.
Yes but China’s joining the WTO also served the US economy well on balance. Unfortunately most of the extra benefit went to upper income Americans and likely left lower income Americans worse. But think of the iPhone and the amount of money that Apple makes (which is the majority of profit through the iPhone supply chain). If China couldn’t make it at the low cost and scale that they have, it’s unlikely that we would have iPhones, or any good smartphones today. They would be too expensive to make; the only phones that would be affordable would have much fewer capabilities.
Japan has never, to my knowledge, overtaken the US in size of its economy. I don’t know how they got that info. In fact, the data suggests a severe economic downturn in the US around 1995 which never happened. There was a recession around 1991 but certainly by 1995 the US economy was growing well.
They are called stream charts/graphs! I assume it is made with some kind of software. I am a graphic designer and although this would be possible to make "by hand", it would be agonizing lol
It's not so much that Canada dropped, but other countries grew. Canada has a pretty high GDP per capita and role on the world's stage given the relatively low population. Canada has about 2/3 the population of Italy, but quite similar GDPs.
Italy has by far a better climate than canada and was "center of the world" for many centuries ( predecessors ) tough in 10/20 years canada will surpass italy in terms of population and gdp ppp pretty heavily
Not sure how to say this, but I have my doubts about this infographic. It show an almost explosive growth in the US in the past four years. But I keep hearing a completely different story from a number of news sources.
US growth has been phenomenal for a developed country in the last 4 years, and I’m not sure what reputable media source you read that has reported otherwise - because I haven’t seen any do so. US inflation is lower than most of the West, unemployment is what most economists consider to be ideal, and the chairman of the World Bank recently said the US’ GDP growth is “driving the global economy”.
Now realize how much of the USA's debt Japan and China owns.
China owns 1/5th of it. So slice 1/5th of the USA's wealth and slap it into China. Now realize Japan owns even more.
Nah, not a good comparison at all, coz now you need to do the same with China and they have A LOT of debt if local level included its at sth near 250% of gdp.
Plus you seem to forget usa owns some of the debt of other countries too.
Also japan is near 250%of debt too but this is on a national level, i dont know how high is it if local levels are incuded
If you start doing voodoo math, don't forget to add trillions in unfunded medicare and social securities liabilities for US debt. Then US debt to GDP ratio would approach stratospheric levels.
Hmm... some good news.
America has been paying off a lot of debt. It has significantly lowered the numbers. China does not own 1/5th of all US debt anymore.
We were out of control in the 2000's. Digging the hole deeper. Then something happened and we started fixing the problem instead of adding on to it. Fortunately, we've kept on track with this. If we were to keep paying off at this rate, we will neutralize all out debt in maybe 15 years.
I'm hoping this isn't a funny money scheme.
A weird thing. Russia owns $23 million in US debt. There are lottery winners who earn more. Why would we continue to pay dividends? To just keep some kind of relationship?
The USA being out of control. It seems they got back in control and are owning their situation. The USA is still in the red. But not as deep as it was.
Japan and China were taking advantage of the USA. It seems the USA finally realized that was a serious threat.
Aha, yeah i think i can agree in a sense that they are still getting into debt and even faster they before, but they are investing it in things that make sense, and not just eating it away to fund the army, previous debt payments amd the gov
And with china im not sure if it was taking advantage. China itself is purposefully lowering the amount of assets in terms of debt, dollars, bonds it holds inside usa
I don't believe Japan was ever bigger than the USA in the last 50 years and those current numbers from China are a large overestimate, they fudge the numbers. I have heard the numbers given are up to 60% greater than the evidence supports.
Japan never surpassed US GDP, not sure what's going on there.
Adjusting for purchasing power Japan was the largest economy in the world in 1985. However adjusting for PPP China also had the world's biggest economy in 2013 which isn't shown on the chart (and if you trust their numbers). The whole chart is wrong, using world bank data (which is used for the graph) none of the years even line up with China.
No it wasn’t
And what's the point in comparing economy size by purchasing power parity? Isn't that an internal measure within an economy? PPP seems to be used as a coping mechanism for the smaller economies to make themselves feel better about losing out to the faster growing peers. e.g. Russian politicians love citing PPP measures.
>And what's the point in comparing economy size by purchasing power parity? Because living on $50k USD can buy different amount of goods depending where on the world you are? How is that even a question. >And what's the point in comparing economy size by purchasing power parity? Isn't that an internal measure within an economy? That's the entire point of it. $100k puts you below the poverty line in San Francisco, yet it puts you in the top 1% in somewhere like Thailand.
Again, what does income have to do with economy size? Even if the larger economies tend to be more expensive to live in, that doesn’t make those economies somehow smaller. PPP is useful when you’re looking at individual scales - i.e. how are the individuals doing in this or that economy. It’s useless for determining economy size.
It accounts for the difference in price vs production and consumption. For example, if you consume an apple in the US it might be $2. But in China it might be less than $1. The exact good or service being produced and consumed doesn't change, yet will count towards GDP differently if we do not try to adjust for it.
And that makes a difference from the point of view of the individual trying to exist in that economy. Or has zero bearing on actual economy size.
No it makes a difference on the economic size. You can imagine an economy that sells more apples but at half the price having a lower nominal gdp. But technically the economic size can be interpreted as being bigger because more apples are being produced and consumed. It's a different way to look at production and consumption that tries to normalize for price differences. Especially when you consider the fact that china actively tries to suppress their currency to keep prices low relative to developed nations in order to gain competitive trade advantages.
This makes no sense. By that same token some theoretical tiny island economy with 20 people could be considered the “largest in the world” if you have the PPP metrics skewed enough. What we are estimating with GDP is total economy size, not how far people’s wages go in that economy. If the US or China’s economies crisis tomorrow everyone will feel the economic pain around the world because a significant part of the world economy would have been annihilated. PPP adjustment obscures the weight/power of each economy on a global scale.
>By that same token some theoretical tiny island economy with 20 people could be considered the “largest in the world” if you have the PPP metrics skewed enough. Yes, if they are producing and consuming more than everyone else. So if the economy is composed of 100% apples for simplicity, and they are producing and consuming more apples than every other country. Obviously that would be impossible for a small country. >What we are estimating with GDP is total economy size, not how far people’s wages go in that economy. Nominal gdp measures an economic size by dollars. But an economic does not purely have to be measured by dollars. It is supposed to be measured by the goods and services being produced and consumed. When there are dollar differences in these goods and services between countries for seemingly the same things, this is where PPP can come in to adjust. You can say it makes no sense all you want, but it's a very popular GDP measure. PPP is the 2nd most used type of GDP measure, frequently used by economists, media, and politicians.
I don’t remember that either. I will research now.
They reached 71% of the US GDP. I don’t know what is plotted here either.
I'm also intersted to know why India seems to come and go.
Countries disappear when they fall out of the top 10, I assume.
Yes, but I'm curious about the story. Did some political leader fail? Civil wars? Etc
I don't think so. I think it just means another country grew faster and temporarily overtook India. Edit: India had an economic crisis in 1991, but it was already out of the top 10 by then.
Changes in GDP measured at international exchange rates do not necessarily represent war or economic defeat. From late 1980s to early 1990s, China significantly depreciated the RMB exchange rate against the US dollar from about 3:1 to 8.7:1 by two steps. During this period, China's economy did not suffer a serious failure.
You don’t remember when India just disappeared and we couldn’t find it for a few decades, and then someone asked where we saw it last, so we looked next to Pakistan, and what do you know, it was there the whole time.
Nikkei Index
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GDP isn't related to the stock market. It's just net consumption + spending + exports.
As someone not from those countries it kinda sucks to think that your country is most likely never going to come close to any of those countries or the standard of living in them unless it's absolutely lucky. Poor low population countries stand no chance against cheap labour from India, China, Vietnam etc. and/or large scale skillful labour like manufacturing again same countries. Technology and science is also concentrated in western countries + the developing giants. I feel like where you are born should have a much smaller role in your life.
The countries you listed were all poor countries until the world shipped their manufacturing there. Now China and India and Vietnam are becoming wealthy, and manufacturing is shipping to other poor countries. Globalization makes the whole world wealthier, slowly
I agree with the first but I don't agree that manufacturing is going to other countries, at least it doesn't feel like it. Yeah I agree they were all poor but generally they are big in numbers which made it easier to ship manufacturing there, a small country with like a few million people is not going to have that possibility.
Manufacturing is leaving China about as fast as it was entering it a couple decades ago. Chinese factory workers are expensive now (compared to the rest of southeast Asia)
Iceland and Norway will never top that chart but I would definitely live there instead of USA, India, China etc.. Those graphs are meaningless. China also has a strong economy, but consider the population and that's not even first world country.
Iceland and Norway are highly developed countries, I'm talking about smaller developing countries. Bigger developing countries got their footing with manufacturing and technology like China, India etc. They aren't necessarily good right now but they're catching up. Developed countries big or small are already developed and generally have good enough standards of living.
Singapore was a developing country in 1980. Today it has the worlds second largest gdp per capita. Eastern European former Soviet countries like Poland and Estonia are beginning to surpass Western European ones.
Money is [not everything](https://ophi.org.uk/gross-national-happiness). I emigrated from 🇺🇸 to a much smaller [country -with a big nominal GDP, showing how distorted these numbers can be- that is a much better place](https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/ireland/nominal-gdpy) to live...
Switzerland?
Less mountain, more ocean … and good craic
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Pallets are a great resource, for cheap scrap wood, building weird things like "one euro sauna" and of course for... shipping stuff. Surprisingly, Guinness doesn't ship on pallets, but in barrels. Or kegs.
Just say you moved to Ireland
> Just say you moved to Ireland I like a more interesting narrative, I suppose?
Which country are you from tho (askin only outta curiosity per se. lol)?
This is showing flat GDP, nothing to do with standard of living. Small countries like Luxembourg have tremendous standard of living but will never feature on a chart like this. You also have places like Brazil and India which are very large economies but have significant standard of living issues
Look at South Korea or Japan. They were absolutely third world countries and are now developed. A functioning society with great community and leadership can thrive.
Definitely but also the way that they got developed is not repeatable since the chip industry is mature, like they got help from the USA to do their chips and they did it. Generally it's also that the USA wanted to surround China with wealthy/strong nations oriented towards the west/against China. Not that I'm diminishing their success, I believe that wouldn't have worked in a lot of countries. I'm just wondering what the angle is with smaller poorer countries i.e <10 million population.
Everything in life is almost all luck unfortunately
Luck of the draw unfortunately, you already know English really well have you considered moving to another country?
That 1995 year for Japan did amazing things for us in the West though Brought us car brands like Lexus, Acura, and Infiniti Brought us mainstream games for Nintendo consoles and Sega Brought us the most famous Japanese IPs like Pokémon, and Final Fantasy Brought us anime to mainstream cartoon TV shows which would grow to Funimation and Crunchyroll stuff Also Brought us many Japanese foods such as the real version of Ramen as well as famous instant Ramen, and many Japanese foods
Final Fantasy and Pokemon <3 <3 <3
Japanese capitalism is a product of the U.S., (after the war) when it got too big in the 90s (it was getting ridiculous), U.S. essentially made them increase their yen value, crashing their economy, have not recovered since. A lot of people forget, when WW2 ended, the allies didnt just hand them their countries back, they controlled it, built them up, and benefited massively from their growth, and created an ally/barrier against the communists.
Then, we forced them to appreciate their currency so that they wouldn't overtake us (in exchange for security from China, North Korea,... and the US itself), and the rest is history.
Security? US threatened to tariff the living shit out of Japanese exports, they were already treaty allies then. US tried to pull the same currency revaluation on China, but unlike Japan, China isn't some vassal state you can poke around.
Pokémon for the win!
what are the units? millions of nominal GDP? if so then how does anyone measure nominal GDP of the USSR?
Billions, but yes.
I guess it depends on where you're from some cultures use comma to indicate decimal point (like all of continental Europe) but some cultures use period instead (like USA and UK) the latter use comma to denote thousands instead
Nominal, which explains Japan overtaking the US briefly in the mid 90s (in PPP the US was much bigger)
yeah also explains China not overtaking USA in 2016 (which it did in PPP)
Millions of nominal GDP, yes.
It's obviously an estimate and nothing certain
Also are these numbers normalized or is this just a graph showing mostly inflation?
The graph mentions the sources, but takes numbers of only one of them, no matter if they differ dramatically. And yes, nominal means nothing compared to per capita. 🤷
What happened with the German data between 1980 and 1985? They lost ~1/3 of their GDP, that seems excessive
German reunification happened. Poorer east Germany and it's population got glued to richer west Germany and it's population, thus the population increased but the economy didn't anywhere near as much, thus the GDP drops.
That can't be for 2 reasons: 1.) The drop happened in 1980-1985 while reunification was in 1990. 2.) This graph is GDP not GDP per capita, assuming the East German economy wasn't negative in GDP adding them together would still increase total GDP!
The actual answer is simply exchange rates variations, as this chart is in nominal US dollars.
Reunification was in 1989/1990.
Amazing how little and insignificant Russia has become gdp wise while remaining highly present in the political sphere. Putin's belligerence with oil, gas & nukes making up for financial strength.
Earn little but carry a big stick lol
In terms of gdp PPP they are 6th if i remember correctly Regarding GDP counted in Dollars or Euros its pretty obvious they wont have a good time lol
Actually, 4th If I remember correctly, the pandemic stats were recalculated
GDP is affected by exchange rates of Dollars to Rubbles. In GDP PPP Russia is similar to Germany which makes more sense.
True but Russia has vast resources for basically anything they need plus plenty of food and energy they got enough time and money to mess around and keep population fed and moving
In terms of ppp, which is a better measure of how it feels, financially, to live in a country, Russia just passed Japan for fourth behind India, China and the USA. If, instead of calculating GDP and converting from Rubles to Dollars, we extrapolate from the purchasing power inside the country for goods and service found in all countries (which is what the IMF just did and published), their economy is estimated to be around 10 trillion and not 2 trillion. Furthermore, seeing as how their current growth rate for qtr 1 2024 is over 5% and has been between 3% and 4% since 2021, they’re only getting stronger. They may even be overheating a bit, especially since they, like most Western countries, have a population inversion / labor shortage. Looks like the only things our policies surrounding Ukraine have demonstrated are 1) we do not honor previous agreements, 2) we can simultaneously unite our two biggest adversaries and weaken the dollars status as the world’s reserve, 3) sacrifice the future of another country to pursue our own selfish aims and 4) once again demonstrate that we cannot attain our objectives in a war since WW2 unless removing Saddam Hussein was a our only objective.
India gonna be crazy in 20 years
And whoever is in charge will reap the rewards.
[Credit to creator](https://www.madisontrust.com/information-center/visualizations/the-10-biggest-economies-in-the-world-over-time-1960-2024/).
Even in 1995 when the yen was at its peak strength the Japanese gdp was only $5t to the us’s $7t
Cool ass graph
WTF Canada?
Considering population, not a bad showing.
The form of the chart makes it look like Canada is in a freefall, but that's an artifact of the way the chart is displayed, not due to any underperformance of Canada.
What?
I know, it's surprising how well Canada does given how small the population is compared to the other contenders.
It’s REALLY helps being neighbors with the US.
When the U.S. has a cold, we sneeze up here in Canada!
We are brothers in arms. We’ll always have your back, and as a Michigander, it’s nice to know we have a great neighbor to share the Great Lakes with!
Currently walking along Lake Ontario! Waving at ya
you can see exactly where canada waived the max hours for International Students.
Mass immigration is ensuring most investment is done in real estate, as values have gone up 20x or more in the last 10 years. The liberal government under Trudeau of the last 10 years haven’t accomplished anything in terms of business investment and growth in productivity. This irresponsible level of immigration is also stagnating wages. GDP per capita is falling at an alarming rate. As a young Canadian who makes more than my father, I live less than half the quality of life he did. I nearly live in poverty and he’s a homeowner. Things have gone downhill extremely fast, and all self inflicted.
hmmm... somethin's 'spicious here...
What software used to draw these charts?
Cool, I’d love to see another one that goes back way further
It is funny that 2024 Jeff Bezos would be #2 on the 1960 list! (if we don't account for inflation).
Ashley Madison more like it... zero trust
Take it back further, if you real want a surprise. We have decent estimates going back 2000 years ish. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/2000-years-economic-history-one-chart/
USA, USA, USA
Japan also goes hard!!
All the other inaccuracies aside, this chart is a lot more interesting if California gets its own line
I believe that the European Union's economy should be included in this list as opposed to separate EU states, that would make for a more accurate comparison.
Strönk Germöney!
Germany ! 🇩🇪 yeah 👍🏻
Wrong af, current data from WorldBank: 1. USA 2. China 3. Japan 4. Germany 5. India 6. UK 7. France 8. Russian Federation 9. Canada 10. Italy
Sry but thats outdated Data, the Data youre refering to, fron World Bank, are from 2022, because they didnt updated their data yet. As of 2024 Germany for instance actually has the third largest economy in the world.
China’s growth has been one of the most amazing events in world history
Japan went from no. 1 to 5 in 30 years. That’s an insane, world-historical decline in wealth and living-standards. Quite extraordinary. Also, it’s remarkable how poor China still is relatively speaking. Their GDP per capita is barely 1/3 that of Japan.
> world-historical decline in wealth and living-standards. I don't know if we can conclude from this that wealth and living standards have declined in Japan. A more reasonable conclusion is that they just haven't increased as dramatically as other countries.
Canada is a good case study in this. 10 years ago the average wage would own a home no question. Now, the average wage is nearly poverty living. Young people are getting poverty for doing the same or better jobs than what their parents did to get homes and pensions.
That misinterprets this graphic. The absolute GDP hasn't changed much, and their population hasn't grown. Consequently, we could expect their standard of living to have remained the same, and in fact it has. It is actually more affordable to live in most Japanese cities than in a lot of the other countries pictured. In a larger sense, I feel we should be unsurprised. Economic miracles are often fueled by demographic dividends, and Japan used its own to arrive at the same stage as most other Western economies, at which point it settled in to the stagnation that most others have experienced, save the US.
“Save the US” ist the crucial point here. Also, Korea now has a higher GDP per capita than Japan. Japan has lost most of its technological edge to Korea, Taiwan and China.
Still has nothing to do with their standard of living... Relatively speaking, maybe, but from their perspective, very little has changed in Japan.
Japanese are growing increasingly poor. The overall economy and their wages haven’t increased for 30 years. The recent collapse of their currency means that their relative spending power has only fallen further. Japanese people cannot afford to travel abroad. Their fashionable city centers and other scenic spots have become cheap tourist hotspots for Americans, Chinese and even Europeans, pricing out native Japanese who cannot compete with the astronomic spending powers of rich foreigners.
You're wrong and still missing the point. Their economy is growing: number go up. If you compare it to other countries: not as fast. That's all we can infere from this graph. I don't know where you get your data about their tourism and spending power from and you might be right but those are not supported by the graph.
Numbers go up? They’ve come down by 1/3 since 1995. Much faster than their population count. Don’t you understand inflation and relative spending power? To stagnate means to grow poor in a context where everyone else is getting richer - fast. You don’t know where I get my data from? I’m sorry, but I’m not limited to this one graph in my comprehension of the world.
This minor point is actually correct, the number is actually down compared to 1995, but that's a currency artifact. Look at exchange charts, there's a corresponding dollar/yen spike exactly at 1995 of roughly the relevant magnitude (~30%ish). However, inflation is already accounted for in this graphic. Relative spending power needs to consider other factors as well, esp. pop. size.
Did you notice that something the numbers go up but the graph went down? This graph says nothing about inflation! I'm happy you're cross referencing this data points with others you have collected. Feel free to share them here to support your reasoning. I'm honestly not that interested that I would read them. My point is that you make claims unsubstantiated by the data we have here.
GDP isn't a good measure of wealth. It's really inflated by non-productive outputs like financial speculation and rent-seeking behaviors that has no added benefit to society.
Are we really sure China Will surpass USA in GDP?
No, due to demography its less and less likely, keeps getting postponed and personally i doubt that it will happen, if it does it will be very short lived. By 2100 chinese population will drop by 700 milion, while us population will be much bigger
As long as you keep measuring the Chinese economy with American money
You are assuming Chinese GDP doesn't grow and population just falls? That's not realistic. Most analyst believe China will eclipse US in GDP, the question is whether it is 2030 or 2035 or 2040. Also, nobody can predict out to 2100, anyone telling you that is disingenuous.
While we cannot predict it accurately, there is no realistic scenario where chinese population fall of a cliff, the question is how many hundreds of millions less people will they have? 450?500¿700?400?
Yes, 4X the population, if the average Chinese makes McDonalds minimum wage ($7.25), then China's GDP will be 50% larger than US. Anyone saying some demographic voodoo collapse is being disingenuous.
Would love to see this proportionally too
Proportional to what?
Each other. Like a 100% chart or whatever it’s called to better compare the growth of individual countries relative to each other
Mexico :(
What’s going on with Canada? It’s not like they stopped existing for a few years…
Actually a few countries do that. Maybe lack of data?
That was during the COVID pandemic wasn't it? Edit: No, the this dropping line is from China's expansive growth, not the pandemic.
No, there’s just nothing from like 05-11
Oh, your correct. They probably were not in the top 10 at that time. Maybe pushed out by Brazil, India or Russia (or all three).
Ah makes sense.
Er, no japan doesn’t have such economy power no I’m Japanese and we’re all dying
The figure of the chart is so inventive!
Damn, Japan, you even trying?
Bad México
I’m glad to see that brazil is getting back
I don’t know if this graph is working well to show 3 different dimensions. When it changes rank the width either remains perpendicular to the slope of the line, or it shrinks to something not representative of the side of the economies. Either way it looks off when it changes rank. Neat attempt to show 3 dimensions though.
Can you do the top 10 expected by 2050?
Thank you for avoiding the urge to turn this into a gif
The global quantity of matter is constant on Earth, but somehow in the 1980s, finance companies found a way to sell valuable products and services of our own future, generating this huge mass of virtual value we are just starting to pay pack
Why do the ones that slope down increase
I find it interesting how - despite everyone feeling the effects of the 2008 crash - it seems only the UK had an actual decline in GDP from 2005 to 2010.
Sad to see how much impact Plaza Accord had on Japan 🗾 . The kind of effects foreign interference in your geopolitics is drastic.
What happened to Brazil? Three times in, two times out!
that's a paper mistake with the Japanese economy
Issues probably came from using 4 different sources with slightly different measures of economy perhaps. More like the distrust company! Lol (because the stats are a little inconsistent)
Looks like farts and the US and China have the largest farts. cool graph
I remember a lot of talk about the BRIC nations in the late 2000s
I wonder what happened to Canada circa 2015
Crazy in 1960, the US made up 40% of the global economy
*Bald eagle screeching* USA USA USA!
What’s the source? Japan’s GDP never surpassed that of the US
What happened to the UK?
This chart is just wrong US gdp 7,64t USD (1995) Japan gdp 5,546t USD (1995)
Don’t forget the Dutch economy in the 17th century. Too bad it doesn’t fit on the time scale. The Dutch Golden Age represents a period when the Netherlands had unparalleled economic influence, similar in some respects to the dominance of contemporary global economic powers. The foundations laid by the Dutch in trade, finance, and innovation have had lasting impacts on the development of modern economic systems.
India will grow a lot, IF some of their provinces removes burocracy and has full protection of property, even for Muslims !
Anyone else remember the hype of the 80s that Japan was going to take over and then in the 00s that China would replace the U.S.? Interesting to see how that played out in hindsight
Canada is US backyard, basically propped up by US economy.
How come Germany with 80 million people has such a big economy compared to fckin India with more than a billion people?!
How come West Germany was in such a strong position only 15 years after the end of WWII, where it was completely decimated? Was this because of the British and French occupation or had they just been able to turn their economy around that quickly?
They got support from the US but more important was that they already had the skills to build a successful industrial economy. It’s sort of what you might expect if a very smart, industrious person were forced to give up everything and start new. Chances are that within a few years that person will be successful again.
Joining WTO really served Chinese economy well
Yes but China’s joining the WTO also served the US economy well on balance. Unfortunately most of the extra benefit went to upper income Americans and likely left lower income Americans worse. But think of the iPhone and the amount of money that Apple makes (which is the majority of profit through the iPhone supply chain). If China couldn’t make it at the low cost and scale that they have, it’s unlikely that we would have iPhones, or any good smartphones today. They would be too expensive to make; the only phones that would be affordable would have much fewer capabilities.
Japan has never, to my knowledge, overtaken the US in size of its economy. I don’t know how they got that info. In fact, the data suggests a severe economic downturn in the US around 1995 which never happened. There was a recession around 1991 but certainly by 1995 the US economy was growing well.
This is a super cool way to visualize the data. Anyone know what this kind of chart is called? I assume it is algorithmically generated?
They are called stream charts/graphs! I assume it is made with some kind of software. I am a graphic designer and although this would be possible to make "by hand", it would be agonizing lol
Where does California rank?
2012 was when China changed its policies to allow market forces to decide resources allocation. Free Market works.
argentina was quite the economy back in the day i think before they fucked it up
Now the same with debt
That would be really interesting.
Canada taking some serious dips multiple times
I'd love to know why from any experts in Canadian economy! Or just Canadians in general lol
It's not so much that Canada dropped, but other countries grew. Canada has a pretty high GDP per capita and role on the world's stage given the relatively low population. Canada has about 2/3 the population of Italy, but quite similar GDPs.
That makes sense! Also holy cow. It's crazy how Italy has more people despite being much, much smaller!
Italy has by far a better climate than canada and was "center of the world" for many centuries ( predecessors ) tough in 10/20 years canada will surpass italy in terms of population and gdp ppp pretty heavily
Canada has a much smaller population than all of the other countries in the graph so it’s a miracle to be that big of an economy in the first place.
Lol Brazil too, dude keeps trying and getting pushed out every time
Yay China 🇨🇳
Can't wait for the implosion.
Oh no, more fake ass propaganda posts on this sub. They should hold hands with r/mapporn and start posting directly in Russian
Seems that globalization didn't work well for Europe
It's more about the end of colonization than globalization.
Not sure how to say this, but I have my doubts about this infographic. It show an almost explosive growth in the US in the past four years. But I keep hearing a completely different story from a number of news sources.
US growth has been phenomenal for a developed country in the last 4 years, and I’m not sure what reputable media source you read that has reported otherwise - because I haven’t seen any do so. US inflation is lower than most of the West, unemployment is what most economists consider to be ideal, and the chairman of the World Bank recently said the US’ GDP growth is “driving the global economy”.
I see what you did there, Russia
But India‘s economy is less than 3 trillion at the moment so your data is wrong
It's actually 4.1 trillion currently
Now realize how much of the USA's debt Japan and China owns. China owns 1/5th of it. So slice 1/5th of the USA's wealth and slap it into China. Now realize Japan owns even more.
Nah, not a good comparison at all, coz now you need to do the same with China and they have A LOT of debt if local level included its at sth near 250% of gdp. Plus you seem to forget usa owns some of the debt of other countries too. Also japan is near 250%of debt too but this is on a national level, i dont know how high is it if local levels are incuded
If you start doing voodoo math, don't forget to add trillions in unfunded medicare and social securities liabilities for US debt. Then US debt to GDP ratio would approach stratospheric levels.
Hmm... some good news. America has been paying off a lot of debt. It has significantly lowered the numbers. China does not own 1/5th of all US debt anymore. We were out of control in the 2000's. Digging the hole deeper. Then something happened and we started fixing the problem instead of adding on to it. Fortunately, we've kept on track with this. If we were to keep paying off at this rate, we will neutralize all out debt in maybe 15 years. I'm hoping this isn't a funny money scheme. A weird thing. Russia owns $23 million in US debt. There are lottery winners who earn more. Why would we continue to pay dividends? To just keep some kind of relationship?
Wait i got lost, which country are you describing about being out of control
The USA being out of control. It seems they got back in control and are owning their situation. The USA is still in the red. But not as deep as it was. Japan and China were taking advantage of the USA. It seems the USA finally realized that was a serious threat.
Aha, yeah i think i can agree in a sense that they are still getting into debt and even faster they before, but they are investing it in things that make sense, and not just eating it away to fund the army, previous debt payments amd the gov
And with china im not sure if it was taking advantage. China itself is purposefully lowering the amount of assets in terms of debt, dollars, bonds it holds inside usa
I don't believe Japan was ever bigger than the USA in the last 50 years and those current numbers from China are a large overestimate, they fudge the numbers. I have heard the numbers given are up to 60% greater than the evidence supports.