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What makes a country rich?

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AleisterCrowley
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Re: What makes a country rich?

#410348

Postby AleisterCrowley » May 8th, 2021, 7:45 pm

Do you mean per capita GDP, or a broader definition of 'rich' - perhaps quality of life etc?
[I'm not going to mention apostrophes..]

AleisterCrowley
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Re: What makes a country rich?

#410353

Postby AleisterCrowley » May 8th, 2021, 8:02 pm

It's probably a combination of everything you've mentioned, with a healthy dollop of luck.
Geography comes into it - a temperate climate so you can grow food and you're not faced with drought, floods, locusts etc. Easily defensible - no long borders with hostile states. Trade routes to other nations.
A strong legal system with property rights, to encourage commerce, trade, and invention.
A national character that is independent, and perhaps arrogant - 'exeptionalism' and a willingness to adopt/adapt/steal ideas from across the world
Secure supplies of energy and water

PhaseThree

Re: What makes a country rich?

#410357

Postby PhaseThree » May 8th, 2021, 8:09 pm

You really need to define "rich", it means wildly different things to different people.
Personally I have always been very impressed by Bhutan's pursuit of "Gross National Happiness" as defined by the GNH index.

The GNH Index includes nine domains

Psychological wellbeing
Health
Education
Time use
Cultural diversity and resilience
Good governance
Community vitality
Ecological diversity and resilience
Living standards

Seems a lot more aspirational to me than GDP

https://ophi.org.uk/policy/gross-nation ... ess-index/

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Re: What makes a country rich?

#410360

Postby Spet0789 » May 8th, 2021, 8:22 pm

Political stability. Democracy. Capitalism.

Or luck (Saudi Arabia for example).

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Re: What makes a country rich?

#410362

Postby Adamski » May 8th, 2021, 8:26 pm

Lots of factors.. including education, world class universities, temperate climate, political stability, no major wars since ww2, having the City, having the NHS, infrastructure, good governance, lack of corruption (compared to developing countries)

AleisterCrowley
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Re: What makes a country rich?

#410366

Postby AleisterCrowley » May 8th, 2021, 8:31 pm

PhaseThree wrote:You really need to define "rich", it means wildly different things to different people.
Personally I have always been very impressed by Bhutan's pursuit of "Gross National Happiness" as defined by the GNH index.

The GNH Index includes nine domains

Psychological wellbeing
Health
Education
Time use
Cultural diversity and resilience
Good governance
Community vitality
Ecological diversity and resilience
Living standards

Seems a lot more aspirational to me than GDP

https://ophi.org.uk/policy/gross-nation ... ess-index/



Yes, we really should adopt something like that - a high GDP can mask huge inequalities and a dreadful quality of life.

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Re: What makes a country rich?

#410373

Postby AleisterCrowley » May 8th, 2021, 8:49 pm

Adamski wrote:Lots of factors.. including education, world class universities, temperate climate, political stability, no major wars since ww2, having the City, having the NHS, infrastructure, good governance, lack of corruption (compared to developing countries)

Add to that - female emancipation/equality, birth control, secularism

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Re: What makes a country rich?

#410379

Postby Mike4 » May 8th, 2021, 9:06 pm

AleisterCrowley wrote:
Adamski wrote:Lots of factors.. including education, world class universities, temperate climate, political stability, no major wars since ww2, having the City, having the NHS, infrastructure, good governance, lack of corruption (compared to developing countries)

Add to that - female emancipation/equality, birth control, secularism


Decent ale.....

AleisterCrowley
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Re: What makes a country rich?

#410380

Postby AleisterCrowley » May 8th, 2021, 9:15 pm

Plus one for that! :D

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Re: What makes a country rich?

#410382

Postby gryffron » May 8th, 2021, 9:19 pm

Abolishing slavery. Since the abolition of slavery we have seen MASSIVE technological development. If you have slaves to do the work, there's no incentive to do anything "better". But when you have to pay your workers, there's every incentive to make them more productive.

I think controlling corruption is a HUGE factor. Many African countries should be loaded. Zimbabwe for example, has all the agricultural and mineral resources any country could hope for. With even vaguely competent management they'd all be very comfortable.

Gryff

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Re: What makes a country rich?

#410392

Postby SalvorHardin » May 8th, 2021, 9:53 pm

Strong property rights and the rule of law.

Without these there isn't much incentive to produce much, because the local strongman can always take it away from you. Or you have to spend a lot to simply defend what is yours.

A high level of trust that others will do as contracted helps. Plus low levels of corruption by state officials, especially the police and judiciary.

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Re: What makes a country rich?

#410446

Postby Dod101 » May 9th, 2021, 7:56 am

Most of the factors mentioned seem to me to be the necessary conditions for a country to become rich but are merely the framework and in themselves do not make a country rich. You need the ability to exploit these conditions.

You need a high work ethic in the people, natural resources help. As always a country gets rich by producing stuff that the rest of the world needs/wants.

Introducing innovations that are useful to others and the ability to exploit them because for instance the UK is good at producing innovation but not always good at exploiting them. As an alternative pinch the innovations of others and exploit them.

It is a big subject and I am not developing my arguments very well but I hope the drift is clear.

Dod

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Re: What makes a country rich?

#410459

Postby TUK020 » May 9th, 2021, 9:01 am

I am always struck by how much impact on quality of life the system of building/planning permissions/zoning has.
Artificially restricting the supply of dwellings, means that their price essentially becomes a function of income growth and interest rates.
This has condemned younger working people to pay either by devoting all of their disposable income to mortgage/rent, or disposable time to commuting. This distorts the relationship between monetary GDP/head and quality of life.
Interesting to see how pandemic accelerated remote working habits will change this

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Re: What makes a country rich?

#410480

Postby 88V8 » May 9th, 2021, 10:24 am

Snorvey wrote:All of the above?

Same as what makes you feel rich. Money + happiness.

So, GDP, underpinned by all the above.

TUK020 wrote:Artificially restricting the supply of dwellings....

Not restricting them leads to the slums of Rio, Calcutta, etc.

Even at a lesser level, was in Madeira a few years ago, a country highly dependent on tourism... due to lax/no planning rules, every valley is dotted with houses. Little white blots on what should in many cases be a pristine landscape. A beautiful setting to the north had huge new blocks of 'social housing'.
Eventually, this is how to make a country poor.

V8

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Re: What makes a country rich?

#410491

Postby Dod101 » May 9th, 2021, 11:01 am

TUK020 wrote:I am always struck by how much impact on quality of life the system of building/planning permissions/zoning has.
Artificially restricting the supply of dwellings, means that their price essentially becomes a function of income growth and interest rates.
This has condemned younger working people to pay either by devoting all of their disposable income to mortgage/rent, or disposable time to commuting. This distorts the relationship between monetary GDP/head and quality of life.
Interesting to see how pandemic accelerated remote working habits will change this


Yes but the quality of the citizen's life is by no means the same thing as a country being rich. I suppose on one level it is but I did not take that as being what Snorvey meant.

Dod

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Re: What makes a country rich?

#410500

Postby EssDeeAitch » May 9th, 2021, 11:33 am

Best summed up in the book "Why Nations Fail" by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson.

Strong rule of law especially property and contract law; distributive (as opposed to extractive) economic policies, vibrant plurality and state monopoly on violence.

As to what brings about those conditions... best read the book

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Re: What makes a country rich?

#410521

Postby CliffEdge » May 9th, 2021, 12:25 pm

I would add an intelligent popular culture. Which we are losing/have lost in the UK. Savagery and lunacy are in the ascendent

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Re: What makes a country rich?

#410591

Postby Sunnypad » May 9th, 2021, 5:59 pm

It depends what you mean by rich. If it's about figures, that's a very different animal to quality of life.

Overpopulation and lack of space makes things feel "not rich" very quickly, even if the figures say otherwise.

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Re: What makes a country rich?

#411104

Postby odysseus2000 » May 11th, 2021, 4:55 pm

Snorvey wrote:I kind of found my answer last night watching a Channel 4 documentary on the UK's progression with the COVID19 vaccinations.

Right at the beginning (in April 2020 iirc) they assembled a team (which incorporated government ministers for direct decision making) to filter out the most likely vaccine contenders, invest in viable treatments, to implement vaccine production expertise, logistics, delivery of the vaccine to patients and ongoing research to improve the vaccines and to monitor variants.....to be honest I cant remember all the stages, but it was certainly impressive the speed in which they moved with to bring all of this together.

(And I'm sure it was the same with other 'rich' nations - although the UK appeared to take a bigger risk with its early actions)

If only we could do this with other major issues.

So I think its people and knowledge. And protecting that knowledge (whilst carefully collaborating with others - such as the UK investing into vaccines other than the Az/Ox type)

Success breeds success?


Kate Bingham, seems to have made important contributions to the UK vaccine roll out:

https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/b ... e-winners/

Cometh the moment, cometh the person if you have a prosperous and educated pool of good people to dip into when needed.

Regards,

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Re: What makes a country rich?

#411383

Postby Lootman » May 12th, 2021, 2:28 pm

Snorvey wrote:
AleisterCrowley wrote:Do you mean per capita GDP, or a broader definition of 'rich' - perhaps quality of life etc?

I really don't know. Just 'rich'.

Money. Quality of life. Freedoms. Heath. Security

I guess it's provoked me to ask because of the elections this week and how lucky we are in many ways.

I guess it all does come down to money though. So why is our money worth more than others?

We may be "lucky" in the UK, but the UK isn't even one of the richest 10 nations in Europe. Nor is it in the richest 25 on the planet. At least according to this analysis, which defines "rich" in terms of GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power parity. (Oddly Ireland is ranked 5, globally):

https://howmuch.net/articles/richest-co ... -the-world

The UK does a little better based on nominal GDP per capita, but still not in the top 20:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... P_(nominal)_per_capita

Of course, GDP doesn't tell the whole story. The UK has a lot of wealth (property values, pension funds, shareholdings) whilst not being particularly productive.


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