US government will call for global enviromental regulations in 10 years

[wisefool]

I'm pulling an Hrose.

The logic is if China's economy increases to the point where it displaces the US as the largest economy, US calculations will be that standards will now hurt the Chinese more than us :)

[James Gutierrez]

Your prediction might be right, but your reasoning is off. Taking the average of the IMF and World Bank figures for current GDP from Wikipedia and assuming a constant growth rate of 2% for the US and (wildly unrealistic) 10% for China, in 10 years the US GDP will be ~$15.9 trillion and China's will be about $6.8 trillion. Continuing with these assumptions, China passes the US in year 22.

[Huzurdaddi]

The GDP of china is 10.1 using PPP. Were China to grow at 10% for the next 10 years then it would have a GDP of 26.2B and the US with 2% growth would have a GDP of 16B.

[James Gutierrez]

Yes, but PPP is the wrong method to use in this case. The PPP method normalizes GDP according to domestic prices. It is an inward looking measurement. If you want to compare standard of living by per capita GDP, then PPP is the way to go, but if you're comparing relative sizes of economies then nominal GDP is the right measurement since it (sort of) measures a countries external purchasing power. Things are lot cheaper in China relative to the US, but that doesn't reflect on the size of their economies.