On Saturday, 2002 May 11 1335, M R wrote:
> http://www.economist.com/markets/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1124023
>
> USA is still the World's # 1 exporter.
> Nearly US$ 700 billion worth of goods were exported.
> I hope most of them have only Metric units.
>
> Madan
This is just a quick and dirty calculation, but I did two things. I added a
line for the European Union (adding Germany, France, Britain, Italy,
Netherlands, and Belgium) and I divided the resulting amounts by the figures
I have for those 1993 populations to calculate exports in terms of dollars
per citizen. Take caution regarding the figures for Hong Kong; re-exports are
a very significant portion of their exports. In other words, they act more as
transhippers than as producers. To a lesser extent, the same can be said for
Sinagpore.
$G $/N
United States 0.728 2.84
Germany 0.566 7.08
Japan 0.404 3.24
France 0.500 8.76
Britain 0.272 4.70
China 0.265 0.22
Canada 0.261 9.52
Italy 0.250 4.31
Netherlands 0.228 14.99
Hong Kong 0.191 32.26
Belgium 0.180 18.12
Mexico 0.162 1.72
South Korea 0.151 3.44
Taiwan 0.125 5.92
Singapore 0.118 41.60
EU 1.996 7.18
A couple of things jump out at me. First, the EU's exports are about two and
a half to three times as large as those of the US. Keep in mind that the
numbers above do not include all the countries in the EU, so their figures
are actually higher than shown above; the factor of three is probably good to
one significant figure. This *strengthens* the argument that we need to
metricate in order to improve our export picture. We're getting stomped!
Second the US's exports in terms of dollars per citizen are less than all the
others excepting China and Mexico. What this tells me is that the monetary
value of the export market is less for Americans than for Europeans or
citizens of most the other countries shown above. This *weakens* the argument
that we need to metricate to improve our export picture; Americans won't care
as much.
Obviously, this is a crude way to slice the pie. Many other factors come into
play. We should really look at the percentage of Gross National Product that
each country exports, for example. This further weakens the argument we might
make about improving our exports, since the US has a very large GNP. But it
does provide some food for thought.
Disclaimer: My procedure involved enlarging the graphic on the page cited by
Mardan and measuring each of the bars (in millimeters, of course!) to
graphically read the export amounts indicated. That scale turned out to be
$G=136 mm.
Tell folks that the EU outstrips us by a factor three in terms of the total
value of goods exported and also in terms of the value per citizen. Europeans
benefit from exports more than we do. Be careful not to talk about this in
the same conversation in which you tell them that we need to allow
metric-only labeling in our country to improve our import/export efficiency;
that could be a double-edged sword.
Bottom line: The EU out-exports the US 3 to 1.
Thanks for that neat link, Madan! There was a lot of meat on that bone.
Jim
--
James R. Frysinger University/College of Charleston
10 Captiva Row Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
Charleston, SC 29407 66 George Street
843.225.0805 Charleston, SC 29424
http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cert. Adv. Metrication Specialist 843.953.7644
