At these rates, it would take China 22 years (2046) to match the U.S. in GDP despite China having 4x America’s population
American Economics Thread
- Thread starter Bernard
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And genetics, of course, is a matter of luck. At least until science one day figures out how to tamper with it ala Gattaca-style.
Very respectable that your friend was willing to commit some real time to pick up techniques/designs from elsewhere that would be scarce and in demand in Canada. Not a lot of people could leave Canada to do it if they already have a wife and kids at home.
So then that still begs the question of how a poor friend on a relatively modest pharmacist's income managed to come up with a high enough down payment to take out a $5M loan. 10+ years' savings from a pharmacist's income, even with commitment to an extremely frugal lifestyle, is not nearly enough to do so unless the timing was right with bottomed-out interest rates and the lowest possible down payment requirements. Try taking out a $5M loan today on the savings of a pharmacist (with a frugal lifestyle) who only just finished their 11th year of their career. Pretty good odds that it leads to rejection and it isn't even a close call from the bank's perspective.
Attributing everything to hard work is a classic hallmark of survivorship bias pertaining to socioeconomic status. If one of the main common threads you see between yourself and your rich friends is that you all work hard, it is pretty predictable for you to assume that this is the distinguishing factor that sets apart the successful from the unsuccessful human trash that are clearly not worthy of your empathy. As you so clearly put it, "So yes, we live in the wealthy bubble and I don't give two shits about people that don't work hard to get ahead."
In contrast, there are a not insignificant proportion of rich (7 figure and up net worth) who understand that luck played a huge role in them being where they are. Whether it is luck of timing, luck of birthright, or luck or genetics. Yes, intelligence and hard work played a huge role for many of them. But again, intelligence is luck of genetic birthright, nurturing of intelligence is luck of upbringing, and appreciation of hard work is luck of upbringing as well. Having the right family to teach you those lessons, either literally or by example.
In reality, the number of very hardworking people that never reach anywhere remotely close to your social circle's average standards of success vastly outnumbers hardworking people that succeed. Likely by two orders of magnitude within the West, and three to four (or more) orders of magnitude outside of the West. On the other hand, there are some people who were born into or coasted into levels of success that most people never get to even imagine. It's a huge spectrum. Appreciating and understanding that spectrum allows one to be more understanding of the many luck-based, genetic, social, and other forms of advantage or disadvantage that are built in from the starting gate.
Some people had the best of some of those factors, end up coasting through the Ivy League, join up with a similar romantic partner, and end up at 99+% percentile rank household income by their 30s. Just from committing very reasonable quantities of hard work. No especially ambitious or creative approaches as you and your friends have done so. High but not outrageous levels of intelligence. And only modest levels of mental health (high stress education and high stress careers being what they are). If even a modest proportion of the people like that can appreciate and empathize with those born into structurally disadvantaged families/environments, I would hope that you can come to do so as well. Poke your head outside that wealth bubble from time to time and see that most of the hardworking people out there in the world still can't "make it" the way you have. Embrace the fact that even if you were born into a poor family, you were advantaged in having good genetics (such as your high intelligence) and good role models (from which you probably cultivated your work ethic to begin with).
I was originally referring more to forms of "humble-flaunting", but what you highlighted just now is one perspective on which you and I are extremely closely aligned. When someone is capable of buying a Ferrari without resorting to any form of revolving credit or installment credit, but instead chooses to drive a Toyota/Honda, that is a good indication of someone who I would probably see eye to eye with on many things.
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US GDP is inflated with things like their bloated healthcare sector. Electric consumption of the US and China paints a different story.
And if the US has higher GDP per capita how come it has fallen behind China in life expectancy?
PiSigma
"the engineer"
Agree on many points. Pharmacist friend got the loan when interest rate is basically nothing and put up pretty much everything she got as collateral, including her house and her parents house. Extremely high risk but paid off.
A lot of these examples is essentially understanding economic trends and doing the math on expected future growth. Once seeing the opportunity, jumping in to take advantage of it.
That takes massive grit/balls/guts on the part of your friend. Literally went "all in". Trying to take this more on topic to the thread (and thanks to the mods' patience), Walgreens is closing 25% of their pharmacies due to the massive popularity of app-to-mail-order prescription pharmaceuticals (shipping from massive domestic processing centers in very low cost locations). Your friend had extremely lucky timing to get her foot in the door when she did, given the trends that have already begun. I get mine via app-to-mail-order as well. Brick and mortar locations got smashed by e-commerce a decade or so ago and we are seeing this happen (starting from this year or next year) in your friend's business as well. Canada is a totally different ecosystem so hard to say if/when they will follow, but the cost savings to the customer (and additional profit for the owner due to centralization and scale) is undeniable. It's just more efficient by far.
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If the U.S. healthcare sector was uncompetitive: rich people from around the world would not spend millions of dollars to see specialists at Hopkins, Mayo, among others.
Electricity consumption doesn’t proxy well - household electricity consumption is an index of air conditioning use and smokestack industries use more electricity despite being less gdp efficient. Further, innovation can cause electricity use to decrease with greater efficiency - see for example, Incandescent lights being replaced with LEDs
Because GDP often pushes down life expectancy - for example, obesity is a function of food being too abundant and motor vehicle accidents are due to mass suburban affluence
These are real GDP growth rates. They bear no relation to nominal GDP, which is determined by exchange rates. It's pointless to try and project nominal GDP because any event that triggers a change in the currency market could massively impact a country's "GDP".
You have no clue what you're talking about in regards to the health care system.
One thing has nothing to do with the other. You can have overall expensive health care thats overvalued without any benefit in quality of life or health or life expectancy. That's a huge fallacy. The mayo and Hopkins can have over valued costs, but people go due to paying and getting things done quickly without waiting. Doesn't mean it's valued higher than it should be. A 3T MRI in the US can cost a thousand for non urgent cases, and you don't have wait but many can't afford it. In Canada it's free with a few month wait for non urgent cases, but everyone who needs it will get it.
You described exactly the reality in America: the rich from all over the world go to the USA for treatment because American medicine is advanced but this healthcare is inaccessible to the majority of US citizens.
The US is one of the only countries in the developed world where healthcare is not a basic citizen's right, private company lobbies take over the healthcare system, making healthcare an extremely expensive and inaccessible item for the majority of the American population. A simple ambulance trip in the USA, depending on each state, varies from US$500 to US$1,300, in developed states in Europe, this same trip is free.
In fact, the US is also the only country in which a basic paid maternity right does not exist, even in poorer countries this is a right. It's no surprise that US life expectancy is one of the worst in the developed world, infant mortality, among others.
US health data even appears to be taken from developing countries, given how unequal the American healthcare system is. The reality is that the USA is becoming a third world country and this is a reality, not just an opinion.