Economics 101 - GDP

I don't know about you, but when I try to get some economic information that is clear, understandable and conclusive, I never can.

Everything is either contradictory or so convoluted that I feel that trying to decipher what I find is a total waste of my time. Since we're currently in the midst of a chaotic primary presidential campaign and get bombarded with all kinds of outlandish claims, it's hard to find one's bearing and relate to what is thrown at us.

With this in mind, I decided to conduct some research and so, each of the upcoming days, I'll take one aspect of the world economy and related issues, and attempt to discuss them in this blog.

We'll begin today with GDP. China and the European Community are now leading the dance with GDPs of $19 trillion each, while the USA, once the dominant economic power, follows at $18T.

When we add to these three behemoths, Inda and Japan, we get to about $66 trillion, more than half of the total world GDP, $113.7 trillion for 2015.

This measure of GDP based on purchasing power parity, is the gross domestic product converted to international dollars using purchasing power parity rates. This means that international dollar has the same purchasing power over GDP as the U.S. dollar has in the United States...