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Country Shares of World GDP

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Here's a chart of world GDP, broken down by country share. ( HT: Carpe Diem ). Careful with the x-axis, it is not at all to scale! The basic idea is that India and China had large shares pre-industrial revolution, after which Europe rose. The U.S. shoots up, to over 40% of world GDP by 1950. Then, Japan begins to grow in the 1960s, and China in the 1980s. Suppose countries end up with GDPs proportionate to their populations. What would that picture look like? I've added a bar to the right, showing the break-down of world-population. Look at the U.S. squished down, with less that 400 million out of a world population of over 7,000 million. The biggest change is in the previously un-noticed 'rest of the world". If Africa, the Middle East and so on moved toward freedom, that could be the story of the century.  What if they do not? Here's a chart with a new assumption. Suppose the "rest-of-world" does not increase its relative s...
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Playboy vs. National Review

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It is traditional to think of magazines like Playboy as corrupting of morals. Yet, there's no comparison to magazines like the "National Review". The wrong moral and political ideas can cause far more harm than viewing nudes. Even Venezuela's dictator Chavez realized that the "wrong ideas" about life and philosophy can be more "corrupting" than a little nudity . A while back The Simpsons were ordered off the air, to be replaced by Baywatch!
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Are Americans spendthrifts?

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Low savings rate:  The " personal savings rate " was  10% in the 70's; but, it fell to a low of 2% recently. "Wealth Effect" / Confidence in the future: Take a closer look at the chart. The savings rate rose  a bit in the 1970s, compared to the 1960s. The 70's were an economically-troubled decade. When people feel less certain about their future, and when they feel their wealth has been eroded, they try to save more. This is a rational response. Perhaps this explains the slightly increased savings rates of the 1970s'.  The chart then shows a drop in the savings rate starting in the early-1980s. Could this be because people felt better about their wealth and about their future? This second chart also shows Personal Wealth as a multiple of current GDP. I chose this as a very rough proxy for how wealthy the "average person" feels. In the early 1960's wealth was over 3 times GDP ( see the right-side axis ). By 1975, wealth had dropped ...
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