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Comment Re:Why are countries like this... (Score 1) 292

Lichtenstein is a very rural country

Only 1.5% of the workforce work on agriculture. That doesn't seem very rural to me.

GDP is completely irrelevant. If 3 people decide to trade. Persons A, B, C, thin air for $100,000, A with B, B with C and C with A, we have traded thin air for $300,000. So we have a GDP of $300,000. However no one earned anything, no one is richer than before, no one in fact had any income.

That's not how GDP works at all. GDP is the (estimated) value of the total worth of a country’s production and services, calculated over the course on one year. It can be calculated in several ways, but the main point you are missing is that net income of A, B and C is zero.

Median household incomes etc. *are* available

I would appreciate if you tell me where.

The main area seems to be tax evasion schemas for surrounding countries, which have daughter or mother companies there

Same in Liechtenstein (remember the Liechtenstein tax evasion scandal of 2008?). That's why numbers provided by both countries are to be taken with a grain of salt, to say the least.

Comment Re:Why are countries like this... (Score 1) 292

Data is from CIA's world factbook, you can check it yourself. When talking about countries, I assumed we were speaking about GDP (and not GPD as I incorrectly spelled), but even if we are talking about people's income, gross domestic product per capita at purchasing power parity is indeed the best approximation I can think of for comparing average incomes in different countries like San Marino, where not much data (like median household income, GNI index, etc.) is available. Even though GDP is not equivalent to income, they are related, and given than Liechtenstein's GDP's is not 5% or 10% higher than San Marino's, but about three times higher, unless confronted with more data I think it's safe to conclude that the Liechtensteiners are wealthier than Sammarineses as an average. Of course, wealth can be (and probably is) distributed unequally so that almost nobody have an average income.

BTW I have always been interested in the history and economy of these tiny European countries, and I usually find very little information about the latter, so If you have any more info about the economy of San Marino please share a link or two ;) thank you!

Comment Re:Why are countries like this... (Score 1) 292

the north is the richest region of Europe, and the south is the poorest region of Europe (and yes that includes Rumania in the south and Skandinavia and Swizerland), the richest region/country of the world, San Marino, is an enclave in Italy.

I don't think so. San Marino's GPD per capita is about 55,400 USD (or even as "little" as 36,000 USD according to CIA), while countries such as Luxembourg or Qatar have a GPD per capita of more than 80,000 USD, and some sources claim that Liechtenstein's GPD per capita is more than 140,000 USD. San Marino is a rich country, but by far not the richest.

Comment Re:He misses one HUGE assumption (Score 1) 482

But who is to say that increasing technology even needs increasing energy consumption?

That's the main point of the article. Currently, as clearly shown by every statistics energy consumption is constantly growing (with a small "pause" during the ongoing crisis depending on the country). The author just states that this energy consumption grow cannot continue for much. He does not say that that means the end of civilization, nor necessarily an economical disaster. On the contrary he says that:

[...] continued energy growth will likely be unnecessary if the human population stabilizes

So he just points, with very good arguments, that "continued growth in energy use becomes physically impossible within conceivable timeframes".

Comment Re:Private copy and tax (Score 1) 156

In Spain private copy (and file sharing) is also legal and had always been. Then they introduced the "private copy tax" you speak about, of course not to keep private copy legal, but because it was infeasible to change the law in regards to that, and a way to monetize the situation was needed by the powers that be.
Fortunately, the EU ruled the tax was illegal. And later some members of the SGAE (Spanish RIAA) were arrested for embezzlement of the money obtained by such tax.
I ignore what's the current situation, but given the fact that wikileaks revealed US pressures to the Spanish government to change the copyright laws, I'm assuming these victories won't last long.

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