Regarding: China poised to pass US as world’s leading economic power – FT.com
–“When looking at the actual consumption per head, the report found the new methodology as well as faster growth in poor countries have “greatly reduced” the gap between rich and poor, “suggesting that the world has become more equal”. The world’s rich countries still account for 50 per cent of global GDP while containing only 17 per cent of the world’s population.”–
[O]f course, no man is felt a hero to his debtors.
The only measure of equality is consumption – the rest is investment and taxes. If we look at consumption per capita, rich western countries are far more equal than their ‘egalitarian’ counterparts. Because all that extra ‘wealth’ is merely the means of influencing the voluntary organization of production. It is ‘pressure’ not consumption. It’s not ‘real’ money that can be consumed.
But getting human beings to understand that it is not consumable without likewise losing the ability to voluntarily organize production, is just beyond their comprehension.
Rich countries are rich because they voluntarily organize very complex, highly rewarding production with little corruption at low risk.
One may not think of the US military as an organizer of production. But both the UK Navy and the US postwar military are the defacto-organizers of world production.
The question remains, that if the west ceases organizing voluntary production by meritocratic means, then what form of involuntary production by unmeritocratic means will prevail.
History is not terribly comforting in this regard.
