It seems the age of worldwide economical dominance for the U.S. will have an end in FIVE years. At least from what the news show.
How will the U.S. addapt to a China richer than itself? Will China develop a more advanced army? What’s up?
Hmm, so with 4 times the number of people they haven’t passed us yet? I’m not worried.
From your cite:
My emphasis. You’d have to look at which analysts ridiculed the prediction, which feel it’s spot on and which think it’s going to happen sooner in order to judge the merits of the case.
So…China’s ADJUSTED GDP will rise to those levels. What will the US’s ‘adjusted’ GDP be at that point, considering that today it’s actual level is $15 trillion. Why the prediction that the US economy will drop or stay exactly the same in the same time frame? Hell, how do they calculate the adjustment…I thought China’s actual GDP was $5 trillion right now?
-XT
But the power of a country is measured by the GDP. The GDP per capita is the relative richness of the people; not of the country.
Now, thinking a bit about it. Since 5 years from now, China will have the same budget than the U.S., and the difference will keep growing! That means that if they wanted, they could expend more in deffense than the U.S.
You usually use nominal GDP when making comparisons between countries for comparing geo-political strength, and PPP GDP (which is what the OP’s article is) for comparing living standards. So by the more conventional measure, China is still something like a factor of three behind the US.
A country full of poor people can’t afford to “waste” as much money as smaller country full of richer people.
Please provide the formula for calculating the power of a country based on GDP.
Why would they want to? And if they are even dumber than us and spend the money, they will hurt their own economy as badly as we have ours with pointless defense spending.
I must agree with that 
Actually, people forget that the Soviet Union falled down for wasting to much in guns and too little in domestic goods.
Well, here you can find an “opposing” view. If you read it, you’ll see the arguments aren’t convincing.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/shortstack/2010/01/china_is_not_likely_to_surpass.html
Let them pass us. Big deal. Then all the news “pundits” will spend their time talking about China’s imminent collapse and leave us the fuck alone. Then we can go back to slaughtering the buffalo, wiping out the indigs, and all the other things that made us Great.
So what? America still has a stronger per capita income and China’s growing prosperity will mean a democratic awakening and another friendly power within most of our lifetimes.
We spend less money of defence percentage-wise since the Cold War. We do spend a little more since the '90s largely due to the War on Terror but we are not spending excessive amounts of money in extravagant defence spending.
Extravagance is in the eye of the beholder, but we have spent enormous sums on questionable efforts in Iraq and Pakistan. We spend money on planes the military doesn’t even want. As I’ve pointed out before, the world’s largest Air Force is the US Air Force. The second largest is the US Navy. Our boats have more planes than any other country’s air force. And China, along with the rest of the world has enjoyed free passage of goods and people on the open seas and in the air because of the money we spend.
We’re fulfilling the same role the Royal Navy did from Trafalgar to the outbreak of the Great War in that sense. And I didn’t say there were programs that could be cut for efficiency but “AAAAAAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG American military spending is ruining the nation!!!” is a myth.
Don’t expect the world thanks the U.S. something they got for free.:rolleyes:
Yes. The U.S. only expend half of its budget in military expending. So, let’s wait when 3/4 of the U.S. budget goes to guns… Perhaps then it will have an effect in the economy.
The US doesn’t spend half of it’s budget on the military. :rolleyes: Seriously, did you think that people would just take your unsubstantiated snark for it?? Or that something like 99% of the 'dopers reading this, regardless of political stripe didn’t know you were full of it by making such a statement?
-XT
Of course building and maintaining over 900 military bases around the world is a huge expense too. Add the money spent on the CIa and TSA and the amount is jacked up even higher.
As a percentage of GDP, who do you suppose spends more on their military? The US or China?
-XT
OK, But is more than 800 billions, isn’t?
U.S. Budget is half the World’s military expending
http://www.markorton.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/us_vs_world-miltary-spending.gif
For the U.S. Budget