Politics and Money

[fuagf]

ok, hope you found the article informative anyway .. before deciding to offer you that one i was thinking re the one of yours i replied to .. firstly, the resource total of any country is difficult to measure, and estimates are manipulated for all sorts of reasons by leaders .. secondly, what would you do to apportion that virtually inestimable to much degree of accuracy (seems to me), and manipulated (hey, we are running out of oil so our prices have to be put up) under the ground resource? .. would you take blocks of percentile share of nominal or PPP GDP (it is some measure of at least 'purchasing power wealth') of each citizen and apportion '??? resource wealth' according to the purchasing power of each level of 'either nominal or PPP purchasing power wealth'? .. i don't know if that makes any sense as just made it up .. then i got this one ..

Why GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is a Poor Measure of Wealth and Prosperity .. one bit ..

Considering these shortcomings, the practice of equating wealth or prosperity with GDP is completely indefensible. Wealth, loosely speaking, is the total of all resources belonging to a country, individual, group, or region. Using common sense, we can say that a change in wealth is equal to the amount of wealth being created and the amount being destroyed or used up. Using this concept as a starting point, we can make a simple equation for the true nature of wealth:

Change in Wealth = GDP + (Production of Wealth Not Included in GDP) – (Destruction and Loss of Wealth) +/- (Flow of Wealth due to Imports & Exports)

How big are each of these terms? I don’t know…but depending on how you value them, they could be huge. Many of them probably cannot be easily quantified with a dollar value. But the lesson is the same…GDP does not measure wealth. It is not even a crude measure of wealth. GDP is only one of several factors determining the rate of change of wealth within society, and it is not necessarily the biggest factor.

http://zorach.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/why-gdp-gross-domestic-product-is-a-poor-measure-of-wealth-and-prosperity/

hope that one at least contributes something toward a bit more useful food for thought for you .. lol, the nominal vs PPP was all new to me .. bottom line, to be real, is the purchasing power of citizens, seems to me .. and the fact that research shows exorbitant inequity in money money money terms however you look at it is NOT good for any country ..