Interesting article. There are a few other reasons why the comparison actually favours Europe:
GDP is usually reported as aggregate, instead of per capita, meaning population growth is an important factor.
The US is the world’s largest oil producer. A significant chunk of its GDP is simply pulled from the Earth.
GDP is inflated due to the presence of paper headquarters of multinational corporations. (In Europe, this also skews the numbers for Ireland. For Europe as a whole, it skews the numbers in the US’ favour.)
GDP (or the article’s rgdpo) still only estimate the market price of the output of goods (possibly corrected for purchasing power). The US spends more on health care, for worse outcomes. That’s part of the reason why quality-of-life metrices have the US tumbling down, typically to below 20th place globally.
The gap further widens once you start taking into account the cost of climate change as effectively negative production.
In the end of the day, metrics on quality of life are much more relevant than GDP. For years we heard about the decline of the Japanese economy, it continues however to have indisputably the best quality of life in all of Asia.
Interesting article. There are a few other reasons why the comparison actually favours Europe:
In the end of the day, metrics on quality of life are much more relevant than GDP. For years we heard about the decline of the Japanese economy, it continues however to have indisputably the best quality of life in all of Asia.