Who Will Become The Next Superpower?

Who Will Become The Next Superpower?

  • European Union

    Votes: 17 26.2%
  • China

    Votes: 34 52.3%
  • India

    Votes: 3 4.6%
  • Russia

    Votes: 1 1.5%
  • Brazil

    Votes: 1 1.5%
  • Japan

    Votes: 2 3.1%
  • Other

    Votes: 7 10.8%

  • Total voters
    65
I find your analysis on growth rate really interesting. Your analysis is based on theories from developmental economics which I have absolutely no knowledge of (actually I have very little knowledge on economics as a whole, its more like a hobby to me). With lack of training in economics, I tried to use engineering theories to interpret your analysis, which I’ve found to be strikingly useful when understanding your analysis. Here is how I break down the analysis:

1. A phenomenon is observed in the real world
2. Numbers and data are collected from the real world
3. Identify important parameters to the phenomenon
4. A model is developed to simulate the real world phenomenon
5. The model is tested using real data to predict the outcome of a similar phenomenon
6. Difference between the model and real world result is compared and corrections are made
7. The model is used to test real data again
8. Repeat step above steps until a satisfactory model has been achieved

Most physical and social phenomenon can be modeled one way or another by the above process and it is also the approach I took in understanding your analysis.

In most engineering problem, the time interval between implementing model and receiving results are usually within a reasonable amount of time and therefore it is possible and practical to develop a so-called optimum model. I could only imagine what a daunting and tedious task it must be is to try to model a social phenomenon as complicated and immense in scale as the growth rate of a country. I guess it would be nearly impossible to consider every single parameters when developing a growth rate model. So what are some of the important parameters you used when plotting the relative growth rate vs. relative capacity graph?

Also, what causes absorbtion rate to decrease as capacity of the catching up country increases? I guess this question would be the same as to ask what Diminishing Marginal Growth Rate is. I tried to think of is as a student raising his grade from 20% to 70% with relative ease while raising from 95% to 100% would require relatively much more work than raising from 20% to 70% grade.

Also on the horsefly example, what is perceived as the growth rate here?

Thanks!
 
Maciamo said:
In some ways, the EU already is a superpower. It's not yet a single federal entity, but its influence in the world already equals (or surpass) that of the USA. Economically, the EU single-market is the largest market in the world (with the highest GDP). In matters of sports or culture, the influence or power of the EU has long been greater than the US. Militarily, the US still leads, but is it what matters most in today's world ?

Yes this is true. If considered a single entity it definitely meets the criteria of superpower. However until it becomes a single federal republic it cannot be considered a nation.
 
lonesoullost3 said:
I'm not ruling out the possibility of another superpower.... There needs to be some exogenous factor that causes a new superpower to arise. ...
It would take another event of a degree similar to that of a world war for the US to be overtaken by a country - at least in my opinion. There would need to be some event which caused the US to fall behind in technology - because as I said in my previous post, technology is the key factor in determining who's the leader.
Thanks once again for a great post!

I, once again, have some questions. (Incidentally, I ask because, although I do have my own opinions, I have never studied economics. Therefore it is very enlightening for me to be able to ask someone who obviously has specific questions. Thanks for answering at least this far! m(__)m )

How do you feel about the enormous national debt that the U.S. has? Do you not feel that this will, over time, erode the U.S.'s financial standing globally as more and more of the budget is devoted to financing this burden?

How about the military situation? With the U.S. so mired in Iraq, coupled with Rumsfeld's zeal for "slimming down" the military, it seems to me that if another major war were to break out, it would break the military unless the U.S. were either reinstate the draft or leave Iraq. Both possibilities, I suppose, but hardly a position of unequivical strength.

And about the savings rate, which you touched upon earlier. It seemed to me that you basically said that the lower the savings rate, the better. However, do you not think that the savings rate can slip too low? If people have a negative savings rate, it means that they are buying on credit. That hardly seems tenable over long periods of time!
 
Godppgo and Mikawa Ossan here's to you:

godppgo said:
So what are some of the important parameters you used when plotting the relative growth rate vs. relative capacity graph?

Here is where I must mark my own limitations in understanding growth theory. As I am not the economist who developed this theory (he's actually my professor), I can only say that the two most important factors were growth of income per capita and level of income per capita. When developing economic theories one most always hold ceteris paribus many unmeasurable/abstract variables like consumer preference or attitudes towards the market in the case of investment. Thus these models can come close, but can never accurately predict what would happen if one of these exogenous variables changes drastically. There could be rough estimates (increases, decreases), but nothing with a quantitative value. So I'm afraid that's all I can answer about this question.

godppgo said:
Also, what causes absorbtion rate to decrease as capacity of the catching up country increases? I guess this question would be the same as to ask what Diminishing Marginal Growth Rate is. I tried to think of is as a student raising his grade from 20% to 70% with relative ease while raising from 95% to 100% would require relatively much more work than raising from 20% to 70% grade.
Ok, so your analogy of a student's grade is perfect for explaining Solow's Growth Theory. It's much easier for a developing country to approach a k* level of kapital than a country which is nearly there. The decrease in absorbtion rate is not entirely attributed to the developing country (which also could be explained by your above analogy). Rather, because that country is getting closer to the leading country, there is less information and technology for it to absorb than before.

godppgo said:
Also on the horsefly example, what is perceived as the growth rate here?

Growth rate would be the relative speeds of the horse and the fly. The horse's gallop is the leading country's growth rate. So while the fly is on the horse's back standing still they have the same speed and thus same growth rate. As the fly walks along the horse's back it appears as if it's 'overtaking' the horse so it's relative speed and growth rate are faster. When it tries to overtake the horse by jumping off and falling back, it's relative speed and growth rate are negative.

--------
Mikawa Ossan said:
How do you feel about the enormous national debt that the U.S. has? Do you not feel that this will, over time, erode the U.S.'s financial standing globally as more and more of the budget is devoted to financing this burden?

Like I said - a long term severe economic depression would have to hit the US (which in turn would actually effect the global economy, but we'll hold that constant for now). The debt issue is not that big - the US has only been debt-free only a handful of years since its inception. Debt can be easily financed by increasing taxes (instead of giving rebates like Bush has done - although it does have its potential merits). Also, more of the budget would be focused to financing the debt only by taking away money from other projects (e.g. military spending or more likely odds: domestic spending).

Mikawa Ossan said:
How about the military situation? With the U.S. so mired in Iraq, coupled with Rumsfeld's zeal for "slimming down" the military, it seems to me that if another major war were to break out, it would break the military unless the U.S. were either reinstate the draft or leave Iraq. Both possibilities, I suppose, but hardly a position of unequivical strength.
The US military relies more so on being technologically advanced than on manpower - hence the recent push for unmanned vehicles and using animals. Both of these lines of research are primarily funded by DARPA - the Department of Defense's head research institution. The DARPA Grand Challenge has been going on for several years and is a competition to create an autonomous off-road vehicle that can travel 132 miles (roughly 220km) at "military speeds". These vehicles aren't remote-controlled - 100% robotic decision makers. Anyways, my point is that the US uses technology, not manpower. And thus the constant development of technology for military use (whether actual standing army is decreased or not) will contribute to the economic growth of the US. And well, if we left Iraq we'd have a heck of a lot of money to start paying back that debt wouldn't we ;).


Mikawa Ossan said:
And about the savings rate, which you touched upon earlier. It seemed to me that you basically said that the lower the savings rate, the better. However, do you not think that the savings rate can slip too low? If people have a negative savings rate, it means that they are buying on credit. That hardly seems tenable over long periods of time!
I didn't mean to imply that a lower savings rate is better - in fact it's completely the opposite! I've reread my post and can't find where I might've made that error - could you point it out to me? The higher the savings rate the more kapital a country can accumulate and thus output is higher which will lead to more growth. If you can point out your confusion I can explain better and in more detail.

Hopefully I covered everything you two wanted me to cover ^_^.
 
I tempted to vote for China, but Russia has so much potential! If only the country could sort itself out, it would be so mighty...But who knows?
 
My husband thinks it is the EU, I am waiting a couple more years to see what happens before I decide.:p
 
I don't think there will be one superpower but more then one super power countries with power distributed among them. The most candidates will be large countries with large population.
 
I suspect China's economy bubble will soon burst, I'm going to go with India.
 
Another one that now exists and resurjirá when all that is on the list have ceased to exist as such.
 
We Spanish literate Americans use resurgirá also, I don't know where resurjirá is used. What I think Carlitos was trying to say, was:

Some other country that might not even exists now will rise up after all on the list have ceased to exist.


Personally I think Carlitos does a pretty good job in trying to translate Spanish into understandable English using translation software. I'll bet that if he keeps at it in a few weeks he will become literate in English.

Keep at it Carlitos! (y)
 
The most typical spelling mistakes in Latin America at writing spanish are:

Write J instead of G.
Write B instead of V (or vice versa).
Write S instead of Z (or vice versa).


This is due to not being able to pronounce V, Z and J correctly. You can find spaniards that make spelling mistakes of course, but certainly not THIS kind of mistakes.


Greetings. :37:
 
Carlitos/Aristander, in Spain we said resurGira, not resurJira. (y)

I have sent a lot of private messages I've said I'm not Aristander, I'm Carlitos and nothing else, I am honest and I have no need to play with two nicks, so stop and paranoia.
 
Spaniards don't use to post from 2:00 AM to 5:00 AM in the Internet or write 'resurjira'...

Seems like you'll have to create a new account. Not a problem I'm sure you are already used to it. (y)
 
Spaniards don't use to post from 2:00 AM to 5:00 AM in the Internet or write 'resurjira'...

Seems like you'll have to create a new account. Not a problem I'm sure you are already used to it. (y)



Total paranoia. :giggle:
 
Total paranoia. :giggle:

You have been connected the whole night and it's not the first time. And you wrote 'resurjira' instead of 'resurgira' in one of your messages, anyone can see it... that's a typical latin american mistake at spelling spanish. :giggle:
 
No misspellings soil, but will understand if I am writing at 3 am or 4 am, it sometimes happens that such errors. And if an error is typical of South America, I'm from Cádiz and there is some or much influence language and going-back, in my vocabulary for example is the term "vaina", eres un vaina, is very common in South America and is on my mother's vocabulary.
 
Some of the first spanish colonizers to settle in America were from Andalusia, so it's understandable that they keep using some andalusian words in there... but that has nothing to do with the spelling mistakes we are talking about here.

People in Spain (including Andalusia) write 'resurGira' correctly, not 'resurJira', because they know how it's pronounced. This kind of mistake is very common in Latin America not Spain.

Greetings.
 

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