Hacker News Reader

Not quite sure what you're getting at, but that claim is not true. The US economy was roughly comparable in size to the EU's 15 years ago but is now nearly 1/3 larger than the EU + UK, or about 1/2 larger than the EU without the UK: https://www.ft.com/content/80ace07f-3acb-40cb-9960-8bb4a44fd...

Seems like the difference is in PPP vs Nominal. Numbers are hard. Matching the numbers:

                 US   / EU   / Europe:
    Nominal [1]: 27.0 / 18.4 / 25
    PPP     [2]: 15.5 / 14.6 / 21

My point was that EU is higher than #6, as well as Germany, whatever the metric.

But, as I was corrected below, they meant "sixth" as share, not as rank.

[1] https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/USA/EU/EUQ

[2] https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PPPSH@WEO/USA/EU/EUQ

A lot of Japan's landmass is basically uninhabitable mountains, though. Not much arable land, for instance.

Yeah but it's mostly mountain. 11% arable (33% in Germany).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com