The article I read, found here, is about the legalization of Cannabis and how it could potentially damage our international geo-political standing. Specifically, it detailed how some are opposed simply because we will lose ground to China.
My problem with the Chinese argument is thus: why do we need to be better than China, and if we do, why do we use GDP or similar indicators to gauge our international standing and not their respective mathematical derivatives: their rates.
Their is no reason why we should need to be better than China and, on those grounds, I reject that argument. After all, they have four-times the population and slightly more land than we do.
However, even if there were a reason to be better than China, shouldn't this better-ness be gauged in GDP per-capita? It makes more sense. Isn't how much the average worker produces more important than gross-production? This would actually give us quite a bit of an edge, as we have far less people than they do.
I agree. Focusing on being better than someone else, is not the way to improve yourself, in many ways, it can even be detrimental to focus so much on what someone else has that we don't. The concern should be with how much it will harm us or help us to legalize marijuana.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion "better-ness" shouldn't even be based on making and buying and selling, it should be determined by how the poorest of the poor are living. Not how the elites or middle class live, but how the truly impoverished survive day to day. The "better" the country, the higher the standard of living.
ReplyDeleteHow much the average worker produces is important, but I believe that if you have a country with a population larger than 1, then the gross production is more important because that shows how the overall standing of a countries workforce. I'm pretty sure that the majority of Americans love being the worlds police, and being the top dog with our economy. We don't want to be bested, because it is a game of power, I'm pretty sure that if China topped us in the economy than we would be quite sad and want to compete even further, but then again . . . who really trusts what the Chinese say these days?!
ReplyDeleteI made a slight typo in the post. I said, "...the average worker produces..." when referring to GDP per-capita. I should have read something closer to, "how much the workers (all of them) produce on average." Perhaps that will clear up what I am saying. But, my point is exactly that it should not matter what our relationship with other countries economically is. We should worry about how we to ourselves are doing domestically.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I agree with Sam. I would also like to add the economic disparity between the highest strati and the lowest strati also should matter.
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