Who wants to be a bigger trillionaire?
Holman Jenkins, Jr., the always perceptive Wall Street Journal columnist, wrote last week that he now finally understands the Russia-Trump connection. Faked e- mails unearthed by the Washington Post, in which Democratic Party staffers supposedly congratulate each other that the then-Democratic attorney general was going to bury the Hillary Clinton email investigation, were actually Russian plants. The phoney correspondence was designed by the Russians to get then FBI Director James Comey thinking he should keep the AG out of the loop and freelance his public vindication of Mrs. Clinton, which he did but was later forced to clumsily retract and then even more clumsily de- retract just before the election, thus helping elect Donald Trump. Got it? To which my reaction was: if the Russians are so smart, how come they’re not richer? Maybe they’re on their way to becoming richer. And some individual Russians are very rich already. ( Interesting tabloid question: Is Putin worth more than Trump?) But in terms of total GDP produced, even with favourable adjustments to allow for the fact that the ruble goes farther buying things in Russia than it does on international currency exchanges, Russian GDP isn’t even close to American or Chinese. It’s not even as big as India’s, Japan’s or Germany’s and it’s not that far ahead of Indonesia’s. Can anyone name the president of Indonesia? We could if his country had nuclear weapons.
If Russia were a U.S. state, it would be the biggest in terms of GDP, to say nothing of area or vodka. But California and Texas have a combined GDP of US$ 4.31 trillion, which is well ahead of Russia’s US$ 3.94 trillion. Of course, if Russia really were a U. S. state, with U. S. property and human rights, its GDP would be a lot higher than it is.
The accompanying table shows the GDPs of the 29 entities ( some of them over- lapping) that make up the world’s trillionaires club. No individual is close to being a member. Forbes magazine says Bill Gates is the richest human with net worth of just—“just”— US$ 75 billion in 2016. ( Some reports put Putin’s net worth at US$200 billion but even if that’s true it’s only a fifth of a trillion.) The country data are the IMF’s forecasts for 2017, in U. S. dollars, with national-currency GDPs converted at “purchasing- power pari ty” exchange rates. The Canada-U. S. PPP rate is usually thought to be around 85 cents, meaning a loonie spent in Canada will buy the same goods and services as US$ 0.85 will buy in the States — even though you can currently buy a loonie for just 74 U.S. cents.
Looking at PPP- adjusted GDP, China’s economy is already bigger t han t he U. S.’s, although since there are 4.25 Chinese people for every American, that’s not the accomplishment it might seem. The EU also edges out the U. S. — for now. Without the U. K. in the EU, the U. S. would move to second place. Russia is seventh overall. Six European countries make the club individually ( Germany, the U.K., France, Italy, Spain and Poland) and so do three U. S. states ( California, Texas and New York).
Where’s Canada? We’re 19th, which makes you wonder why we’re in the G7. We’re just behind Spain and just ahead of Texas — or Iran, if you prefer countryto-country comparisons. We used to think of ourselves as being the economic equivalent of California, given that we have roughly the same population (36 million here, 39 million there), but California’s GDP is 50- per- cent bigger than ours, even if some of it is produced by the few hundred thousand Canadian expats living there.
In l ots of things, size doesn’t matter. These days many people ( usually rich people) say GDP doesn’t matter: there’s more to life than GDP. There certainly is. But national wherewithal is useful for all sorts of things, some bad, many good. Keeping pace with Texas is fine, but we Canadians think of ourselves as having a bigger impact on the world than Texas does. If we want our self- image to match reality, we probably need to do better. Does “We’re Number 19” set your heart astir? Didn’t think so.