If you want to be a decent analyst, let alone a forecaster, you need to know how to find real information. A lot of official statistics are either useless (inflation, unemployment numbers) or misleading.
Russia, with assists from Iran and North Korea and China (in non military goods, though often useful for making military goods) is out producing NATO in war material. If you just look at the GDP of NATO vs. Russia/China/Iran/NK you’d predict that couldn’t happen and you’d be wrong and like a lot of people you’d think Ukraine might or would win the war.
Most people go on and on about how the US still has a bigger economy than China, but China has way more industry and leads in about 80% of technological fields even as the US can barely build ships, is losing its steel industry and is only creative in biotech and infotech. These same people will tell you how well the US economy is doing. China’s shifting its house building to primarily government. Meanwhile:
Eighteen percent last year.
Since 2020 billionaire wealth has doubled.
GDP tells you how much activity in your country is conducted thru money, as opposed to unpaid labor. That tells you much economic activity you can easily tax. That’s all it tells you.
It doesn’t tell you how well off your people are. It doesn’t tell you how healthy they are. It doesn’t tell you (directly) how many tanks you can build, or planes or missiles. It doesn’t tell you if you can feed your population if foreign shipments are disrupted. It doesn’t tell you how many of them have homes and how many of those homes are good. it doesn’t tell you how many people do or don’t have healthcare. It doesn’t tell you how advanced you are technologically. It doesn’t tell you if your flagship airplane company can’t design and build good planes any more.
It also doesn’t tell you that America is doing better than Europe and its other allies because US economic policy is set up to cannibalize their industry. When Germany loses energy-intensive firms, a lot of them move production to the US. Burning down America’s allies to slow America’s decline isn’t a sign of strength.
America’s in decline because its entire political-economy is set up not to be productive or to spread wealth around, but to funnel money to the rich without them having to produce much of anything. China’s stock-market trades sideways, like America’s did in the 50s and 60s. Americans make money on housing and stocks without having to do a thing. Private Equity makes money by buying companies with debt, loading the companies up with that debt and then driving them into bankruptcy, destroying real productive economic activity in exchange for dollars in a declining country.
Real power comes from real production, technology, a healthy and loyal population, and the ability to turn all of that into military power when necessary. America’s military, for years now, has been unable to meet recruiting goals. Its enemies are ahead on missiles and drone, catching up on airplanes and outproducing it massively in ships.
China’s rising. Russia’s rising. America and its allies are in serious decline.
THE END
Mark Pontin
China’s way ahead already according to IMF data, for heaven’s sake. Top 10 Countries with the Highest GDP (PPP) in 2024. —
https://worldostats.com/gdp-ppp-by-country-2024-imf-data/
China: $35.29 trillion
United States: $28.78 trillion
India: $14.59 trillion
Japan: $6.72 trillion
Germany: $5.69 trillion
Russia: $5.47 trillion
Indonesia: $4.72 trillion
Brazil: $4.27 trillion
United Kingdom: $4.03 trillion
France: $3.99 trillion
So we’ve well and truly entered the Norma Desmond phase of US international hegemony with US elites, pundits, and thinktankers declaring that they’re going to ‘contain’ or ‘blacklist’ China and the BRICs.
These people need professional help if they imagine the BRICS’ combined population of approximately 3.24 billion and 40 percent of the world’s population, is going to be contained or blacklisted by a puny 750.47 million or 10 percent of the world’s population in the G7.
https://investingstrategy.co.uk/financial-news/brics-vs-g7-head-to-head-comparison-and-statistics/
Ian Welsh
Why people still like to use nominal. But GDP is a bad proxy. China is much farther ahead than even the PPP GDP stats suggest.
Oakchair
GDP is a bad proxy.
——
A better proxy –though still with limitations– would be productive sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing/industry, and mining.
China already has more manufacturing than America and the EU combined.
Mark Level
So gloomy, Ian. It’s all a matter of perspective.
Our Betters, the Biden toadies who ran the last 4 years see things like rapid homelessness increase as a Gilded Lily for their lapels (right next to the Israel & Ukraine flag pins.)
Kicking the poors down is THE feature, in no way a glitch. I’m rereading a prescient Feb. 2021 Harper’s column by Alexander Cockburn in which he 100% predicted how “Biden” (okay, non compos mentis, everything done by his “team”) would immediately ally with Mitch McConnell to govern, beating out even Obama’s ability to “compromise” (sell out) to Tweedledum. Same as it ever was, it’s no longer hidden (if it ever was).
mago
But but but we’re number one
The something something on a shining hill or something
A beacon of light from sea to shining sea
A citadel, a fortress, God’s chosen ones
Don’t you read the news?
BC Nurse Prof
This might be very very bad news:
https://www.longdom.org/open-access/proximal-origin-of-epidemic-highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-h5n1-clade-2344b-and-spread-by-migratory-1099735.html
Abstract:
“We investigate the possible laboratory origins of the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b genotype B3.13, currently affecting various animal species and causing sporadic human infections. The proximal origins may be the USDA Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory (SEPRL) in Athens, Georgia, and the Erasmus medical center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The first detection of HPAI H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b in the Netherlands in 2020 raises concerns about earlier gain-of-function research. Genetic analysis indicates genotype B3.13, emerging in 2024, and links to genotype B1.2, which originated in Georgia in January 2022 after the start of serial passage experiments with H5Nx clade 2.3.4.4 in mallard ducks at SEPRL in Athens, Georgia, in April 2021. Genotype B1.2 was found in a bottlenose dolphin in March 2022 in Florida, indicating sudden new adaptations. The NP gene of H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b (genotype B3.13) likely originated from avian influenza A virus in mallard ducks. Significant mutations found in recent human cases suggest possible links to serial passage experiments. However, causation has not been established, and further investigation is urgently needed to confirm these findings and to identify all H5N1 laboratory leaks that may have occurred with a focus on mallard ducks and other migratory waterfowl, which have the potential to infect a large number of poultry and livestock facilities around the world. A moratorium on GOF research including serial passage of H5N1 is indicated to prevent a man-made influenza pandemic affecting animals and humans.”
bruce wilder
America has been disinvesting continuously since Reagan. Disinvestment generates a heck of a lot more net cash than investment, and the flow of said cash has funded the billionaire’s bubble.
Nominal GDP tracks the money-finance economy. Money makes money in a finance economy and that is great for the monied as long as money can buy services and goods for cheap. Everything made in America is expensive and the services of the FIRE economy are often outright predation. But, TEMU stalks Amazon and Walmart even as we type. China, workshop of the world, has built an economy of cheap manufactures. “Things” are inherently cheap. The $250 iPhone is just a couple of years away. Is Waymo going to save the Really Rich? The proles may prefer to drive their own F-150s.
I am not optimistic. I am really not. Milton’s Satan rules and would visit ruin on us all. What goes up must come down, they say. Elon won’t explode; he will deflate, implode. But the destructive effect may be similar.
Revelo
USA (amd Canada, etc) has created a massive asset/debt bubble. The debt is not highly inflationary because it is owned by the rich and the rich don’t want their wealth inflated away. On the contrary, debt (including government debt aka printed money) is short-run deflationary, because the rich can use a fraction of their enormous accumulation of debt wealth to bribe aka lobby government to do as they desire, and the rich always desire austerity: cut spending, raise interest rates, cut taxes on the rich, etc.
What will likely pop the debt/asset bubble is when China drops the hammer and creates a replacement for the US dollar financial system. China is waiting on this because the US dollar financial system is weakening the USA more effectively than could any Chinese military. Since most of the world will eventually primarily trade with China, USA will be in no position to prevent a mass migration to the Chinese financial system.
What happens then is that foreigners try to get rid of their excess US dollars in the only way possible: buying USA natural resources and demanding extra US dollars to sell to USA (US dollar depreciation). USA will face massive supply side inflation. Fed will respond in the only way which conventional wisdom approves: much higher real interest rates. This pops the asset bubble but doesn’t stop the inflation, which is due to soaring import and raw material costs. On the contrary, high interest rates will interfere with import substitution investment, prolonging the stagflation. High interest rates also increase the wealth and thus power the rich to resist the needed remedy: namely, reduce the debt accumulation either by hyperinflation or default or higher taxes on the rich. Government will respond to mass bankruptcy and unemployment by more deficit spending on jobs support, causing some demand inflation, causing higher income interest rates.
Japan took 20+ years to work through the mess caused by their asset bubble. USA (and Canada, etc) will take similar amount of time. Japan’s crash was cushioned by USA and EU prosperity in the 1990’s plus Japan’s population hadn’t yet started aging in the 1990’s, whereas USA (and Canada, etc) crash will face headwinds of climate problems, aging population, breakdown of USA empire, wars everywhere, etc.
And when all this happens, don’t cry for us, Argentinians, just reflect that imitation is the highest form of flattery!
sbt42
“Real power comes from real production, technology, a healthy and loyal population, and the ability to turn all of that into military power when necessary.”
I love this. I wonder how much of this I can apply to my own life on a micro-scale, now that I live out in the boonies. I think that thinking like this for one’s personal life may very well be the way to go from now on. Personally I like the idea of remaining invisible and/or unremarkable, the Taoist idea of “the wise man hides his jade under his robes,” and all that. But I also appreciate the idea of simpler, low-tech solutions that reduce one’s dependence on outside inputs.
Lots to think about, should this be feasible…
Jorge
A better measurement of America’s industrial output is our diesel usage, which has been cyclical but flat for 15 years.
Here is one set of reports for US industrial output and diesel consumption. Heavy industry runs almost entirely on diesel in the US, less so in China.
https://jkempenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/us-manufacturing-and-diesel-consumption-aug-2024-2.pdf
Feral Finster
Nobody of influence and authority cares about stuff like homelessness, as long as there aren’t hobos camped out in their yards, nor do they care about things like industry, which is where peons work.
different clue
I remember once reading in a P. J. O’Rourke essay about very late-stage USSR where Mr. PJ was talking to someone in Russia who summed up the end-state Soviet economy this way . . . ” We make huge machines to dig coal and ore out of the earth. We burn the coal to smelt ore into metal. We use the metal to make huge machines to dig coal and ore out of the earth.”
To me that said something about economystic productionism in general.
Steve in Virginia who runs a blog called Economic Undertow says things like ” our economy is based on driving cars so we can afford to pump and buy the oil needed to keep driving the cars so we can keep affording to pump and buy the oil needed to keep driving the cars so we can keep affording to pump and buy the oil needed to keep on keeping on driving the cars and etc.” ( I paraphrase).
bruce wilder
Nobody of influence and authority cares about stuff like homelessness . . .
I sometimes wonder whether anybody of no influence or authority cares, either.
The vast bulk of the Democratic Party seems to consist of clueless people, with no discernible principles, who think Obama was a great President. A great President, who couldn’t find a bankster to prosecute or a war he wanted to end, a great President who talked a good game (got a Nobel Peace Prize! without a peace) but made torture national policy and saw life expectancy — at least for deplorable white men — go into secular decline.
I talked to a real estate agent I know about homelessness here in Southern California, where it is frequent, highly visible and nearly overwhelming at times. People don’t have “a right” to live in California, he said. What are going to do? In the 30 years I have lived in Southern California, real estate has escalated in price something like a multiple of 8! The idea that that is systematic in ways that public policy might sensibly manage is foreign to him and he’s professionally engaged in the market for residential real estate.
As far as I can tell, being homeless is likely to destroy a family or an individual. But, I also understand that housing in Los Angeles is absurdly expensive — people crowd into shared apartments to keep rent within 50-60% of their cash income.
But, if I talk to people I know about homelessness, the best most can come up with is a shrug of the shoulders and the opinion that drug addiction is a major cause. Not sky-high rent and poor job opportunities. Hollywood, as a neighborhood, has seen a vast number of “luxury” apartment buildings built. Household numbers are increasing rapidly among those with incomes north of $160,000/year, working mostly in the entertainment business, I guess. Sounds good, but leaves a lot of shabbiness.
A household income of a quarter-million in California doesn’t make anyone important or influential. These people are not “elite”. But, do they care? Kinda, sorta, maybe. I think about Hillary’s infamous and no-doubt focus-grouped line: “If we broke up the big banks tomorrow….would that end racism? Would that end sexism?” If you are a good liberal apparatchik in some University’s parasitic Administrative structure or working in a Health Insurance conglomerate — not Brian Thompson, but some mid-level worker bee and shuffler of paper, maybe doing Pharmacy Benefit Management — or maybe “designing iPhones in California” (whatever that consists of). Caring among the Great and the Good may be for show only, but caring among the ordinary educated professional and managerial class — what is that? What would be its objects? What would be its analysis?
“Make stuff” not money? How much stuff does anybody need? And, why does the stuff we actually do need, have to cost so much money?
A slightly deeper question is why does so much of what we ordinary folk do to make money — never mind the things people who have so much money that they don’t need money do to make more money that they don’t need — seem to involve uselessness or soft predation?
KT Chong
This came as a surprise to me, here is Professor Hugh White of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University:
“Today China’s GDP is 19% of the global GDP and America is 16%.”
“In 2035, China’s GPD will be 24% of the global GDP and American will be 14%… and these estimations are sophisticated calculations… not straight-line extrapolations, they take into account the demographic challenges China faces…”
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzKuHxp7WqA
I have been trying and unable to find the full video.
mago
McCleary’s cow kicked the pail and the hay caught fire and burned Chicago down
I don’t know how it works.
Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle
The cow jumped over the moon
GrimJim
There’s all the talk about “quiet quitting” in the US and I’m reminded of the old Soviet joke, “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay.”
And it will get only worse soon, once the corporations and their billionaire masters are completely unregulated.
I think for the near future in the US under Trump, if he gets all the threatened economic charges in place, it would behoove the masses to watch old documentaries on Soviet queuing.
And all those homeless will make excellent slaves in the Industrial Prison System, driving remaining wages even lower.
A lovely vicious circle, right up until the food riots…
Curt Kastens
I just saw this. I did not even watch yet myself. I am not sure that I should watch it because I would have no idea whether or not it is a 90% exaguration.
There can be no doubt that due to climate change and resource deplition Canada is doomed. But there is for me a lot of doubt about whether Canada will be one of the first G7 countries to fall or whether the Canada will be the last country still standing. But my guess would have been that the area around the Great Lakes would be one of the last bastions of living above barbaric levels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3oTjFjgoGI
Mark Level
Here’s a great factoid about how the Elites cook the Inequality into the economic pie–
Per an Economic Policy Institute analysis of Census Bureau data, from 2001-07 (Bush the Lesser) just before the Greenspan Crash, was “the first expansionary business cycle on record in which the poverty rate increased . . . (&) also the first” such cycle recorded “during which incomes in the middle quintile fell.”
You’re welcome, they’re happy at the top. And Elon is confident he can not only install far-right Uber-Austerity regimes in the USA, but also in the UK (beyond what they already have), Germany, etc. How’s that Javier Milei debt peonage scam in Argentina going? Coming soon to every “West” country where large #s of people don’t actively, loudly resist, even riot.
KT Chong
It would be wise for Canada to use China to play off against Trump and the US:
“You wanna play? Tell you what, we are gonna remove your sanctions on Huawei. We are gonna allow cheap Chinese EVs to come into Canada. We don’t make cars, so Chinese EVs are gonna wipe out one of the last few markets and bastions for American cars. Let’s play.”
And then Trump will be nicer and less arrogant to Canada.
Yes, China won’t ever trust Canada, BUT Canada and China can have a transactional and mutually beneficial relations. Let’s use each other, for now.
different clue
It’s too bad Sanders didn’t immediately think to respond to Hillary’s famous diversionary-tactic line with . . . ” If we ended racism and sexism tomorrow, would that break up the big banks?”
I didn’t think of that till years after the fact. But Bernie’s in politics. Maybe he should have been able to think of that right then and there. Maybe his worst problem is that he is not mean and aggressive when necessary. A mean aggressive person might have thought of that clever comeback right there in the debate. Then again, a mean aggressive person might have humiliated Biden in the next primary’s debate by asking him a question demanding mastery of granular detail along multiple thought-lines at the same time. And watch Biden go all sun-downer trying to respond.
KT Chong
“… China has way more industry and leads in about 80% of technological fields even as the US can barely build ships, is losing its steel industry and is only creative in biotech and infotech.”
ACTUALLY, China has started to pull ahead of the US in biotech. Here is an abstract of a recent report that came out of South Korea in September:
China dominates biotechnology, US falls behind: KoreaBIO
China is seizing the lead in the global technology research arena with unprecedented speed and dominance, particularly in biotechnology, gene technologies, and vaccines, according to an industry report.
The Korea Biotechnology Industry Organization (KoreaBIO) released a report on Thursday based on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s (ASPI) two-decade Critical Technology Tracker analysis of 2019 to 2023. The study evaluated leadership across 64 critical technologies, including biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and robotics.
The results show that China now leads in 57 of these 64 technologies, a leap from the mere three it commanded between 2003 and 2007.
The U.S., which once dominated global technology with a lead in 60 out of 64 fields from 2003 to 2007, now finds itself trailing far behind, leading in just seven technologies in the latest five-year span.
. . . . .
According to the ASPI report, China’s recent advancements in biotechnology, gene technology, and vaccines have allowed it to surpass the U.S. in annual high-impact publication rates from the late 2010s into the 2020s.
. . . . .
China’s dominance is especially notable in biotech, gene technologies, and vaccines, where it leads in four out of seven critical areas: synthetic biology, genome sequencing, vaccine technologies, and biological manufacturing, the report showed.
The U.S. remains at the forefront in genetic engineering, nuclear medicine, and vaccines, though its overall influence has waned.
. . . . .
Link: https://www.koreabiomed.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=25066
Here is the relevant link at the ASPI website: https://www.aspi.org.au/report/aspis-two-decade-critical-technology-tracker
Feral Finster
“But, if I talk to people I know about homelessness, the best most can come up with is a shrug of the shoulders and the opinion that drug addiction is a major cause. Not sky-high rent and poor job opportunities. Hollywood, as a neighborhood, has seen a vast number of “luxury” apartment buildings built. Household numbers are increasing rapidly among those with incomes north of $160,000/year, working mostly in the entertainment business, I guess. Sounds good, but leaves a lot of shabbiness.”
Nor do they ask *why* so many Americans are turning to dope, as if opioids were just falling from the sky and injecting themselves into the poors.