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Comment by jldugger | Hacker News Reader

Thailand's GDP per capita was 7,066.19 in 2019. China's is 12,556.33. However, the Chinese GDP number is widely known to be inflated[1]. Even Federal Reserve has weighed in on the question[2].

Thailand is not exactly a free place, but the political leadership isn't using economic growth reason for their continued existence and then setting annual targets for every province and city.

But what probably really makes up the difference is the purchasing power parity[3]. If I'm reading that right, Thailand has a PPP of 3x China. That will more than make up for any noise in GDP, population numbers, or GINI coefficients.

[1]: https://www.marketplace.org/2023/07/17/is-gdp-still-a-useful... [2]: https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/s... [3]:

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I will repeat this a million times on HN until I die - GDP PER CAPITA AND GDP PPP PER CAPITA IN ISOLATION ARE NOT RELEVANT METRICS TO USE FOR HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT.

They are productivity metrics (as in how much shit can country X produce versus country Y). Per Capita literally means total population, so GDP Per Capita is (Total Production in USD) / (Total Population).

Yet we all know there is no society in the world where every man, woman, and child earns the same exact amount of money.

Use a mix of Gini coefficient, median income, health indicators, education indicators, etc to track development.

Is median income even relevant in places with massive informal economies?

> Thailand has a PPP of 3x China.

Where are you getting this? I'm no economist, but based on a simple search and data from wikipedia [1], your number seems wildly incorrect.

> However, the Chinese GDP number is widely known to be inflated

And BIS (Bank of International settlements) notes [2] "There are studies that contradict these results and find that the official data is roughly correct and may even understate the "true" economic growth (e.g. Holz, 2006a, 2006b; Clark et al., 2017a, 2017b; Perkins and Rawski, 2008)."

GDP is just one number that is inaccurate everywhere, it's more of a 'pulse'.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)... [2] https://www.bis.org/publ/work925.htm

>> Thailand has a PPP of 3x China.

> Where are you getting this? I'm no economist, but based on a simple search and data from wikipedia [1], your number seems wildly incorrect.

Ah jeez https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/PA.NUS.PPP?locations=TH... is what I was using but I'm by no means competent in this. Was supposed to be citatation 3 but fell off it seems.

That's not PPP GDP per capita. This is the statistic you're looking for: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat.... China just passed Thailand in PPP GDP/capita in 2021.

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