America: A record of Economic Failure for the Past 25 Years

Illustrative Image

Written by Eric Zuesse

Here are the economic records of growth over the past 25 years, in Gross Domestic Product calculated at Purchasing-Power Parity (GDP PPP), for 7 regions of the world. In each of the seven regions, the information-source is the Trading Ecnomics Website. Each country or region is identified in the URL that is shown here to that Website, and the name of the country or region is boldfaced within that URL-address, so that you can immediately recognize which country or region is which. Then, the “25-yr” period is shown (1998 to 2022), then “=” which indicates the 2022 GDP PPP number divided by (“/”) the initial, 1998, GDP PPP number, so that a ratio “x” is then identified (“=”) for the ending number divided by (“/”) the starting number, thereby displaying how many times bigger that number was in 2022, as compared with in 1998. Here is this information for each one of the seven compared regions:

• https://tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp-ppp-us-dollar-wb-data.html  25-yr=32/5=x6.4
• https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp-ppp-us-dollar-wb-data.html 25-yr=53/9=x5.9
• https://tradingeconomics.com/india/gdp-per-capita-ppp  25-yr=71/24=x2.96
• https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-per-capita-ppp 25-yr=65/47=x1.36
• https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/gdp-per-capita-ppp  25-yr=46/33=x1.40
• https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp-per-capita-ppp  25-yr=42/36=x1.17
• https://tradingeconomics.com/south-korea/gdp-per-capita-ppp  25-yr=45/19=x2.37

In each case, click onto the “25Y” button in order to access the full 25-year record.

Each of those links are to that 25-year economic record, and shows the ratio of the 2022 number (the nation’s or region’s actual GDP in 2022) divided by the 1998 number, and closing with the multiple that the 2022 number is when divided by the 1998 number.

In other words: China’s economy grew 6.4 times (“x6.4”) over those 25 years, Russia’s grew 5.9 times over those 25 years, India’s grew 2.96 times over those 25 years, U.S. grew 1.36 times over those 25 years, EU grew 1.40 times during those 25 years, Japan’s grew 1.17 times over those 25 years, and South Korea’s grew 2.37 times over those 25 years.

Here is the performance of the entire world over those 25 years:

• https://tradingeconomics.com/world/gdp-per-capita-ppp-us-dollar-wb-data.html 25-yr=22/7=x3.14

So: x3.14 is the global average performance over the most-recent 25-year period.

In other words: whereas India performed slighly worse than the global average, the U.S., EU, Japan, and South Korea, performed considerably worse than the global average during those 25 years.

My analysis of these data is: America’s economy performed worse than the global average. However, throughout that period, America’s Government was proclaiming itself to be the world’s leading economy and pretended that it is the nation that all of the world’s other nations should take as their economic and political model. But the actual economic figures make clear that that claim by America was a lie, at least from the economic standpoint, and that America’s economic performance throughout this period was actually worse than the world’s average. Furthermore, America’s foreign colonies, or ‘allies’, in Europe, South Korea, and especially Japan, had economies that were absolutely atrocious, and the only U.S. copy-cat economy that performed significantly better than that global ‘model’ country (America) did, was South Korea. But Japan performed the worst of the entire lot. Thus, one might reasonably conclude that, as has happened in empires throughout history, the imperial nation (in this instance America) performed poorly in comparison with countries that were not (yet) captured by it; and that most of its ‘allies’ or colonies performed even worse than did the imperial nation that had captured it. Imperialism is bad for the imperial country but is even worse for its satellites. (Imperialism benefits only the billionaires — NOT the public: it always harms the public, everywhere.)

Both Russia and especially China had world-beating economies throughout that period, and this helps to explain why the U.S. and its foreign colonies want to destroy both nations — take them over and do to them what they did to all countries that resist the U.S. empire, such as Libya did, and Iraq did, and Iran did, and Venezuela did, and Syria did, and Palestine did, etc.

However, what about politically (aristocracy versus democracy) — was the U.S. the world’s model democracy during that 25-year period? All of the data make unequivocally clear that America is actually a dictatorship, by the nation’s wealthiest one-tenth of its richest 1%: by America’s very richest people, the nation’s aristocrats, against the nation’s entire bottom 99.9%, America’s public.

Consequently: nations that are allied to or otherwise copying America are heading for economic decline and into being an aristocracy instead of a democracy. Anything to the contrary of this conclusion is propaganda that violates what the relevant data clearly show to be the reality on the matter.

All of the relevant data have been linked-to here so that they can be accessed by simply clicking onto those links, in order to verify that the U.S.-and-‘allied’ claims to the contrary are lies — billionaires’ lies, which serve billionaires’ purposes.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

MORE ON THE TOPIC:

• U.S. War Crimes and the Political Economy of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis: Who Is Responsible? Why?
• Sanctions Propel Russia To Europe’s Largest Economy
• Meta And Privacy: The Economy Of Data Transgressions