[lbo-talk] GDP per capita/Dougs comments

[Paul]

Doug writes:
>[The report from the Swedish think tank that had European living standards 
>around those of the Mississipi delta got me crunching some numbers. Here 
>are the per capita GDP figures for 2002 expressed as a percentage of the 
>U.S. level, based on World Bank data. GDP is figured using purchasing 
>power parity - i.e., an exchange rate designed to measure real buying 
>power, with the distortions of market exchange rates stripped away. There 
>are some problems with PPP, practical and conceptual, but it's the best 
>we've got.]

I worry that this understates the problem.  On many of the key 
international questions, using PPP *reverses* what people would otherwise - 
and more fairly - assume are "the facts".  This reversal is arbitrary and 
not justified.  PPP numbers are presented as statistics, but they are in 
fact a knowingly biased recalculation of "real" statistics portraying an 
imaginary world that does not (and can not) exist.
Paul