23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

Why are there such huge differences between the things that you can buy in different countries with what should be the same sums of money? Such differences exist basically because market exchange rates are largely determined by the supply and demand for internationally traded goods and services (although in the short run currency speculation can influence market exchange rates), while what a sum of money can buy in a particular country is determined by the prices of all goods and services, and not just those that are internationally traded.

The most important among the non-traded things are person-to-person labour services, such as driving taxis and serving meals in restaurants. Trade in such services requires international migration, but that is severely limited by immigration control, so the prices of such labour services end up being hugely different across countries (see Things 3 and 9). In other words, things such as taxi rides and meals are expensive in countries such as Switzerland and Norway because they have expensive workers. They are cheap in countries with cheap workers, such as Mexico and Thailand. When it comes to internationally traded things such as TVs or mobile phones, their prices are basically the same in all countries, rich and poor.

In order to take into account the differential prices of non-traded goods and services across countries, economists have come up with the idea of an ‘international dollar’. Based on the notion of purchasing power parity (PPP) – that is, measuring the value of a currency according to how much of a common consumption basket it can buy in different countries – this fictitious currency allows us to convert incomes of different countries into a common measure of living standards.

The result of converting the incomes of different countries into the international dollar is that the incomes of rich countries tend to become lower than their incomes at market exchange rates, while those of poor countries tend to become higher. This is because a lot of what we consume is services, which are much more expensive in the rich countries. In some cases, the difference between market exchange rate income and PPP income is not great. According to the World Bank data, the market exchange rate income of the US was $46,040 in 2007, while its PPP income was more or less the same at $45,850. In the case of Germany, the difference between the two was greater, at $38,860 vs. $33,820 (a 15 per cent difference, so to speak, although we cannot really compare the two numbers this directly). In the case of Denmark, the difference was nearly 50 per cent ($54,910 vs. $36,740). In contrast, China’s 2007 income more than doubles from $2,360 to $5,370 and India’s by nearly three times from $950 to $2,740, when calculated in PPP terms.

Now, the calculation of each currency’s exchange rate with the (fictitious) international dollar is not a straightforward affair, not least because we have to assume that all countries consume the same basket of goods and services, which is patently not the case. This makes the PPP incomes extremely sensitive to the methodologies and the data used. For example, when the World Bank changed its method of estimating PPP incomes in 2007, China’s PPP income per capita fell by 44 per cent (from $7,740 to $5,370), while Singapore’s rose by 53 per cent (from $31,710 to $48,520) overnight.

Despite these limits, a country’s income in international dollars probably gives us a better idea of its living standard than does its dollar income at the market exchange rate. And if we calculate incomes of different countries in international dollars, the US (almost) comes back to the top of the world. It depends on the estimate, but Luxemburg is the only country that has a higher PPP income per capita than that of the US in all estimates. So, as long as we set aside the tiny city-state of Luxemburg, with less than half a million people, the average US citizen can buy the largest amount of goods and services in the world with her income.

Does this allow us to say that the US has the highest living standard in the world? Perhaps. But there are quite a few things we have to consider before we jump to that conclusion.

. . . or do they?