What are your thoughts on the shifting global economic power over the last few decades?

28 comments
  1. It’s great seeing people lifted out of poverty

    We are totally screwed if China starts excerising its military clout though

    America does not like having a rival and won’t take no longer being number 1 easily

  2. From the looks the US remains stable for now.

    It’s CN or the EU now. Figures speak for themselves. The EU should get a grip with essential influencer stuff, like EU defence. Better now than then…

    Edit: would have been interesting to see how Russia evolved as a not insignificant former world power with significantly more nukes than CN.

  3. I think it’s amazing how well China has done for itself and it’s great that hundredths of millions were pulled out of poverty in the process.

    What’s more remarkable is how poorly the rest of the developing world has done in comparison to China. India with it’s English speaking population could have done much better.

  4. The europeans can be a force if they integrate into a superstate. As an american(although i am sure I am an extreme minority) I think the EU(or at least some of it) is like the last sane collection of rational fair governments that can offer a decent quality of life and social mobility for most of their populations. It is too bad that strong integration that could actually make a difference is like a pipe dream at this point. I mean to be fair we have a trade deficit with the EU still to this day, but we also have the dollar.

  5. Europe has for a long time been constituting an ever smaller amount of the global population. The same can’t be said of the US, which keeps seeing its share of the world’s population remain stable at least.

    China on the other hand has simply seen an amazing amount of economic growth.

    That the EU is a smaller economy compared to a larger non-European world, is only to be expected. It is not however, an indication of social/cultural/economic decline. It’s at most an indication that European countries are becoming smaller and smaller in the world. And that’s already well known.

  6. For most of history Asia was richer and more powerfull than the West – it’s sort of an anomaly that we were so dominant for 300 years.

    Anyway I also think we became very conservative and anti-progress, debating WWII for like 70 years 😉 So that makes it easier for the Asians to regain their spot.

  7. This pie chart is blatantly useless since global enrichment is a necessity for long term prosperity. Poverty on the other hand is detrimental to the global economy.

  8. I don’t care. The wealthier the rest of the world is, the more calm we’ll all, hopefully, be. So long as war is lessened – GOOD. We don’t need to be the ivory tower.

  9. Honestly good for China, they’ve done amazing and looking at their development from 2000 – 2020 you can’t help but be impressed.

    The US also has done really well for such a large, developed economy. Most Europeans don’t like to hear it but the US economically blows basically every European county out of the weather bar a few specific regions such as London, Switzerland, Norway, Paris etc.

    I think the EU is too slow to implement change, look at Germany’s digitalisation for example, and then compare that to American tech companies and you’ll understand why. Salaries in the Us are so much higher already as well for the majority of Americans, and that’s compared to Western Europe. They’re in an entirely different league from Eastern Europe so yeah not surprised.

  10. I am actually more impressed that US managed to lose only 1.6% of global gdp with growing China, growing world population and US itself being only something like 3% of global population.

  11. The world is returning to its natural order. As the biggest country on earth, 5x the size of the USA (by population), it makes sense that China should be at the top, alongside India. I have no problem with this, it’s been a great thing for the billions who have been lifted out of poverty thanks to it.

  12. Why has no one yet commented on how OP is representing a time series as three pie charts?! Any simple 2D graph should have been a better choice. Humans are terrible at judging angles. Also the labels are too small and the colors aren’t color-blind friendly.

  13. Thanks for sharing, this information certainly isn’t surprising at all! I wonder how much future tech innovation and space exploration are going to be drivers of economic growth in the coming years. The big tech companies that are already doing so well seem to have a strong interest in space exploration which is great for humanity, but it makes me think this will certainly be a much bigger deal in a decade or so and countries that aren’t able to compete will get further and further behind.

  14. Well anyone who’s been paying attention knows that Europe is the only continent which has been the continent with the smallest amount of growth in the past 30 years. Stagnant for the past 10. Shown by how high-skilled people migrate too.

    And also a sign of talks of a ‘US decline’ are at best exaggerated. There is no reason to believe the US will not continue to be the world hegemon for the forseeable future. Economically, militarily and geopolitically. To try to unshackle oneself from the US world order through some naive, ideological ‘EU unification’ will lead to bad consequences for member states.

    Any member state who isn’t actively looking outside the EU for sources of economic growth is going to be in trouble in medium term.

  15. This is an over simplification.

    1) debt to gdp ratio is important, related to this: trade balances in theory you can borrow yourself a nice GDP
    2) Chinese data on their economy is not trustworthy
    3) and ffs, effects of climate actions.

    Still, EU has to catch up. I hope we all can put our egos aside before we’re not even mentioned anymore on this map!

  16. I am glad for all the Chinese people that got out of poverty. I hope other underdeveloped countries will follow the same path as China eventually.

  17. Eu needs to become one country, that will unite with US against the common enemy: the Chinese Communist party. Honestly, fuck those guys, fuck global authoritarian regimes

  18. All the armchair experts here with somber takes about the EU falling off, I mean yes surely there’s something to be said about that, but most of the takes here seem speculative and non-academic. Also, not sure why GDP and global dominance are being glorified so damn much, there’s much more to a nation’s prosperity than that

  19. Too much Laissez-faire and austerity.

    While they can be acceptable for economically central zones, they inevitably depress peripheral locations.

    The are also other reasons (demographic stagnation, and losing the race in IT), but I think these latter are more the effect of the former than anything else.

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