Quote Originally Posted by daihashi
Question.. if Other countries who have socialist practices are so much better.. why are we #1 in GDP?
cuz we are 300 million people, cuz we are not just 1 country, we are 50 countries merged together, we are literally a continent
cuz we landed in a place just less than 600 years ago that was totally untouched in means of resource... that gave us a massive boom
cuz we practiced free labor (slavery) for a good part of our history and that gave us an advantage over others

the rest of the worlds resources have been used for a much longer time (excluding oil)

our GDP is based on consumer spending. average american holds thousands of dollars in debt, so far we have kept it rolling on debt, at some point u cant accumulate more debt

we got WW II, the rest of the world was literally destroyed to ruins, they have had to start over (most of europe, japan and even china)

u know what counts? PPP, or GDP per capita, not just the GDP alone, and then compare the population and general number of people in each country who live under poverty line

u will find out that Swiss has only 4000 dollars less than us in PPP, but look at their size and their system and their population and their poverty stats

A lot of our richer people cancel out the effect of our poor in this calcualtion, go ahead and compare the poverty statistics in US and other developed countries


here is just one link for the start List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, i must go to a test now, but i'm interested in this debate, I'll be back

an for clarification: I'm not a socialist nor do I advocate socialism but I see nothing wrong with certain things that people consider to be socialist, like a socialist healthcare system. or a socialist taxation system

we are capitalist right? how come we got the highest corporate tax rate in the world, forcing companies to seek means of saving by outsourcing and other means... think about it till i get back