# ![@GuthmannR Avatar](https://lunarcrush.com/gi/w:26/cr:twitter::1108601275497758720.png) @GuthmannR Rafael R. Guthmann

Rafael R. Guthmann posts on X about in the, countries, china, the world the most. They currently have [-----] followers and [---] posts still getting attention that total [-----] engagements in the last [--] hours.

### Engagements: [-----] [#](/creator/twitter::1108601275497758720/interactions)
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- [--] Week [------] +690,117%
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- [--] Months [---------] +5.30%
- [--] Year [---------] +609%

### Mentions: [--] [#](/creator/twitter::1108601275497758720/posts_active)
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- [--] Months [---] +35%
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### Followers: [-----] [#](/creator/twitter::1108601275497758720/followers)
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- [--] Week [-----] +0.41%
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### CreatorRank: [---------] [#](/creator/twitter::1108601275497758720/influencer_rank)
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### Social Influence

**Social category influence**
[countries](/list/countries)  46.15% [finance](/list/finance)  15.38% [travel destinations](/list/travel-destinations)  2.88% [currencies](/list/currencies)  2.88% [agencies](/list/agencies)  1.92%

**Social topic influence**
[in the](/topic/in-the) 23.08%, [countries](/topic/countries) 19.23%, [china](/topic/china) 14.42%, [the world](/topic/the-world) 13.46%, [gdp](/topic/gdp) 12.5%, [brazil](/topic/brazil) 9.62%, [$4732t](/topic/$4732t) 8.65%, [level](/topic/level) 7.69%, [japan](/topic/japan) 7.69%, [to the](/topic/to-the) 7.69%

**Top accounts mentioned or mentioned by**
[@arpitrage](/creator/undefined) [@umeshgeeta](/creator/undefined) [@thetheoristv3](/creator/undefined) [@jbsteinberg](/creator/undefined) [@policytensor](/creator/undefined) [@maxcroser](/creator/undefined) [@gamblou](/creator/undefined) [@amazingmap](/creator/undefined) [@waldiro](/creator/undefined) [@agnescallard](/creator/undefined) [@ericseufert](/creator/undefined) [@robinhanson](/creator/undefined) [@theeconomist](/creator/undefined) [@goescarlos](/creator/undefined) [@patimarins64](/creator/undefined) [@alzzyd](/creator/undefined) [@bengolub](/creator/undefined) [@0xgaut](/creator/undefined) [@thephilippics](/creator/undefined) [@fotosdefatos](/creator/undefined)
### Top Social Posts
Top posts by engagements in the last [--] hours

"Major update of a working paper: This project was motivated by my desire to understand the puzzle of intellectual property. As it is not a standard type of property but a monopoly granted by the government on a specific market. Very glad to have arrived at this paper"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1933900525092892735)  2025-06-14T14:53Z [----] followers, 41.9K engagements


"Thats not true. GDP data for African countries is highly imperfect. If we look at the relative GDP level using contemporary data and correct for methodological discrepancies they show Sub-Saharan African countries as among the world's fastest growing economies since [----]. In particular Ethiopia a country over [---] million people exhibited enormous growth similar to China's over the past [--] years in aggregate terms. Other data such as life expectancy child mortality etc do show enormous progress as well. Today life expectancy in Tanzania is higher than it was in the US back in the 1940s. Every"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/2021320009402700203)  2026-02-10T20:26Z [----] followers, 20.9K engagements


"I agree that the economics profession needs to improve a lot. Economics is a social science that deals with highly "organic" complex systems and not a science that deals with easily measurable and quantifiable stuff like physics. I think the main issue with the modern economics profession is that it practices economics in a way that doesn't properly account for how "soft" and complex economics is. That means we need more diversity of ideas and approaches the inverse of the uniformizing "tyranny of the top 5" we have today. But to improve the way economics is being done we need lots of young"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/2022091604073324829)  2026-02-12T23:33Z [----] followers, 13.5K engagements


"Interestingly the term "Western civilization" today is almost completely obsolete. That is because modern industrialized civilization has spread globally and since modern industrialized civilization is heavily influenced by historical European culture and institutions (constructs like "nation states" civil and common law systems international norms of diplomacy and monogamy) objectively speaking the entire world is now "Western civilization" except for some isolated tribal populations. Perhaps one can say China is not "as western" as the US because its writing system and religion are less"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/2022722910083797256)  2026-02-14T17:21Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"Relative to the rest of the world the US economic peak was in the years following WW2 but thats because Europe was essentially destroyed. One can roughly estimate that in relative productivity trend terms US economic peak was just before the [----] crash in the roaring 1920s. That was a time when 2/3 of US households had a car while virtually nobody outside the US and Canada had a car and when 80% of the world's countries were mostly illiterate subsistence farmers while US per capita energy consumption was close to 3/4 of today's level. From [----] to the early 1940s there was substantial"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/2022056697322242353)  2026-02-12T21:14Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"@umeshgeeta Calling your political system a "democratic republic" is also almost universal these days. North Korea for example. In practice none of our modern democracies are like the ancient Greek democracies where the population directly participated in government except for Switzerland"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/2022740636617920840)  2026-02-14T18:32Z [----] followers, [---] engagements


"@thetheoristv3 Wilkinson has coined the term "central civilization" to describe the merging of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian worlds in the bronze age. Says our current global civilization directly descends from this system which is the narrative I find most insightful: https://eolss.net/sample-chapters/c04/E6-94-10.pdf https://eolss.net/sample-chapters/c04/E6-94-10.pdf"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/2022749943086108948)  2026-02-14T19:09Z [----] followers, [---] engagements


"@GambLou @amazingmap @waldiro The relative distribution of the Egyptian population is likely the same since [----] BC. Even the location of the capital Cairo today is very close to Memphis [----] years ago the capital of the Old Kingdom"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1615131018347876362)  2023-01-16T23:36Z [----] followers, 12.1K engagements


"My interpretation of Hayek's argument is that society's informational problem has [--] dimensions: (1) Computation (2) Incentive compatibility (3) Communication cost (4) Articulation Hayek's point is that (1) is trivial (just equate marginal rates of substitution) while (4) is hard Coming back to Hayeks argument there was another aspect of it that has always bothered me. What if computational power of central planners improved tremendously Would Hayek then be happy with central planning Coming back to Hayeks argument there was another aspect of it that has always bothered me. What if"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1660752358454820872)  2023-05-22T20:59Z [----] followers, 49.8K engagements


"Ancient relative prices were wildly different so making a meaningful "correction for inflation" in that regard is impossible. In terms of breath prices we know bread in Pompeii sold for 1/2 to 3/4 of a sestertii for 2-3 librae (.68-1.02 kg). So in terms of bread a sestertii would be ca. [--] dollars. But in terms of house costs [--] sq meter is estimated to cost around [--] sesterces today the median price per sq meter in the US is [----] dollars. So in terms of housing a sestertii would be ca. [--] dollars. That means [--] million sesterces could be converted from [---] million to nearly [--] billion dollars."  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1699840387085443541)  2023-09-07T17:41Z [----] followers, 25.4K engagements


"@AgnesCallard "High achiever" in which sense My impression with economics is that it is converging into a verticalized hierarchical profession that attracts people who want to climb social hierarchies instead of being primarily interested in finding out the truth"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1700666234163929199)  2023-09-10T00:23Z [----] followers, 21.6K engagements


"If you want to pursue a "sinocentric" narrative you would focus on industrial statistics where Chinese dominance is much higher than in terms of GDP PPP. China's "economy" is about [---] times the US in GDP but it's often an order of magnitude larger in terms of industrial goods: There are more industrial robots being installed per capita in China than in US or Europe. China consumes more cement every 3-4 years than the US consumed over the past [---]. China monthly production of aluminum steel and EV batteries is larger than the US's annual production. It is interesting that Chinese economy"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1785007828731654286)  2024-04-29T18:06Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"The World Bank's just released their latest benchmark of real GDPs: Comparing specific categories between US and China with physical indicators of consumption make it look like the size of the Chinese economy is indeed greatly underestimated even in PPP terms. Compare the following categories in billions of PPP dollars with physical indicators of consumption: Food consumption: US - [------] China - [------] So apparently we are supposed to believe that Chinese per capita food consumption is 25% of American food consumption In terms of calories Chinese mean daily food consumption is [----] calories"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1797131985522925785)  2024-06-02T05:03Z [----] followers, 89.1K engagements


"First insightful economic papers tend to be disseminated irrespective of being published in the "top 5." Also IMO Nordhaus' light paper caused more harm than good anyway. He noticed that the measurement of GDP over the long run is wrong because technological change causes changes in the sets of products available. But instead of figuring out that a unidimensional variable cannot measure the multidimensional nature of economic progress over the long run he just concluded that the degree of unidimensional measurement was wrong and not the unidimensional approach itself. Thanks to him the"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1800302404635684963)  2024-06-10T23:01Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"My first attempt at an ancient economics paper: Basically it suggests that GDP per capita should have varied ca. [--] times from Roman Britain to Roman Greece or Lybia which is pretty huge for pre-industrial standards. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfmabstract_id=4725420 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfmabstract_id=4725420"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1801745089443860965)  2024-06-14T22:34Z [----] followers, 54.9K engagements


"@eric_seufert Measurement error: https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1802058548412649651 One example of the consequences of the high heterogeneity in GDP computation practiced across countries these days is the idea that Italy has been stagnant since the 1990s. However if we consider the PPP benchmarks from the ICP program since [----] using the US as the yardstick https://t.co/IhRWm5Fx7H https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1802058548412649651 One example of the consequences of the high heterogeneity in GDP computation practiced across countries these days is the idea that Italy has been stagnant since"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1802930834166485083)  2024-06-18T05:06Z [----] followers, 15.5K engagements


"@robinhanson Being Greek Polybius obviously didn't believe his civilization "fell." He believed that the low birth rate was the primary cause of Greece's population decline that had occurred by his time"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1811567078899405003)  2024-07-12T01:03Z [----] followers, 10.1K engagements


"New working paper We develop a rich general equilibrium framework to evaluate competition policy. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfmabstract_id=5129730 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfmabstract_id=5129730"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1888359047197258054)  2025-02-08T22:47Z [----] followers, 35.6K engagements


"I suspect the latest round of PPP benchmarks substantially underestimated Japanese productivity causing this impression. Other indicators of development that is proxy indicators of GDP show a very large gap between Poland and Japan. In fact these indicators show that Poland is more comparable to China in terms of overall development. Using alternative price data I estimated Japan is at 72% of US's per capita GDP Poland at 51% China at 42% in [----]. The latest IMF World Economic Outlook expects Poland to overtake Japanese GDP per capita next year https://t.co/fPSvZBzujj The latest IMF World"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1899163574682935567)  2025-03-10T18:20Z [----] followers, 21.9K engagements


"First its now clear that China's GDP per capita PPP has been underestimated. Also taking into account underestimation and regional inequalities we have that China's GDP per capita should be adjusted from 30% of US's to 40-45% and considering that the richer coastal regions are 30-40% richer these regions real GDP level is ca. 60% of the US's. We are talking about regions with about 650-700 million people with GDP per capita almost equal to EU's average. So China now contains the world's largest region with a developed country's standard of living. The same exercise can be done with life"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1904915024339943752)  2025-03-26T15:15Z [----] followers, 10.9K engagements


"Are Poland's living standards about to surpass Japan's I don't think so Let us check some other evidence besides the World Bank's estimates of GDP PPP as economists used to do back in the day (for GDP I used my own estimates): "The remarkable rise of Poland" is this week's cover story in @TheEconomist. "Poland has transformed itself into Europes most overlooked power - with a bigger army than Britain France or Germany and living standards adjusted for purchasing power about to eclipse Japans" https://t.co/EZ98eghFgN "The remarkable rise of Poland" is this week's cover story in @TheEconomist."  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1926363897965006883)  2025-05-24T19:45Z [----] followers, 38.2K engagements


"GDP is a poor measure of the power of a nation because it is demographic and material resources that determine power. While GDP per capita is correlated with material resources per capita it is an imperfect correlation and material resources are a logistical function of GDP per capita rather than a linear function. For example the per capita material resources increase enormously when you vary GDP per capita from Malawi's level of [----] to the Iranian level of [-----] dollars PPP. But increasing GDP per capita from [-----] to the US's level of [-----] represents a much smaller proportional increase"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1938680054126366958)  2025-06-27T19:25Z [----] followers, 23.8K engagements


"There is a certain fetish among US elites that they must "lead" the world in the sense of having more market share "patents" and "publications" in "strategic industries/fields" than any other country. Back in the 1990s they even sanctioned Japan as the Japanese started leading in some technological fields. But sanctioning giant countries like China is not feasible and even if this hypothesis of leadership were feasible is also not beneficial for the bulk of the US's own population: it's better for Americans that India and China develop and so trade opportunities are greater. Trying to"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1944765315084157008)  2025-07-14T14:25Z [----] followers, 11.6K engagements


"@goescarlos No caso da China existe uma abundancia nica de recursos para construcao civil (devido em parte a fortes subsidios). A cada [---] anos se usa mais cimento em obras na China que os EUA usaram nos ltimos [---] anos. Isso torna projetos mirabolantes como esse comerciamente viaveis"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1952182069179953411)  2025-08-04T01:37Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"@pati_marins64 This war is irrational in the strategic sense: the "plan" was to destroy Russia as a great power by using Ukraine as an armed proxy. So hundreds of thousands are dying for a plan that has zero probability of success. It's like a large scale human sacrifice ritual to make rain"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1955663438803526119)  2025-08-13T16:11Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"There has been an enormous technological convergence in recent centuries which has allowed the playing field to be leveled to an enormous extent in terms of allowing small developing countries like North Vietnam to effectively counter coercion from major powers. For example in the 1940s Iran was so weak that the Soviet Union and Britain just decided to occupy it to open a supply route from the Allies to the Soviet Union in their war against Germany It was an almost trivial operation. British and French coercion of China in the 19th century is another example of how trivially easy it was for a"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1965417125574582699)  2025-09-09T14:08Z [----] followers, 17.4K engagements


"There has been a large socioeconomic and technological convergence across the world since the mid 20th century. This means that American French and British stereotypes about the "backwardness" of the rest of the world are now completely incongruent with the reality of most countries. For example Chile has higher life expectacy and lower murder rates than the US. Russian child mortality rates are now 30% lower than the US's and Chinese manufacturing now employs more robots per worker than American manufacturing. I remember an American friend telling me he's afraid of visiting Romania because"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1965794067683393559)  2025-09-10T15:06Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"@alz_zyd_ Even set theory is post-Newtonian mathematics. Gauss-Markov as well. Kakutani's fixed point theorem is from the 1940s. Thus in fact most actual mathematics used in modern economics is "post newtonian.""  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1971692933633208725)  2025-09-26T21:46Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"In well paying fields like economics the salary premium of a PhD is also valuable even considering it takes [--] or [--] years to finish. The typical initial salary from a prestigious econ PhD program is about 200k more if you do consulting for the private sector. Many people from developing countries do it because they can use a PhD to immigrate to the "first world." Others do it because they couldn't find a job straight out of undergrad and decide starting gradschool is the way to go and they are too scared to get away from academia with a MA degree. @ben_golub Doing a PHD without a deep sense of"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1972780845003063630)  2025-09-29T21:49Z [----] followers, 30.4K engagements


"I got hooked into economics after reading some undergrad textbooks in the 9th grade. Just [--] years later I got my first article published. You can just do things. I didnt start doing physics until I was [--] and now I work on a cutting edge research project at one of the top labs in the world. You can just do things I didnt start doing physics until I was [--] and now I work on a cutting edge research project at one of the top labs in the world. You can just do things"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1973506954548093316)  2025-10-01T21:54Z [----] followers, 55.9K engagements


"Not true it's "all about work hours." German GDP per capita (not per hour) increased from 73% of the US in [----] to 87% in [----] according to the PPP benchmarks. Thing is that official GDP per capita growth rates imply that German GDP per capita should have been ca. 110% of the US in [----] if it was 87% in [----]. The reality is that official GDP growth rates do not function reasonably well to measure economic divergence or convergence. They work to signal convergence when the difference in the growth rate is radical such as China/US but in cases when the difference is small like Germany/US one"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1975887539371118918)  2025-10-08T11:34Z [----] followers, 13.5K engagements


"The "official" justification for the use of mathematics in economics is to force the economist to be fully explicit showing the "internal structure" of their reasoning by articulating it using a fully explicit formal machinery. I think this justification makes a lot of sense. Why is math useful in economics Here are some counterintuitive results which math makes intuitive: - Portfolio diversification: an asset with expected return higher than the risk-free rate which is uncorrelated with the rest of your portfolio is always worth holding Why is math useful in economics Here are some"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1981011347656872068)  2025-10-22T14:54Z [----] followers, 49.4K engagements


"The yuan got much stronger in recent decades. Back in the mid 90s the Chinese price level was a ludicrous 10% of Japan's now it's about 70% of Japan's"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1987701175643173203)  2025-11-10T01:57Z [----] followers, 11.2K engagements


"Publishing in AER in [----] vs publishing now"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1424743731148861444)  2021-08-09T14:45Z [----] followers, [--] engagements


"Irving Fisher: You know how higher interest rates are supposed to reduce inflation If that's true how come inflation correlates positively with interest rates Here's the international pattern. #InterestRates #inflation https://t.co/8EfMhvrMmc https://t.co/RMQIMSI1WR You know how higher interest rates are supposed to reduce inflation If that's true how come inflation correlates positively with interest rates Here's the international pattern. #InterestRates #inflation https://t.co/8EfMhvrMmc https://t.co/RMQIMSI1WR"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1622808901673418757)  2023-02-07T04:06Z [----] followers, 27.3K engagements


"According to this [----] map Russia used to have [--] times the population of Brazil. Today it's [---] times"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1678832786763837460)  2023-07-11T18:25Z [----] followers, 15.7K engagements


"@0xgaut Atlanta's density is so low (lower than entire countries like Bangladesh and Taiwan) that you could just classify Atlanta as a high-density rural area with a small city in the middle. The difference from traditional rural areas is just that most residents don't farm"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1698490250148847784)  2023-09-04T00:16Z [----] followers, 18.4K engagements


"@thephilippics You are comparing wartime to peacetime shell production and modern artillery shells are 3-4 times heavier than WW1 shells. Also Russia produced much fewer shells than Germany about [--] million shells during the whole first world war compared to [---] million for Germany"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1703921073543082489)  2023-09-18T23:56Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"@FotosDeFatos Do melhor ao pior: [--] [--] [--] [--] [--] 3"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1722726108594831544)  2023-11-09T21:21Z [----] followers, 25.3K engagements


"@ShazCoder Marxism was never popular in the US because the US is not a stratified class society. However 20th-century Marxist philosophers managed to translate Marxism into American sensibilities by reframing it in terms of race and gender creating wokeness"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1726767670958100652)  2023-11-21T01:01Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"@RobinBrooksIIF The reality is that Russia is a big industrialized country of [---] million with massive natural resources. Sanctions on such country specially without cooperation of other major economies like China India Brazil etc will not have first order effects on aggregate output"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1728479783225287043)  2023-11-25T18:24Z [----] followers, 22.2K engagements


"@whstancil Median household income collapsed between [----] and [----] that explains the bad personal experiences:"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1730795169195213211)  2023-12-02T03:44Z [----] followers, 18.5K engagements


"High-level intellectual activity did collapse across Western Eurasia with the "transformation" of the Graeco-Roman world into the medieval world. This graph is a plot of the number of entries in two encyclopedias for attested figures from the fields of "natural sciences" and "philosophy" whose lifetimes can be reliably dated. The number of attested scientists decreases 98% from 1st century AD to the 8th century and attested philosophers decreases 95% from 1st century AD to the 7th century. Note that as more recent records tend to have higher survivability these figures are actually biased"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1741216526760374312)  2023-12-30T21:55Z [----] followers, 58.7K engagements


"@ivanildoiii Lula ficou [---] anos dos [--] anos que foi condenado. Em comparacao [--] anos dos [---] anos condenado um tempo esperado. A Suzanne von Ritchthoven at que cumpriu demais pelo padrao Brasileiro: ficou [--] anos dos [--] que foi condenada em regime fechado"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1747367521622151198)  2024-01-16T21:17Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"@buildhomez Many counter examples: Camboriu in Brazil Benidorm in Spain Santiago in Chile Tokyo in Japan"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1747678993074004439)  2024-01-17T17:55Z [----] followers, 42.5K engagements


"@ulashooter @UpdatingOnRome @the_chappening Before Rome had to keep [--] legions in the channel to defend against the Britons. So they figured to move these legions north into modern Scotland so that they would pacify most of Britain's population improving their defensive position without increasing military expenditures"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1753426758374728038)  2024-02-02T14:34Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"A little-known fact is that Baghdad began as Seleucia on the Tigris. The city was founded by Alexander the Great's general Seleucus. It was already said to be one of the largest cities in the world during Roman times; Strabo said it had [------] people although modern estimates are more conservative. Strabo said that one of its suburbs was called Ctesiphon by the Parthians who set up their palace there (as the Greek walled city was off-limits to barbarians) but it was later destroyed by the Romans. Then it was rebuilt by the Persians but then it was just called Ctesiphon. Then after being"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1755360730327478641)  2024-02-07T22:39Z [----] followers, 22K engagements


"@P_droMenezes Se continuar assim pode correr um milagre: em [----] nao elegeremos um populista pela primera vez desde 1998"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1765805464393036231)  2024-03-07T18:23Z [----] followers, 47.8K engagements


"@MrRBourne Depends on the profession. Economists with same qualifications make much more money in Brazil than in Europe. Doesn't mean Brazil is much richer. Manufacturing compensation is typically higher in several European countries:"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1780621035219431586)  2024-04-17T15:35Z [----] followers, 64.3K engagements


"@jonatanpallesen Well looking at available estimates of urban population on a log scale the decline of the Roman Empire looks comparable to the industrialization of Europe and Northern America over 1780-1980. Other ancient indicators are similarly spectacular"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1789336403060425181)  2024-05-11T16:46Z [----] followers, 36.7K engagements


"One example of the consequences of the high heterogeneity in GDP computation practiced across countries these days is the idea that Italy has been stagnant since the 1990s. However if we consider the PPP benchmarks from the ICP program since [----] using the US as the yardstick we should adjust Italy's GDP growth upwards: Then this GDP series adjusted by PPP benchmarks and divided by the working-age population of Italy now looks like this with the growth being identical to the US's official GDP series from [----] to 2021: First insightful economic papers tend to be disseminated irrespective of"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1802058548412649651)  2024-06-15T19:20Z [----] followers, 32.3K engagements


"@realmilgrauu"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1814736867415499099)  2024-07-20T18:59Z [----] followers, 20.4K engagements


"It is also absurd to claim these four countries combined have a "middle-class" population comparable to China's. Motor vehicle sales are a good proxy indicator of the size of a "middle class" population: the population that can afford to purchase new cars. Chinas middle class is shrinking chart from this weeks Economist. https://t.co/a174dxXB7S Chinas middle class is shrinking chart from this weeks Economist. https://t.co/a174dxXB7S"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1860517046619980209)  2024-11-24T02:53Z [----] followers, 35K engagements


"This indicator illustrates how China's middle class is now comparable in size to the aggregate middle classes of the US Europe and Japan:"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1860517737807654964)  2024-11-24T02:56Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"@kamilkazani It's called convergence: today UK is roughly equal to European average. Convergence is universal tendency: due to marginal returns of capital being higher in poorer countries. This is continuing: by this century I expect that the US will not be much richer than India"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1862186233599832140)  2024-11-28T17:26Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"Nobody is "forcibly deindustrializing" anyone. China's manufacturing output is enormous because it's [---] billion people and it has traditional East Asian comparative advantage in manufacturing. US doesn't produce a lot of manufacturing today bcse the dollar is the world's reserve currency so US exports debt (produced at zero marginal cost by US government's massive budget deficits) to import manufactured goods. If you want for the US to increase manufacturing output it's simple: just need for the government to balance the budget. That will result in reduction in demand for USD and it's"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1864268059147694549)  2024-12-04T11:18Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"If one measures healthcare consumption using actual quantities Americans do not really have access to more medical resources than similar countries. For [----] people in Germany there are 30% more doctors and three times the number of hospital beds. In France there are the same number of doctors and twice the hospital beds. In Japan there are 20% fewer doctors but over four times the hospital beds. The number of CT scan machines per [----] is not much higher in the US than in most similar countries and it's much lower than in Japan. The difference in expenditures is mostly because medical care is"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1864788773818487142)  2024-12-05T21:47Z [----] followers, 17.2K engagements


"@JohnF_Sullivan The US has historically never suffered mass casualties like the British and French did in WW1 or the Germans and Soviets in WW2. But does that mean they are afraid of casualties No just that they were never in a strategic position that resulted in mass casualties"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1876776776287822102)  2025-01-07T23:43Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"@ByrneHobart Also using methodological corrections for measuring military expenditures Chinese expenditures are already at parity with the US and Russian expenditures are not far behind"  
[X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1878255129683464266)  2025-01-12T01:38Z [----] followers, 11.9K engagements


"@deustha @rafaelgloves No caso DeepSeek eh bem menos pior porque seus tabus so bem explcitos e delimitados. J os tabus identitrios das IAs ocidentais so inmeros e espalhados quase aleatoriamente"  
[X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1885527388047409532)  2025-02-01T03:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"China's GDP is substantially underestimated it's real GDP per capita is something around 35-40000 dollars. Then the coastal provinces where half of the population lives are richer than average. There GDP per capita should be around 45-50000 dollars or nearly two thirds of American levels. Argentina's GDP per capita appears a bit overestimated vis countries like China Chile and Brazil it's officially only 10% lower than Chile's but the gap in living standards is very large as is evident in terms of life expectacy and car sales per capita. Finally Turkey's latest benchmark GDP estimates led to"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1893330703200264586)  2025-02-22T16:03Z [----] followers, 117.8K engagements


"@EconChrisClarke This article is about GDP growth rate. I am talking about GDP levels. In regards to lights they come from electricity and Chinese electricity consumption per capita is now higher than Germany"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1893593566447808607)  2025-02-23T09:27Z [----] followers, 12.6K engagements


"The big figures in history of philosphy and science would be very hard to replace. Without Socrates the history of Western though could have been completely different. Without Aristotle the invention of formal logic might have taken substantially longer. Newton's contributions to physics were not easy to be replicated by others from his time. Einstein's contributions on relativity were very original it would be very hard to replace him"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1894007614133969238)  2025-02-24T12:52Z [----] followers, 16.6K engagements


"Russia's strategic material resources are much larger than suggested by nominal GDP. It is strategic material resources and not nominal GDP that primarily determines geopolitical power. If you look at Co2 emissions a better proxy indicator of how big an economy is in material size Russian emissions are close to half the US's and 3/4 of the European Union's. I also made a comparison using physical statistics of the production of strategic natural resources (coal oil gas etc.) and industrial indicators (electricity steel used in metal working industries chip production etc.). In per capita"  
[X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1895948194791465274)  2025-03-01T21:24Z [----] followers, 710.8K engagements


"@Timeforteatwo @YashengHuang I aggregated these data using US wholesale prices"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1895965805604720737)  2025-03-01T22:34Z [----] followers, 97K engagements


"@xruiztru The Romans knew China existed but they didn't know much about it's geography but they knew silk they imported came from there. Like the silk depicted in this 1st century paiting:"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1907073566295679026)  2025-04-01T14:12Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"China is [---] billion people US is [---] billion people. If trade is blocked between these two groups of people (as over 100% tariff is almost the same as a blockade) each American loses 4-5 possible people to trade with while each Chinese loses [---] people to trade with. Therefore the current trade war has a much greater long-term cost on Americans than on the Chinese. Hence why China has much greater bargaining power and why they are much more patient in negotiating"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1916227895053210013)  2025-04-26T20:28Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"As I said before that claim is not true. While Poland improved a lot over the last [--] years Poland is still midway between Mexico and Japan in terms of development in many ways closer to Mexico. According to many indicators Iran has progressed faster than Poland in recent decades. Iran's national accounts underestimate its level and speed of development. Poland went from Iran-level of economic development to Japan-level in a single generation https://t.co/7LzpJER8SL Poland went from Iran-level of economic development to Japan-level in a single generation https://t.co/7LzpJER8SL"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1933941208792838322)  2025-06-14T17:34Z [----] followers, 14.6K engagements


"@arpitrage Or just abolish government pensions: http://nber.org/papers/w11146 http://nber.org/papers/w11146"  
[X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1935051768276337112)  2025-06-17T19:07Z [----] followers, 223.3K engagements


"@nntaleb Looks like neither Trump nor Khamenei wants war; only Israel wants war. So they gave Israel a fake war"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1937260760037458237)  2025-06-23T21:25Z [----] followers, 11.8K engagements


"No it's because Chinese statistical agencies do not follow Western national accounting standards. This results in a dramatic underestimation of nominal expenditures on consumption compared to other countries. In Mexico for example they adjust their total GDP by around 20-30% by just imputing informal private consumption and investment. China's lack of methodological consistency with Western national accounts is likely due to the fact its national accounting system is based on Soviet national accounting concepts their notion of "net material product" that excludes services. If Soviet standards"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1941167519215067487)  2025-07-04T16:09Z [----] followers, 34.8K engagements


"@amanpour Journalists should stop with the automatic claim that the US is "the world biggest economy" considering the scale of China's statistics this claim is sounding increasingly delusional:"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1945918824361980133)  2025-07-17T18:49Z [----] followers, 15.7K engagements


"China/US ratio of [--] by [----] looks about right given trends if not is slightly understated. But Indian manufacturing will be in real terms comparable to the US's by [----]. A ratio of 11%/3% far underestimates the scale of Indian manufacturing even today. Looking at physical data for [--] industries and weighting it by international prices yields the following manufacturing shares for 2023:"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1946240053115486398)  2025-07-18T16:06Z [----] followers, 52.6K engagements


"@phl43 Trump appears to think that all countries are in fact centrally planned economies whose governments can centrally determine imports and investments"  
[X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1949821589584744856)  2025-07-28T13:17Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"This claims the median US income is like the 95th percentile in Brazil which shows how problematic this kind of comparison is. As an economist who lived in both countries I would say that socio-economic outcomes for a 95th percentile household in Brazil are much better across the board vis--vis the median American household. Although it might be true that for certain categories of goods iPhones trucks and sports cars in particular goods that are unusually expensive in Brazil the median American family might have higher purchasing power. But in many other classes of goods the 95th percentile"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1964483969212354604)  2025-09-07T00:20Z [----] followers, 146K engagements


"An elite Roman's house was something like this villa excavated by archeologists near Herculaneum: The richest Roman senators were said to be worth 200-400 million sesterces and a [----] square feet house in Roman Italy was estimated to cost ca. [-----] sesterces. Thus such senators could buy tens of thousands of such houses. In the US today a [----] sq ft house is ca. [------] dollars; thus the richest Roman senator would be worth 10-20 billion USD according to the US's current real estate prices. And unlike ancient Romans a rich Brazilian today has access to all the technologies that a rich American"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1964709532074213738)  2025-09-07T15:17Z [----] followers, 70.4K engagements


"Not quite. China is [---] billion people US+EU+UK+Japan is ca. [--] billion. While China is less developed today there is no reason to expect that China will stay less developed. Across weighted average of industrial indicators I compiled China is already larger than the US+EU+UK+Japan "block" (34% to 29% of the world's in my estimation). For example electricity generation in China now is [-----] twh US+EU+UK+Japan combined is ca. [----] twh. Steel consumption is [---] mt in China ca. [---] mt in the US+EU+UK+Japan block. In addition there are collective action problems in such a large and heterogeneous"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1965026492800278985)  2025-09-08T12:16Z [----] followers, 27.9K engagements


"@Noahpinion Thats more like [-----] [----] dollars which is Maddison's estimate of US's GDP per capita in the early 1950s. But anyway its still evidence of massive global convergence"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1965822672417538327)  2025-09-10T17:00Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"There is indeed no lack of strong state institutions in Brazil. The modern Brazilian state was forged in the 19th century: its formation involved crushing nearly half a dozen separatist revolts and a war with Paraguay which holds the record for the highest proportional loss of life in modern history (around half of Paraguay's population perished in the conflict with Brazil and it's allies with estimates going as high as 90% of the adult male population). Considering the length of it's independent history with over [---] years that it maintained a geographical size larger than the contiguous"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1966675255159554211)  2025-09-13T01:28Z [----] followers, 13.8K engagements


"China's GDP is underestimated on both the PPP conversion factor level and the nominal GDP level. Maddison's reconstruction of Chinese national accounts updated his estimate of nominal GDP by 12% then adjusting it by the GDP PPP conversion factor of [----] instead of [----] means that China's GDP per capita was ca. 45% of the US's in [----] and aggregate level is ca. 185%"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1970848338619609462)  2025-09-24T13:50Z [----] followers, 39.4K engagements


"I think this idea of warm countries being poorer is just a historical accident: as modern economic growth began in Western Europe the regions colonized by their settlers which tend to have a similar climate developed earlier. As the world is converging to development these discrepancies are being erased. Places like Taiwan Singapore Malaysia and southern mainland China are quite hot and now are rich as well. I would think living in a cold climate is a cost not an endowment. It lowers welfare since you have to incur costs of heating plowing snow heavy clothing etc. Thus the net effect of cold"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1971210790406328426)  2025-09-25T13:50Z [----] followers, 18.7K engagements


"It is pretty obvious by now that China is a much larger economic power than the US and the European Union. Across various statistics it now looks like India is a closer economic power in terms of magnitude to the EU than the EU is to China. *GDP figures in bold I adjusted from the World Bank's estimates based on the last ICP round using data from previous ICP rounds and Maddison's estimates. In other words if the US is a [--] trillion dollar economy by ppp then China is actually a [--] trillion dollar economy. In other words if the US is a [--] trillion dollar economy by ppp then China is actually"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1971577157567516790)  2025-09-26T14:06Z [----] followers, 241.5K engagements


"I find it quite obvious that scientific and technological innovation do not require "democracy" in the currently understood sense. None of Europe's states from the 18th to the mid 19th centuries were liberal democracies by modern standards. UK only implemented universal male suffrage in the [----]. Germany was the foremost scientific power of the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century and was only a democracy during the 1920s. The US only became an actual liberal democracy according to political scientists after the civil rights reforms in the 1960s as universal suffrage entered in"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1980010600026513465)  2025-10-19T20:38Z [----] followers, 19.6K engagements


"Lucas was right. There has not been a depression in the Western world since WW2. Even the Great Recession was quite mild compared to an actual depression. Lucas in [----] a few years before the GFC proclaiming the end of macroeconomics: https://t.co/ykaHk7G2M1 Lucas in [----] a few years before the GFC proclaiming the end of macroeconomics: https://t.co/ykaHk7G2M1"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1980999988063990061)  2025-10-22T14:09Z [----] followers, 37.8K engagements


"The use of formal math in economics took off in the mid-20th century as during that time economic debates using verbal language started to run into corners. For example the Keynes-Hayek business cycle theory debate in the 1930s where each responded to the other's positions by writing 300-page-long books was at a point in the development of economic theory where theoretical economic reasoning had become too complex to be clearly articulated in verbal language. So both Keynes and Hayek were often talking past each other. After that economists started to articulate their business cycle"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1981019471302078618)  2025-10-22T15:27Z [----] followers, 35.7K engagements


"India Brazil Indonesia Russia and Mexico are major countries and all have lower life expectancy than the US. While Switzerland and Sweden are obviously not major countries. The fact is that US life expectancy is at the 80th percentile across countries worldwide which is still very good but indeed relatively lower than its GDP per capita (94th percentile) or GDP per hour worked (I guess ca. 90th percentile considering there are 7-8 EU countries with lower GDP per capita but higher GDP per hour worked). Overall I don't think US life expectancy could be increased much from further increasing the"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1982461466595803612)  2025-10-26T14:57Z [----] followers, 12.7K engagements


"Well Americans (and the Japanese and Western Europeans) are still richer on average than the Chinese. But the gap is relatively mild if you compare Chinese living standards to those of very poor countries in Africa and Asia. For example Chinese life expectancy is [---] years lower than American life expectancy but it's [--] years higher than Nigerian life expectancy: In terms of consumption of protein Chinese per capita consumption is now higher than that of the US France Germany and Japan's: Thanks to improved nutrition Chinese children are now taller than American children: Chinese use of"  
[X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1982559281703461319)  2025-10-26T21:25Z [----] followers, 75.3K engagements


"While Muhammad was indeed highly significant I actually think Hannibal and Scipio Africanus had greater impact since they were perhaps the critical figures in the formation of the Roman Empire. No Roman Empire means: no christianity islam and muhammad no Middle Ages no "Europe" in the first place. The last [----] years of history would be radically different. But it's a matter of determining how decisive Hannibal and Africanus were in the formation of the Roman Empire. I think they were critical specially Hannibal since it was Hannibal's invasion of Italy that induced the mobilization of the"  
[X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1986776080091332875)  2025-11-07T12:41Z [----] followers, 27K engagements


"Since Chinese manufacturing has been achieving the highest productivity in the world the long-term trend is that its exports of tradable goods will tend to raise China's GDP per worker to a nominal level higher than the US and the EU like Japan's high-productivity manufacturing did in the 1990s. Since China's employed labor force is ca. [---] million [---] times the US's and over [--] times the EU's its total nominal GDP might reach a level close to an order of magnitude higher than the US or the EU (roughly similar to the current Russia/US gap) in the near future. Using company-level data from"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1986846837681078577)  2025-11-07T17:22Z [----] followers, 25.2K engagements


"As China and India are developing their price levels (ratio of nominal exchange rate to PPP) are converging relative to the most mature economy of Asia. Relative to the rest of the world the yuan is not a weak currency anymore; it's ca. 75% as strong as the Japanese yen roughly 80% as strong as the Korean won. It is now stronger than the currencies of India Indonesia Malaysia Russia and Brazil. Thing is the yuan appears cheap because the USD is also (still) anomalously strong relative to other developed currencies. The same applies to the British pound. The yuan got much stronger in recent"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1987929003869507751)  2025-11-10T17:03Z [----] followers, 20.7K engagements


"The USD is anomalously strong right now which causes estimates of nominal GDP to greatly overestimate US relative productivity. The serious way to estimate GDP per capita is to use carefully constructed PPPs as done by the ICP rounds. Another problem with GDP per capita is that it doesn't take into consideration leisure. Taking those into consideration and the gap between US and Western Europe has not existed for [--] years as since the 1980s that GDP per hour worked is basically the same. There still remains a gap of the West with Japan which appears to have slowly increased I think thats"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1988321495072768228)  2025-11-11T19:02Z [----] followers, 11.8K engagements


"There is no significant "growing gap" between the US and Europe except for the recent exogenous shock from the Ukraine war which has severely hurt the EU's economy. In general it appears that European economies have tended to grow slightly faster than the US's average over the past 30-35 years mainly due to the convergence of Eastern European economies to the technological frontier following the Fall of Communism. However Western European economies have converged to the US's level of productivity for nearly half a century by now. In [----] real hourly labor compensation in manufacturing was as"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1988356260287377599)  2025-11-11T21:20Z [----] followers, 12.6K engagements


"France might have been the primary driver of the initial monetary contraction: Then the sustained high unemployment level in the US was caused by Hoover's policies. While unemployment levels recovered to relatively normal levels in Britain and Germany by the late 1930s. http://nber.org/papers/w16350 What caused The Great Depression I spoke w @WIRED. My favorite part is discussing my G-Grand Father's experience with the WPA. We cover everything from gold standard new deal Friedman Keynes Dust Bowl Wall St crash & refrigeration Give it a watch 🧵/ https://t.co/8LhhSb8K6X"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1988625387643932998)  2025-11-12T15:10Z [----] followers, 17.7K engagements


"@sobel_mark Its not undervalued relative to the currencies of Asia (i.e. which are over [--] billion people). In fact relative to the Brazilian real it looks slightly overvalued. The currency that is overvalued is the USD. https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1987929003869507751s=20 As China and India are developing their price levels (ratio of nominal exchange rate to PPP) are converging relative to the most mature economy of Asia. Relative to the rest of the world the yuan is not a weak currency anymore; it's ca. 75% as strong as the Japanese yen https://t.co/p6U29zagNQ"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1991172861722255431)  2025-11-19T15:52Z [----] followers, [---] engagements


"@policytensor Most services need to be produced locally so if government budget deficits consume 105% of GDP (like US does) and services are 75% of consumption then net good imports are 20% of output which means goods output would increase 25% if the government balanced the budget"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/2000914935451410552)  2025-12-16T13:04Z [----] followers, [---] engagements


"Nobody cares about Maduro. This is pretty obvious considering how abysmal his regime was. The main objective of the Maduro operation was achieved which was to help to restore US's geopolitical prestige with some fireworks: "we took out Maduro in [--] hours take that Putin" It was an exercise of performative regional hegemony. That was it. Then Trump had to talk about oil to make up some justification"  
[X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/2007821359024332828)  2026-01-04T14:28Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"Labeling Robert Lucas as an ideological enemy is a symptom of the insane degree of political indoctrination that the workers of the NYT have been subjected to. 1/What a horrible obituary for Bob Lucas in the NYT. ".a contrarian Nobel laureate in economics who undergirded conservative arguments that government intervention in fiscal policy is often self-defeating." https://t.co/xXRPIzHhqS 1/What a horrible obituary for Bob Lucas in the NYT. ".a contrarian Nobel laureate in economics who undergirded conservative arguments that government intervention in fiscal policy is often self-defeating.""  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1659237471610077216)  2023-05-18T16:40Z [----] followers, 58.1K engagements


"@culturaltutor Well [--] million sesterces was perhaps more like [---] billion dollars in the US today considering what we know about prices from that time. For example the annual pay of a legionary was [----] sesterces and a [---] m2 house cost 6-7k sesterces to build"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1699644566188548425)  2023-09-07T04:43Z [----] followers, 94.9K engagements


"@Catherineoscopy The difference is to pay the Stata license"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1705064441161633881)  2023-09-22T03:40Z [----] followers, 21.3K engagements


"1990-2019 was when the Industrial Revolution actually began for most of humanity. On a global population-weighted basis Im going to start calling 1990-2019 The Real [--] Glorieuses. On a global population-weighted basis Im going to start calling 1990-2019 The Real [--] Glorieuses"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1801743833925042458)  2024-06-14T22:29Z [----] followers, 14.8K engagements


"@arpitrage @jbsteinberg China's labor force is nearly [--] times the US. It's only natural that as they develop they collectively are tending towards leading the US over all technologies and all industries. Just like the US leads over Italy. It's basic math"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1944761840124203400)  2025-07-14T14:12Z [----] followers, 10.1K engagements


"I am talking about the purchasing power in terms of goods and services. The 95th percentile household in Brazil is very wealthy. One thing about the rich is that the differentiated stuff they consume is mostly real estate and labor whose price in terms of relative incomes is more or less constant across societies. Thus the consumption basket of a 95th-percentile household in Brazil if priced in US dollars would cost like hundreds thousands of dollars to a median US income in [----] of [-----] dollars. So near the top of the income distributions of Brazil Mexico and the US the living standards of"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1964488668518711522)  2025-09-07T00:39Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"@gp_mihalache If we look only at physical goods production statistics in industry and agriculture the Brazilian economy is closer to the US in magnitude than the US is to China. For example steel production in Brazil is 45% of the US's but US's production is 8% of China's"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1971583463666192678)  2025-09-26T14:31Z [----] followers, [----] engagements


"Not really. People who understood economics knew the USSR was a relative failure. Some already concluded it was so in the 1920s and 1930s. While China's case is radically different it is a colossal success story. In fact it does look like the USSR grew slightly faster than the US until around [----] but this can be measurement error: the GDP per capita of the parts of the Russian Empire that became the USSR increased from ca. 28% of the US's in [----] to ca. 34% by around [----] (Maddison 2010). A 20% relative increase which over such a 67-year period can be plausibly attributed to measurement"  
[X Link](https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1977814224693858395)  2025-10-13T19:10Z [----] followers, 17.4K engagements

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