Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote:
> Would you say the same critical things about the UN's
>Quality of Life Index (QLI)? BTW, those have generally
>shown pretty good conditions for officially socialist
>countries. Cuba does pretty well compared with other Latin
>American nations. They even had North Korea about even
>with South Korea a few years ago, although that would
>appear to have altered since the outbreak of famine in
>North Korea.
> Again, there is a serious foundation for looking at
>PPP rather than GDP. GDP in the US has gone up, but
>leisure time has gone down and more things are paid for in
>the market that used to be provided outside the market.
>Much more is provided for outside the market in LDCs.
>Maybe using PPPs makes the differences between the
>metropole and the periphery not look as great as GDP would
>make them look, but they are still very large.
Look, I think that using social indicators to measure the level of
development is a good thing. But it's not a complete picture, nor is PPP,
especially if you're talking about the global wealth/power hierarchy. The
fact that U.S. money incomes are 40 or 50 times the level of African money
incomes means something, even if it doesn't mean that Americans are 40 to
50 times "better off" than Africans.
Did F. Scott Fitzgerald say something like "the ability to hold two
thoughts in mind at once is a measure of intelligence"?
Doug
