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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (93450)	11/3/2008 6:08:47 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 541789

8 countries ahead (with none tied) implies the majority of them are behind. Also it doesn't really include GDP, it includes the natural log of GDP, substantially minimizing the impact of being wealthier. Rather than repeat everything else I've said about that index recently on this thread I'll just link to additional comments here Message 25137992

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (93450)	11/3/2008 8:12:48 PM
From: thames_sider	Respond to of 541789

Hmm. Being fair to Tim, that indicator does measure "standard of living" as a PPP/GDP derivative. I would still contend that once a certain point of development is reached, that isn't relevant - e.g., we have one more car in our household than we do drivers already, so why would more cars rank us higher... - but it does indicate his measure is not as subjective as I was proposing. So although I might say that it's not the best measure, his statement about the standard of living in the US relative to Europe has more validity than I thought. I'm startled by how low some European countries are ranked - Denmark and Austria especially - and also by how low NZ ranks, as although it's not a rich nation I thought the spread was very low so there were few relatively poor people there. But I suppose the actual numbers are all very close, with a coefficient of 0.2 (from 10) between 3rd and 19th, jjst 0. between 6th and 17th. BTW I'd attribute the high ranks of Spain and Ireland to then-booming house prices, so that's misleading - neither are overall as rich as the core EU countries, and it does show if you visit. I'd be interested by what next year's surveys show.