> It's not cherrypicked at all. 1980 is an ideal date to refer to. Stop with the strawman. My issue wasn't with the date. It obviously was with the nations you

> It's not cherrypicked at all. 1980 is an ideal date to refer to. Stop with the strawman. My issue wasn't with the date. It obviously was with the nations you chose. You only selected nations who declined relatively to the US, you didn't choose any that grew relative to the US. The definition of cherrypicking data. > PPP terms are worthless at best and wildly and entirely inaccurate at worst. They barely even qualify as guesses. What? Do you even know what PPP is? I wonder why HN has so many people who insist on being right even when they are absolutely wrong. > That's how you get Puerto Rico with a PPP GDP per capita equal to New Zealand and just below Japan in 2018 per the IMF (and far above Portugal; absurd). What is absurd about a US territory having a higher PPP than new zealand or japan? > Taiwan has a PPP per capita higher than Austria, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, Canada. Yeah, sure. Taiwan is a first world developed "nation"/island. What is so shocking about that? They have some of the largest companies in the world and are amongst the leaders in the semiconductor sector. > And Russia almost has a PPP per capita as high as Portugal and just a bit below Israel. Yeah? And? > That's a small example of what makes PPP laughable. No. It makes you laughable. You don't understand what it means. I point out how absurd your cherrypicking of data is and yet you attempt to do it again and even poorly at that because you don't even understand the economic conditions of any of the nations you listed. If PPP is laughable then so is nominal because PPP is pretty much nominal adjusted for cost of living... Of course you completely ignored my assertion about EU and China vs US. The main point that made your first comment absurd, you conveniently ignored with some nonsense about things you don't even understand.