Greg Neill wrote:

Mark & Juanita wrote:
Greg Neill wrote:

HeyBub wrote:
LDosser wrote:


The Chinese passed us a couple years back. Like we were standing
still. Indians may be gaining.

Passed us in what way? Just the INCREASE in our GDP for the past five
years
is greater than the ENTIRE GDP of China.

Consult a list of the GDPs of nations and economic zones.
There's one in wikipedia.

The U.S.'s GPD is listed as being about 14.2 trillion dollars,
China about 4.2 trillion, pretty close to that of Japan's at
4.9 trillion. This is pretty could performance for a country
that's only recently begun industrializing and really
participating on the world stage economically.

Interestingly, the CIA factbook now lists the European Union
as having a larger GDP than the U.S., some 18 trillion dollars.

That's because the EU is an agglomeration of multiple countries. Would
be
like combining all of South American countries or if the US, Canada, and
Mexico combined their GDP's. The EU is not yet a full-fledged country on
its own, though it is attempting to do so -- it really will depend upon
whether France, Great Britain, Italy, and other large European countries
are
willing to surrender their sovereignty to a larger governing body.

The comparison is between economic blocks. As you say, the
EU's common market makes it behave almost like a single entity,
much as the individual U.S. states' economies comprise the U.S.'s
overall economy.


It's quite a stretch to compare the EU's member nations to the equivalent
of US states.


If you take a close look at the U.S., you can see that the
individual states have not 'surrendered' all of their
autonomy either. They have their own economies and sets
of laws, but bow to the Fed for certain cross-jursdictional
matters. Canada is the same way with its Provinces.

Again, there is a significant difference between the member nations of the
EU vs. the states that comprise the US federal Republic. Each of the EU
member nations has regions or states within each member nation as well --
Germany has Saxony, Prussia, etc. Great Britain has England, Ireland,
Scotland, Wales, etc. Those would be a closer analogy to the US make-up.


--

There is never a situation where having more rounds is a disadvantage

Rob Leatham