the reason why the income number is easier than the wealth number, of course, is that if you had all the world's wealth, what would you buy with it? "In a very real sense" ( this phrase [c] Alan Bennett), the world's wealth can probably only be measured in hours of equivalent socially necessary average labour time, because that's what you'd command if you owned all the other stuff.
The global money supply question is also very difficult indeed; my ex-colleague Peter Warburton used to collect decent money for a now-defunct brokerage by guesstimating a "Global Hard Money Equivalent" figure, but this was about five years ago and I haven't kept in touch with him. The differential between the cash and PPP numbers Doug quotes below would probably indicate to a better Keynesian economist than myself something about the relative tightness/looseness of the GHME money supply, but I'm too frazzled to work it out right now. The answer to Charles' fundamental question is of course yes; if you're on $1,000 per year you're doing much better than the official poverty levels, and there's enough production going on in the world to give everybody that much. cheers dd -----Original Message----- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Doug Henwood Sent: 03 August 2004 21:41 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: What is the total wealth ? Charles Brown wrote: >What is the total wealth, networth, value of all the economies of >the world ? Do any economists estimate this ? Wealth is tough. Income is easier. Acc to World Bank, per capita GDP (PPP, with all Paul A's caveats incorporated by reference) in 2002 was $7,867.94. Cash money, no PPP magic: $5,212.56. Doug
