Posted on 06/13/2025 10:11:43 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I call bullshit
Can you point to any specific flaws in the survey? Are you criticizing the methodology? The conclusions?
Regards,
On what grounds?
So says Jack Daniels. /s
Ireland is really #1 and always will be. Why? Because its capital is always Dublin. /lame joke
Not only that, but I would have a higher levels of confidence in keeping gold reserves at the end of every rainbow than being told they're safe at Ft. Knox.
Macao (have they renamed Macau?) and Hong Kong aren’t countries. They are money laundering points for Red China.
Surprised Monaco ($256,580 per capita GDP) and Liechtenstein ($186,400 per capita GDP) didn’t make the list.
These numbers do not make sense.
Same goes for Liechtenstein and Switzerland too - while it makes some fantastic stuff it also launders cash and runs a bunch of international scams like Geneva and Davos. Sad thing is that our communists have put the US way down on the list.
“However, like all statistical measures there are caveats: it doesn’t account for income distribution, quality of life metrics, or how sustainable the economy is.”
...or how much DEBT the country has, and what is happening with that debt (as in budget deficits). Nor does GNP exclude useless or counterproductive ‘production’ - such as shutting down the Keystone Pipeline when all the materials have been produced, wasting $2 Billion on two bridges in Texas because we just had to use a DEI engineering firm (true story), or electrifying cars, and main battle tanks, for that matter.
I think the Vatican is by far the richest country per capita.
The money in the Vatican bank and the value of the items in their museum is much higher per inhabitant than other places.
Of course, they keep those numbers secret.
So, the only ones who really know are the Pope, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
All the nations with higher per capita GDP are very small nations, and that fact is a sock in the eye for the other large economically developed nations.
From the article:
“Noticeably, many of the top spots are held by small countries with specialized financial services sectors, also known offshore financial centers.
Luxembourg (#1), Ireland (#2), Switzerland (#3), Singapore (#4), Netherlands (#11) and Hong Kong (#18) are all considered tax havens as their friendly tax laws, strict privacy rules, and strong financial sectors encourage multinational corporations to route earnings through them.
As a result, this improves their GDP a significant amount, but doesn’t reflect the resident populations productivity.
In Ireland’s case, these flows distorted GDP values so much that the government discontinued its use as a reliable statistic, preferring to measure and compare gross national income (GNI) instead.”
Exactly.
Nope, I think I spoke too soon, assuming they are scoring nations with socialized medicine, etc. with a higher standard of living.
I’m very suspicious of international comparisons - they often reflect a socialist bias.
But I can’t back it up, so I’ll retract my comment. :-)
I retract my comment, see comment #16
You are probably correct about the Vatican based on the vaults and offshore assets, but I’m not sure about the bank, and how much is actually there given the money laundering, embezzlement, and lack of controls. Roberto Calvi would be a good source to ask about the bank.
After all, it probably cost a good bit of money to have officials in England remove the Blackfriars bridge.
Hey, I wasn't trying to "call you out" on anything - the statistics are certainly worthy of closer scrutiny. Isn't clear whether they are measuring income in PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) or not, for instance. The article admits that some of the small-but-wealthy countries are benefitting from extraneous or purely statistical factors having nothing to do with the actual income / standard of living of average citizens. There's altogether too little info presented here - or, rather, too little context - so it's difficult to rip it apart any further, but an even only cursory reading of it makes it clear that - while not entirely bogus - it can't simply be taken at face value.
Thus, you probably have a very sensitive BS-meter - I merely wanted to hear your explanations!
Regards,
Doing so would have exposed how unnuanced these naked figures are.
I won't even dignify them by referring to them as "raw data," since I suspect that they have already been subject to quite a bit of "massaging."
Regards,
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