I’ve been looking at a chart of GDP per year that has a list of populations in millions here on this wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_United_States. And I saw a correlation between GDP growth and population size. GDP expanded in the 70s when the population reached beyond 200 million. Let’s throw out all traditional methods of looking at the economy for a second. Could it be that China just has so much GDP because it has so many people, and, all the developed nations have so much more GDP than undeveloped nations because they have growing populations? Obviously there would have to be some exemptions from this rule, I would think (like with the case of Japan)… but what do you think?
Do you mean GDP or GDP per capita? It’s rather obvious that a more numerous population means a greater GDP, since a bigger population generally means a bigger labor force.
Krazy Kaju
Do you mean GDP or GDP per capita? It’s rather obvious that a more numerous population means a greater GDP, since a bigger population generally means a bigger labor force.
I guess I would be talking about both. I was just looking at the chart and I think I want to do a bit more research in this regards, but, like to me I don’t know why people seem to think that all of these nations have realy high GDP because of their economic structure or their financial structure. Like a lot of people say that the current system of paper money we have right now is indespensible, and, that before when people didn’t have so much money the GPD was far less. People could make that argument. But I think that if you looked at the growth rate for developed countries and compared that to GDP, you would see that perhaps economics doesn’t play much of a factor, and it’s really the population matters (how much population they have).
So, in a sense, we could make the case that the reason we have so much more GPD now than we did in the 19th century was not because they lacked a productive work force. But it was because they lacked a work force, as you’ve said, the more the population the larger the labor force.
Why don’t more people look at it that way?
More labor doesn’t mean that every unit of labor is more productive.
Anyway, consider this: China and India both have populations three times the size of the United States, yet the US has a higher GDP and GDP per capita than both countries. On the other hand, countries such as Switzerland, Singapore, and Luxembourg all have very high GDP per capita.
Consider this: The government makes lipsyncing illegal and then hires parasitic civil servants to go to pop concernts to supervize the observance of the new crazy law. Violators are given the death sentence. Incomes go up, population goes down and GWhateverP goes up! Yipee!
I have a better one. Consider this: In CrazyLand, the statesmen legalize murder. As a result, more people sign up to become hired civil servant assassins. Incomes go up, population goes down and GWhateverP goes up! Yipee!
I do not mean to troll. I am being very serious. What I mean to point out is that the calculation of GDP is woefully arbitrary and there is no intelligent reason to identify it with the “size” of an economy. In fact, there really is no objective way to measure the “size” of an economy at all.
IIRC GDP is not an abritrary figure, but it was never supposed to measure what it is now being used for, it was invented during the WWII and it really estimates the ability of a country to churn out tanks and ships and whatever other stuff. So the USSR had a huge GDP albeit it had an abysmal living standard and no living economy to speak of.
What is the GDP of 100 million subsistence farmers?