[Soulman]

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Per capita GNP statistics across international borders are very misleading. In fact, by your own data in the link you provided, European economies grew by 20% from 2004 to 2005 when we know that simply isn't true. Rather, that reflects a currency shift of 20% or so.

To get a true measure of each countries output, you need to go one link deeper in the data you provided, to the PPP, the Purchasing Power Parity, where you take the effects of currency fluctuation out of it. If you do this, then the numbers come up as: <snip>

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I'm not very much into economics so I'll just take your word for what you're saying here. Does PPP use median or average values? I do believe the US has a more lopsided distribution of wealth than most European countries, although I don't know this for a fact. Median seems more correct to use for a layman like me anyway.


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Norway is a major oil exporter, but that is rapidly changing, even the Norwegians acknowledge that, and they have a major economic crisis coming as the North Sea oil runs out.

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Well, it's still a decent way off; they're going to start drilling in the northern area of the North Sea as well now (a rather politically heated issue here). But yeah, Norway's been leaning on oil income to a large degree (too much imo). Ending threadjack now [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]