Changes in the Relative GDPs of the G20 Nations over the Last 25 Years

The American Enterprise Institute has an interesting graphic on the relative GDPs of the G20 nations over the last 25 years.  Who's GDPs increased as a relative percentage of the total GDPs of the G20 nations and who's fell over that time?

Note that the European Union as a whole has a membership in G20, but not being a nation is excluded from the chart above.

What I am interested in is the change in the relative percentage of the GDP of the G20 nations over the past 25 years.  Let us look at the fraction of the 2018 percentage divided by the 1992 percentage beginning with the nations that had the highest percentages 25 years ago:

USA, 30.90/31.96 = 0.9668
Japan, 7.77/19.11 =  0.4066
Germany, 5.86/10.38 = 0.5645
France, 4.12/6.85 = 0.6015
Italy, 3.08/6.43 = 0.4790
United Kingdom, 4.18/5.77 = 0.7244
Canada, 2.63/2.90 = 0.9069
Russia, 2.51/2.25 = 1.1156
China, 19.50/2.09 = 9.3301
Brazil, 3.28/1.96 = 1.6735
Mexico, 1.83/1.78 = 1.0281
South Korea, 2.44/1.71 = 1.4269
Australia, 2.11/1.59 = 1.3270
India, 4.14/1.39 = 2.9784
Argentina, 1.02/1.12 = 0.9107
Turkey, 1.36/0.77 = 1.7662
Saudi Arabia, 1.09/0.67 = 1.6269
South Africa, 0.56/0.66 = 0.8485
Indonesia, 1.62/0.63 = 2.5714

If an underdeveloped nation is not determined to shoot itself in the foot, it can commonly make easy gains on its share of the world's GDP over time.  Similarly, the lesser developed nations of the G20 could easily have done so over the last 25 years.  Some of them have, the most remarkable one being China.  India has had the second greatest GDP surge among the G20 nations.  Third place belongs to Indonesia.  Turkey, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Australia, Russia, and Mexico have improved their relative positions in that order from more to less.  The gains of Russia and Mexico are actually very unimpressive.  The losers among the smaller economies of the G20 nations from biggest loser to smaller loser are South Africa and Argentina, though both were at one time relatively leading economies in the world.

Japan and the major nations of the European Union have suffered huge reductions in their significance, while the USA and Canada have seen relatively minor reductions in their relative economic significance.  The least bad performer of the major European Union nations has been the United Kingdom.  France has been the distant second least bad.  The former Axis nations of WWII have done relatively poorly with Germany being only 0.5645 as significant and Italy becoming only 0.4790 as significant.  Japan has many anti-competitive restrictions in its home economy and has a rapidly aging and shrinking population among its problems.

Both Canada and Australia have done far better than the United Kingdom, which I believe has been held back by its membership in the European Union.  If the United Kingdom simply makes a break from all of the European Union's collectivist requirements and bureaucracy, while it will likely do worse for a while as it adjusts to the new reality, it will do much better in the long run.  The United Kingdom should aim to be more like the USA as a dynamic economic power in the world and increase its trade with the USA, Canada, Australia, and India especially.  These are all nations doing comparative well, while France, Germany, and Italy are sinking rapidly.

The EU has smothered itself with many largely irrational safety and quality control policies, which I can see as such from the standpoint of being active in materials analysis and testing.  They are using these policies to suppress goods and services from outside the EU, but the effect is to increase costs and to make local companies lazy and unresponsive in an anti-competitive environment.  In addition, the EU has been following very foolish energy policies and has swallowed the catastrophic man-made global warming fraud hook, line, and sinker, with disastrous economic results.  The inability of the bigger economies of the EU to keep up in economic growth is the result.  The USA, for all of its increased regulations and the many anti-business policies of the Obama regime, has performed much better in comparison.  With Trump decreasing the burden of unreasonable regulations and following rational energy policies, the USA is improving its relative position in the world economy.  We can do even better to the extent that we can arrange truly free trade agreements with nations around the world.

American Individuality, American Arrogance

Obama dislikes American individuality and he also dislikes what he calls American arrogance. America is truly distinctive in that we are the only country whose principles of governance state explicitly that the purpose of government is to secure the right of the people to their own life, liberty, and the pursuit of their happiness. None of these are group concepts. Only the individual has a sovereign right to his life, to his liberty, and to his pursuit of happiness. Obama resents this individual concept of rights and wants to force every man, woman, and child to subsume their personal right to the service of some group of people. He is fascinated by groups and by service. He greatly distrusts the self-interest of the individual.

Yet, we each and every one of us have to do our thinking with our individual mind, though some, like Obama, try to somehow submerge their minds in group-think. Each of us has our own individual life experience, which is always unique and never the same as that of everyone else in any group, not even one as close as our own family. Each of us is bound to have our own unique values and there is simply no satisfactory way to sacrifice those values and adopt some group consensus values as a replacement. Yes, we all have reasons to work within groups for various purposes and we do make compromises as need be and where it is rational to do so, but when all is said and done, we need to maintain our individuality and our own chosen values. Obama frowns on this because he believes this is arrogant and it does not serve his purposes of converting America into a socialist, group-think, internally and internationally sacrificial nation.

Americans have always relied primarily upon their own minds and their own experiences to become among the best problem-solvers in the world. They take on a task and focus on it and they try out ideas to see if they will address the problem. If something does not work, they will study the problem anew and then try another possible solution. They tend to have great confidence that they can get the job done with enough thought, experimentation, observation, and effort.

I have worked with many scientists and engineers from outside of the United States. Very many of them have expressed amazement that Americans are so confident of their ability to address technical and business problems. Some of them say they wish they shared this attitude, some say they wish this attitude were as strong in their home countries, and some are self-selected in coming to the United States in good part because they share this attitude and feel a bit out-of-place in their home countries. Some equate this confidence in our American know-how with arrogance and actually resent it.

In international political and military spheres, this same American tendency to believe in an active and a let's try this and amend our methods as we go attitude is also considered arrogance. Sometimes the complainer is a petty tyrant or some socialist who simply resents everything about America and what it stands for. But, it is also sometimes the case that our activity and confidence that we can get the job done is just strange to other peoples. Most of the people of the rest of the world have long traditions in which slavery and serfdom applied to most of the people of their culture. Most of these cultures passed through long nation-building phases with kings, aristocracies, and priests as the authorities in whom all sovereignty rested. The people had only such standing as these groups gave them and could not stand up for their individual rights. No such concept existed. You did as you were told to do, or you kept your head down very low. If you asserted yourself as an individual, you were certain to be challenged that your position in society did not allow this. In the best of situations, you had better have done something very right which would meet with approval from the powered elite. One mistake and your head was in a noose or under the guillotine. This cultural tradition leads to a very different worldview and a very different idea toward individual initiative. It also puts very real shackles on a man's self-confidence.

Sure, modern Europe is not Medieval Europe. Nonetheless, it is more socialist and culture-bound. It is more inclined toward group-think than is America. The role of the individual is much more constrained than ours has been, though Obama is trying very hard to change us into Europeans. To modern Europeans, Americans individually look brash and over-confident. Yet, when something important needs to be accomplished in world trade, in research and development, or militarily, look to whom most of the world tends to turn, including the Europeans. They turn to the can-do nation of brash individualists.

Obama wants to change this. He wants the United States to be just one nation among the 20 nations in the G20. He wants the United States to submit itself to the United Nations and international law bodies, who will become supreme over our own Constitution and who will not recognize the right of the American individual to his life, his liberty, and his pursuit of happiness. He wants Americans to submit themselves to sacrifices to be demanded by other nations ruled by socialists and by petty dictators. Symbollically, he even bowed to a Suadi prince at the G20 meeting. This is the end to American arrogance which he pursues. He has many allies among the American elitists of our day and among the elite and powerful of many other countries.

We are in for a battle royale if we insist on asserting our right to our individual rights. I do so insist. I hope you will also stand beside me in this terrible conflict to preserve, protect, and defend our individual rights and our Constitution. Unfortunately, we will have to do so against Obama, the Democrat Congress, most of the university elitists, and many elitists abroad. Let us be proud to be rationally arrogant!