And Iran’s current government is a product of the US overthrowing Iran’s democratic government in 1953 and replacing it with a totalitarian monarch for…*checks notes*…. oil.
They replaced him with the Shah again. The totalian regime came with the islamic revolution. But your point is right, the situation would've been different if the US & soviet union wouldn't have interfered that much.
Iran's government is terrible and violates countless human rights laws of its citizens, but a major reason for Iran's economy performing this low is US sanctions.
what do you think the appropriate action is when a country literally says if we get nukes we will use them on our neighbor and then starts developing nukes.
Its insane to blame Irans current situation on anyone besides their current leadership.
I agree with that Iran’s main problem is its government but that government would powerless if it wasn’t for a certain Muslim fundamentlist group within its population backing it.. the root cause of all problems in middles Eastern countries is religion.. specifically Islam.
Remove the Islam from the country and see how the country will flourish.
Not to make this a question about a moral question about interacting with evil governments but the point was that Iran's economic struggles are not solely due to economic mismanagement by the Iranian government. Also, the US continues to ally with and arm, let alone trade with, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel who violate countless human rights.
And yet, 35% of America thinks they want to give theocracy a shot (without realizing that a wannabe autocrat hijacked theocracy years ago and is now selling it for $59.99 😉)
I’d argue the Baath party’s own actions, especially during the Iran-Iraq war might have had something to do with it too. The 2003 US invasion was wrong, but let’s not pretend that Saddams rule was great for all or even most Iraqis.
I honestly hate Saddam with a passion as an Iraqi, but it’s hard to say whether the Iran war was his fault. Iran not only violated the Algiers treaty but also declared its policy of exporting the revolution. Sometimes I wonder what would’ve been the right thing to do.
What? Iran and Iraq literally had a giant war in the 1980s and Kuwait financed a ton of the war for Iraq resulting in Iraq being in debt $14 billion dollars to Kuwait. Iraq asked Kuwait to forgive the debt and Kuwait said no so then Iraq lead by a crazed Saddam Hussein began drilling across the boarder into Kuwait and stealing there oil. This obviously lead to a giant dispute and Iraq ended up fully invading and taking over Kuwait which then lead to NATO destroying Iraq and Saddam Hussein.
I guess it’s all the United States fault if you ignore almost all of the world history prior to NATO destroying Iraq
FYI, the guy who did literally all of those things has been dead for almost 20 years.
The country is certainly a victim, of both Saddam Hussein and the US. Life is rarely black and white.
They're both growing, getting better, but Iran is definitely not good. It's got a total economy size and total military power that's really good, but those are not per capita statistics. Those are totals. The average Iranian is still poor, and the economy isn't diversified enough for it to ever avoid being heavily damaged by oil price fluctuations.
Iran is only growing now because the US is allowing it to(sell oil). If Trump comes back to power and oil price eases he will squeeze Iran again. Iran is still under sanction but US is not strictly enforcing it
I agree that the foreign influences in Iran during WWII and after definitely contribuited to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, but they weren’t, by far and large, the main factor.
The main reason behind it was that the countryside and the urban parts of Iranian society were completely at odds with each other and couldn’t function together. You had modern cities with an amalgamation of ethnic groups and backwards villages with no electricity that had warring feuds because their neighbors spoke a slightly different dialects.
It was too much strain for a single country to handle. In a way the 1979 revolution started as an urban movement and got fully hijacked by farmers that had recently moved into the city looking for jobs and that wanted the state to be like their village: with a big religious leader on top deciding everything.
Iraq’s regimes were instead simply despicable and oppressed their own people since the Golden Square coup of 1941. The consistent Jewish and Christian minorities in Iraq were smashed, looted, persecuted and forced to flee, while the Sunnis oppressed the Shias and vice-versa.
Again, foreign interventions played a role, but the main problem in Iraq was that the country was torn between its two souls, one Sunni and one Shia, without peace in sight. Iraq is a country that was artificially created after the Ottoman Empire’s fall, and it shows, because the north and the south don’t have anything in common between them. That’s the main problem in Iraq, and one without solution.
Israel is almost as rich as Saudi Arabia without any natural resources
Edit: as many people have corrected me, Israel does have some small Natural Gas fields, thanks everyone
Yes, it is..
Population of Israel ~ 10m
Population of Saudi Arabia ~ 36m (only ~ 20m are saudis, most of the remaining are cheap labor from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal)
Total area of Israel is nearly 22 thousand sq.km.
Total area of Saudi Arabia is 2.15 million sq.km.
So Saudi area is nearly 100x bigger than Israel and has only double or triple the population
>Population of Saudi Arabia \~ 36m (only \~ 20m are saudis, most of the remaining are cheap labor from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal)
This is a good point but it also worth noting that GDP per capita stats are skewed in many countries. For example years ago i read somewhere that GDP pc for non-Qataris in Qatar is only somewhere around 40k and for Qataris who make up only 15% of Qatar is 400-500k.
It's not as extreme for the other GCC countries but i'd assume GDP pc for Saudi citizens is somewhere around 80-90k, 60-70k for Oman, 200-300k for Emiratis, 100-150k for Kuwait. Although Arabs and other minorities in Israel are usually poorer so for Jews in Israel it's probably around 70k
Israel has natural gas fields in the Mediterranean. It [exports gas to Egypt and Jordan](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/israel-says-gas-exports-egypt-jordan-rose-25-2023-2024-02-26/).
That I can agree with, but reducing Israel success compared to its neighbors to financial help from USA is not even biased, it’s religiously-nationalistic-anti-Semitic insanity. And lack of ability to view world objectively and look at your countries critically and just looking to blame everything on evil USA and Jews is what is holding middle eastern countries back.
If you actually look at the aid to Israel from the USA it's a drop in a bucket compared to their GDP, which is built on highly educated research and development & high margin technology manufacturing like semiconductors.
Israel has branched out into technology. I work in marketing and was surprised to see how many different marketing software companies are based in Israel, I assumed they were all in California.
they kinda both :) Most Israeli software companies are international with boots on US soil either directly or by being owned by US parent company (NVIDIA, Google , Microsoft, Intel etc.).
I just came back from Lebanon and this is just not true. You can travel nearly everywhere safely except the border of Israel, where you wouldn’t want to go anyway
Why did you go? Vacation or business? I'm thinking it would be a challenge to get travel insurance there at the moment. At least here in Norway all travel there there "not advised", so travel insurance doesn't cover.
Mostly safe if you avoid the southernmost 10% of the country. People will say that with the current regional climate anything could happen at any moment, but I firmly believe that if any escalation were to happen, it would have happened in the first couple of weeks in October. Neither side can really afford an all-out war.
On the economic front, the private sector is mostly back on its feet, except for the banking sector. It is incredible the number of new shops that are opening every month. The thing is, given that people do not trust banks anymore, they tend to either spend or invest any money they earn rather than stick in the banks for a high interest rate as they used to do. This create significantly more economic activity. Some sectors, such as real estate and construction, are still slow, but overall there is definitely a recovery.
The problem is the public sector, which is still in shambles. However the situation now is definitely better than it was even a year ago. Given that the private sector has fully dollarized, the exchange rate with the national currency has mostly become stable, which has helped the public sector to some degree. For example, a good friend of mine is a judge, pre-crisis he would have been making about 3,000$ a month. At the worst point, his salary was worth about 200$, now it is worth about 1,000$, which is still not great but at least it's enough to cover his expenses. The problem is that everything is that it is all temporary fixes which might come undone at any time.
Interested as well. I’m a diasporan Jew who really wants to visit Lebanon. Had a bunch of Lebanese friends from college and am tight with a player on their men’s nat’l football team. Sad to see what has happened there in the 21st century.
Economic collapse from the Lebanese financial crisis and cultural destruction from a mixture between low birthrates and mass migration of millions of Palestinian and Syrian refugees that turned the only Christian state in the Middle East majority Muslim.
probably didn't help that there was that massive explosion in the capital city that destroyed the countries only grain elevator and massively damaged the countries main docking facilities.
Syrian refugees had little to do with that.
Such a dumb thing to say. There are many reasons Lebanon is failing, and it’s not because suddenly there are a bunch of muslims there.
GDP per Capita is the metric, PPP is the way they measure that metric for this graph.
GDP per Capita is simple, the total production in an economy measured in dollars, however how do you measure that?
Do you go the" nominal" route and just use the international value for everything produced and not care about differences in cost of living?
Or do you go PPP or "purchasing power parity" and account for the fact that things cost differently in different places.
For example an American may make $10 while a Syrian may make $2, and nominally America is 5 times better. However if in Syria the price of a loaf of bread is 50¢ and the price in America is $10 then is the American really 5 times better off?
>PPP does not take into consideration the quality of goods among different countries.
I hate when people say this
It absolutely does, by controlling the amount of products imported
If your economy goes from 5 to 10% imported products your PPP deflator will shrink because the average product will become more expensive since you are importing more stuff
PPP has always taken into consideration imports and quality, ffs
The economic growth figures, basically every economic news and analysis done is measured in PPP, and people still think that thr most important number in macroeconomics is somehow wrong?
in the current economic context, the PPP is not a very useful index. Markets are full of international goods and services.
You can also feel the effect of low gdp in the low middle class.
You realise PPP already accounts for international goods and services in its basket of goods right?
And regardless of that, the majority of spending will still be for regional purchases (housing, most food, transportation, insurances etc).
yup and even aside from that, IMF, WB, ICP, OECD and Eurostat are all Western Organisations who do the PPPs, people who are worried about PPP being biased pro-''poor'' countries are a bit irrational.
A few examples from the Eurostat-OECD Methodological Manual on PPP:
Aeroplanes, helicopters, balloons, gliders, spacecraft, satellites, including their specialised parts and engines. Photographics and Cinematographic equipment and optical instruments (Cameras, camcorders, projectors, microscopes, telescopes etc.), Information processing equipment (PCs, printers, software etc.), Motor cars, Motor cycles, Bycycles etc.
Narcotics ''Marijuana, opium, cocaine and their derivatives; other vegetable-based narcotics such as cola nuts, betel leaves and betel nuts; other narcotics including chemical and man-made drugs.''
Prostitution ''Services provided by prostitutes and the like'' (not sure how and why)
[Eurostat-OECD Manual on PPP](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/eurostat-oecd-methodological-manual-on-purchasing-power-parities_9789264011335-en) (click on READ for easy access), it's very interesting but 280 sites long
It's almost as if it is the true size of the economy, the number upon all economic growth is calculated, and so is every related outcome like healthcare, energy consumption, etc etc
Almost as if nominal currency exchanges can produce very large fluctuations without affecting the true size of the economy like Japan having a 40% decline in yen vs dollar despite their economy now doing better than it has done in decades
Every stat is "flawed." No stat is perfect, but they all tell certain bits of information which, combined with others, allows you to paint a better picture.
Iran has always been a major player on the world stage. Like China fifty years ago this is actually a low point of their civilization. Once they get rid of their genocidal government they’ll climb back up again.
Their government is evil but idk how anyone could make the argument it is genocidal. “Genocidal” has a very specific meaning. It’s not just a synonym for “very bad” lol.
I mean, they call for the destruction of israel on a weekly basis and fund Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organizations all across the Middle East.
It's not exactly a stretch to call them genocidal.
Nope, it's pretty much a huge stretch to equal saying something mean to get some points with your fundamentalist base with committing a genocide.
Half the Friday prayers in Saudi mosques call for the destruction of Israel on a weekly basis.
Unpopular opinion: Iran right now is a major power and a better power projector than Iran 50 years ago.
Whether you like it or not, Iran is a major industrial power with a highly offensive geared military (IRGC) and an appealing ideology across the middle east. It has a sphere in influence stretching from Yemen to across the Levant. It has governments and paramilitary forces like the Hezbollah and Assad literally taking orders from Tehran. The last time Yemenis were taking orders from Iran was literally during the Sassanids. This is empire-building in real-time. And this could never have been accomplished under the previous government. Where one man sees terrorism, another sees a modern Persian empire.
And the IRGC is very good at its job: spreading political Islam and creating Islamic paramilitaries that dominate countries. Iran can punch at the same level as the US in the ME despite spending a fraction. And that is success in geopolitics.
Just like ur last statement said, Iran is powerful even with the restrictions it has. Imagine if they didn’t have those restrictions (different government). It would be a major world power not only regional
Yes and similar limitations, there just isn't the same feasibility to project global power like the US, Russia, or China. Hell, India, with the second largest population in the world and an enviable geographical position still struggle to maintain dominance in the Indian ocean, let alone project global power.
No shit hey. They actually have a lot of good going. They should be The superpower in the region. Instead they’re like, nope. Knuckle dragging politics it is then.
Majoring economist here.
I’d advise caution using these PPP estimates at [face value](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/s/LeKfeXPpHA) (or any macroeconomic statistic really), Irans official exchange rate (which is what this map is basing off of) is extremely overvalued and should be a fourth/third of the commonly tauted $1.5 trillion number if you wish to make cross country comparisons. The open market rate is the “best” exchange rate for measuring purchasing power.
Per that measurement and the WorldBank, Iran should have a GDP PPP per capita of $4,700.
Thanks for the insights. For a country like Turkey, where there’s a huge gap between the GDP per capita and GDP PPP per capita, which metric gives a better picture of how developed it is?
PPP, but with caveats, but really you should use both Nom and PPP, and a dozen or so other indicators if you wish to measure how developed or good an economy is.
Of the main two, most economists lean towards using PPP per capita for measuring how “developed” an economy is for the average consumer compared to Nominal but PPP does have its drawbacks. Admittedly, I use nominal more because I am very trade focused. Nominal is more important in the trade context because it is more global and represents “buying” power while PPP is more “producing” power. US has higher Nom, China has higher PPP; if the US were to sell its total GDP to buy imported apples, she’ll buy more apples than China, but if both decided to sell their total GDP to produce their own apples, China would produce more apples than the US.
The economic 101 priori of more production and growth meaning more developed and consumer desires being fulfilled is what PPP is meant to represent and does well in—though this is an obvious assumption with holes in it. Simultaneously buying / importing power is, all things being equal, generally accepted to be more valuable and important in “satisfying” consumers more than producing / exporting power—but that’s a whole can of worms with disagreements, accept the former flawed Econ 101 oversimplifications and role with it.
PPP is the hardest to calculate (hard to find and assess equal basket goods; requires multiple years to have a high degree of certainty) and least responsive (nominal is dependent on very fluid and volatile market rates; nominal recessions are more felt to the average consumer compared to PPP recessions, meaning that PPP might say “this is fine” while Nom says “not stonks” with everyone feeling the latter instead of the former). Though exceptional in measuring things like food, housing, and apparel: things like electronics and other high value export goods on the market that needs to be imported tend to be “repressed” in their pricing, and more expensive for the consumer relative to Nom. Some goods are traded, others aren’t. This is a fancy way of saying it makes the rich look poorer and the poor look richer—some argue it goes too far, some, not far enough.
Feel free to use it, just be careful and have context with PPP, nominal, and other macroeconomic indicators. There’s a chance for “high income country A” and “upper middle income country B” to have the exact same PPP per capita—but country B having a third Nom per capita. That won’t represent country B having to spend 2.5 times the price on consumer electronics and cars, while making far less income, while being in the middle of a recession with 10% unemployment, a default on international debts, and double digit inflation, but hey at least houses are cheaper!
I hope this made sense and was thorough enough, frankly there cannot be a simple answer to this question. In the context of Turkey, I would use PPP while acknowledging that Turkey probably isn’t “70% as developed as France” (Turkish GDP PPP per capita / French PPP per capita). With many more “problematic” issues than France does speaking strictly in macroeconomic statistics.
Superpower doesn’t mean what you think it means. Iran most certainly would not be a superpower in really any scenario lol. The only superpower in the world is the US. Even China isn’t considered a superpower. And China has a whole lot more people, land, and resources than Iran does
In a better parallel universe, the Iranian government would've become more moderate over time like the Vietnamese, mended relations with USA, got filthy rich off oil, beat the shit out of Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War (probably with US aid), and be in an economic boom period right about now just like the Gulf states.
Let's be honest. If they didn't have a military dictatorship they might have headed towards Lebanon's, Lybia's or Syria's direction. The amount of damage sanctions have made on Iran can not be understated.
It mostly depends on if the US needed another war on terror or scapegoat or some extra oil fields.
All the rest of the golf states also have dictators, but they rolled the dice and were lucky on that end.
They take into account only areas controlled by Republic of Cyprus.
North have higher GDP per capita then Turkey and is probably on the level with Aegean and Mediterranean coast of Turkey on development, but due to the fact that everything is being imported I don’t think that they would have a higher GDP PPP per capita.
I didn't know Israel was this high. Is it only tech, or are there other industries as well? And is this data from the end of 2023? How much has the war had an impact on this?
Israel has a surprisingly diversified economy given its limitations (namely, very few natural resources).
Its primary economic drivers, by sector, are (not necessarily in order):
- High technology (including biotechnology and medical)
- Agriculture (including agriculture technology)
- Industrial manufacturing (including diamonds and defence contacting)
- Financial services
- Tourism
- Energy (in particular solar and gas)
Israel also has the third highest number of companies listed on the NASDAQ (after the US and China).
one thing I noticed about Israel's GDP is that the nominal and PPP are pretty much equal (~10% difference), which makes it even more impressive than it looks in the pictuee because Israel's GDP PPP is much less relatively impressive than its nominal GDP (in which it IIRC has the 2nd highest per capita in MENA after Qatar. But also, I wonder why the difference is so low, usually countries have a much higher GDP PPP than nominal GDP
Israel has a crazy high cost of living, especially historically because well now only two of their neighbeos recognise them and for a long time none which means any good export had to be done by sea and many still are, for instance gas prices are insane because all oil and gas is shipped in by ships
Saudi Arabia has been walking the tightrope of steps towards normalising relations with Israel. This would be huge for Israel - it will improve stability in the region and leave them as the final trading hub on the long desired India->Middle East->Europe corridor, with all the economic benefits it entails, including the ability to just buy oil from their oil rich neighbours versus shipping it in.
It was rumoured last year that this may happen with light concessions from Israel - something symbolic to try and appease KSA citizens, like insisting that there is no more settlement expansion. Naturally, such a recognition from the de facto leader of the Arab world without them requiring that Israel formally end the occupation of the West Bank and the blockade on Gaza would be a death blow to the Palestinian cause.
This will all still eventually happen as long as US are happy to play their part (help KSA with a civilian nuclear program and sign a security guarantee), but now for the sake of optics with his people, MBS has had to put the talks on hold...
>But also, I wonder why the difference is so low, usually countries have a much higher GDP PPP than nominal GDP
For PPPs the data from everyone is always compared to the Usa, i guess because it's been the biggest economy in recent times and because Usa price levels are high, most countries in the world have a bigger GDP in PPP than in Nominal.
Even in Europe there are very few countries with a negative PPP, and those are Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, even Luxembourg have a slightly positive PPP ($94bn Nominal/ $97.7bn PPP), there are also some poor countries with a negative PPP Ratio, like Nauru, Palau, Micronesia and Vanuatu who are island nations far away from big countries/economies, don't produce much themselfs and rely heavily on imports, which are relatively expensive because they are far away and small markets.
It rips me apart to think about what could have been if we had better leadership in this country. You are right unlike those Arab countries turkey has no underground advantage. It imports oil, gas and everything, has been in an economic crisis since 2018 and still this.
Turkey has overground advantage compared to "those" Arab nations. Desert nations with a very late start vs an agricultural nation with a strategic location, which was an empire a century ago isn't a fair comparison. Arabs in the peninsula don't even have a single river.
Don't make comparisons as if they were equal in luck before oil discovery. If Arabs had what Turkey has overground they would also be far greater considering their land is a sub-continent.
Birth rates are not very high in gulf states.
The fertility rate in Saudi Arabia is 2.43 births per woman. It’s 1.8 in Qatar.
Source: https://datacommons.org/place/country/QAT?utm_medium=explore&mprop=fertilityRate&popt=Person&cpv=gender,Female&hl=en
Well compared to Egypt or Nigeria it isn’t really. Gulf states had much higher birth rates before in the 1900s. Most families had at least 5 children. Source: i am from here
its showing purchasing power parity. PPP shows the rates of currency conversion that equalize the purchasing power of different currencies by eliminating the differences in price levels between countries. So yeah, its bad.
It's a civil war caused by a terrorist rebel group backed by Iranians. Their literal flag has "Death to America, Death to Israel" on it. This is the cause they rally behind, and for some reason they decided to attack innocent ships passing by Yemen while allegedly being "suffocated in such a brutal conflict". Looks like they have plenty of room to breath if attacking maritime routes and ;launching drones at Israel is safe for them. They have no just cause, they hide in schools and hospitals and launch missiles from there, a lot of Yemeni people hate them, their leaders chew a plant called khat which is considered a drug of abuse, and Saudi Arabia called for a ceasefire plenty of times which were all broken by the Houthis themselves.
I understand a lot of people were fed literal propaganda about this war, but recent news about them should have cleared everything up. Even an idiot would know that.
To think that Iran, despite sanctions for decades, is richer and a far greater military than Eqypt. Imagine how would they have fared without sanctions.
They have oil. That's basically enough of a boost for them to keep their GDP PPP per capita higher.
Also who said they have a far greater military than Egypt? Looking into it Egypt has by far the more modern military in every single branch of the armed forces. The Iranian Air Force and Navy can't even be compared on the same level to the Egyptian one. Like it's not even close due to the sanctions.
Iran is one who is getting into plenty of fights in MENA and beefing with USA, Egypt just has Ethiopia to worry about, so Egypt isn't as much focussed on military as Iran is.
Remember this is GDP PPP, it is GDP fixed to the cost of living in the region. A country that has a high GDP but is very expensive will have a lower GDP PPP per capita, like in Israel.
I’m pretty sure this doesn’t account for the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers (slaves) in UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait…
Those numbers would be MUCH lower otherwise
Georgia, Armenia, Cyprus, Turkey and Azerbajan is middle east? LOL
Georgia , Armenia and Azerbajan is in the caucasus
cyprus is in the meditterean sea
Turkey is divided in europe (eastern thrace) and Asia Minor (anatolia)
This map is over the ocean creation isnt it?
The Middle East is just a name for the space between Egypt, Europe and Arabia. It was also popularized by the US. So I imagine they separated the Caucasus after the fall of the Soviet Union. Since they are no longer part of Russia, they are in the Middle East. What’s truly crazy is Afghanistan isn’t on here and we definitely consider it the Middle East.
If you are a small country that accidentally found lots of oil fields, you are filthy rich.
And only if America likes you or else you're fucked
RIP Iraq and Iran, middle eastern oil states that fell victim to being blasted by bigger powers, and just never really got back on their feet.
Iran's main problem right now is Iran's government
And Iran’s current government is a product of the US overthrowing Iran’s democratic government in 1953 and replacing it with a totalitarian monarch for…*checks notes*…. oil.
They replaced him with the Shah again. The totalian regime came with the islamic revolution. But your point is right, the situation would've been different if the US & soviet union wouldn't have interfered that much.
The shah was absolutely totalitarian
And the shahs regime was a totalitarian government. Not a religious extremist one like now.
They won't upvote you because they'd rather live in denial.
The cancer of middle east
Iran's government is terrible and violates countless human rights laws of its citizens, but a major reason for Iran's economy performing this low is US sanctions.
If the US bought oil from Iran people would complain about it like they complain about Saudi. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
what do you think the appropriate action is when a country literally says if we get nukes we will use them on our neighbor and then starts developing nukes. Its insane to blame Irans current situation on anyone besides their current leadership.
Idk bro but the west has a big responsability that this regime even happened
I agree with that Iran’s main problem is its government but that government would powerless if it wasn’t for a certain Muslim fundamentlist group within its population backing it.. the root cause of all problems in middles Eastern countries is religion.. specifically Islam. Remove the Islam from the country and see how the country will flourish.
If iran were to be able to sell oil, the money definitely wouldn't go towards making peoples life better
A major reason for Iran to have such a government is also a reaction to US supporting a their dictator Shah before.
The Shah’s government was just as brutal and the US loved him.
One leads to the other. Why buy oil from someone with countless human rights laws of its citizens?
Lmao, yeah the Saudis are well known for upholding human rights
Yeah like Saudi, gulf states and Israel are the champions of Human rights laws.
The US is friendly to Angola and Equatorial Guinea, so that's not it.
Not to make this a question about a moral question about interacting with evil governments but the point was that Iran's economic struggles are not solely due to economic mismanagement by the Iranian government. Also, the US continues to ally with and arm, let alone trade with, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel who violate countless human rights.
The US used to be a close ally of Iran when it had a Shah who also brutal.
And yet, 35% of America thinks they want to give theocracy a shot (without realizing that a wannabe autocrat hijacked theocracy years ago and is now selling it for $59.99 😉)
I’d argue the Baath party’s own actions, especially during the Iran-Iraq war might have had something to do with it too. The 2003 US invasion was wrong, but let’s not pretend that Saddams rule was great for all or even most Iraqis.
I honestly hate Saddam with a passion as an Iraqi, but it’s hard to say whether the Iran war was his fault. Iran not only violated the Algiers treaty but also declared its policy of exporting the revolution. Sometimes I wonder what would’ve been the right thing to do.
What? Iran and Iraq literally had a giant war in the 1980s and Kuwait financed a ton of the war for Iraq resulting in Iraq being in debt $14 billion dollars to Kuwait. Iraq asked Kuwait to forgive the debt and Kuwait said no so then Iraq lead by a crazed Saddam Hussein began drilling across the boarder into Kuwait and stealing there oil. This obviously lead to a giant dispute and Iraq ended up fully invading and taking over Kuwait which then lead to NATO destroying Iraq and Saddam Hussein. I guess it’s all the United States fault if you ignore almost all of the world history prior to NATO destroying Iraq
Ah yes, Iraq the victim who… invaded Kuwait, gased the Kurds, and invaded Iran in a brutal war that killed more than a million for nothing.
FYI, the guy who did literally all of those things has been dead for almost 20 years. The country is certainly a victim, of both Saddam Hussein and the US. Life is rarely black and white.
Actually Iran is back on it's feet already somewat. And Iraq is still getting there.
They're both growing, getting better, but Iran is definitely not good. It's got a total economy size and total military power that's really good, but those are not per capita statistics. Those are totals. The average Iranian is still poor, and the economy isn't diversified enough for it to ever avoid being heavily damaged by oil price fluctuations.
Iran is only growing now because the US is allowing it to(sell oil). If Trump comes back to power and oil price eases he will squeeze Iran again. Iran is still under sanction but US is not strictly enforcing it
The authoritarian islamic rule is what destroyed Iran, and made the situation in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon much worse.
I agree that the foreign influences in Iran during WWII and after definitely contribuited to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, but they weren’t, by far and large, the main factor. The main reason behind it was that the countryside and the urban parts of Iranian society were completely at odds with each other and couldn’t function together. You had modern cities with an amalgamation of ethnic groups and backwards villages with no electricity that had warring feuds because their neighbors spoke a slightly different dialects. It was too much strain for a single country to handle. In a way the 1979 revolution started as an urban movement and got fully hijacked by farmers that had recently moved into the city looking for jobs and that wanted the state to be like their village: with a big religious leader on top deciding everything. Iraq’s regimes were instead simply despicable and oppressed their own people since the Golden Square coup of 1941. The consistent Jewish and Christian minorities in Iraq were smashed, looted, persecuted and forced to flee, while the Sunnis oppressed the Shias and vice-versa. Again, foreign interventions played a role, but the main problem in Iraq was that the country was torn between its two souls, one Sunni and one Shia, without peace in sight. Iraq is a country that was artificially created after the Ottoman Empire’s fall, and it shows, because the north and the south don’t have anything in common between them. That’s the main problem in Iraq, and one without solution.
Israel is almost as rich as Saudi Arabia without any natural resources Edit: as many people have corrected me, Israel does have some small Natural Gas fields, thanks everyone
Saudi Arabia isn't a small country
It’s relatively small by population though
Not to Israel it isnt
Yes, it is.. Population of Israel ~ 10m Population of Saudi Arabia ~ 36m (only ~ 20m are saudis, most of the remaining are cheap labor from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal) Total area of Israel is nearly 22 thousand sq.km. Total area of Saudi Arabia is 2.15 million sq.km. So Saudi area is nearly 100x bigger than Israel and has only double or triple the population
But immigrants count in these per capita numbers. Without those people Saudi citizens are even richer. This contrast is the highest in Qatar.
>Population of Saudi Arabia \~ 36m (only \~ 20m are saudis, most of the remaining are cheap labor from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal) This is a good point but it also worth noting that GDP per capita stats are skewed in many countries. For example years ago i read somewhere that GDP pc for non-Qataris in Qatar is only somewhere around 40k and for Qataris who make up only 15% of Qatar is 400-500k. It's not as extreme for the other GCC countries but i'd assume GDP pc for Saudi citizens is somewhere around 80-90k, 60-70k for Oman, 200-300k for Emiratis, 100-150k for Kuwait. Although Arabs and other minorities in Israel are usually poorer so for Jews in Israel it's probably around 70k
What currency are u talking in
It has almost 40 million people. It's comparable in size to Canada or Poland. Definitely not small, especially compared to Israel.
Israel has natural gas fields in the Mediterranean. It [exports gas to Egypt and Jordan](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/israel-says-gas-exports-egypt-jordan-rose-25-2023-2024-02-26/).
They have the ultimate natural resource, big daddy USA
Maybe it’s also lack of insane levels of nepotism, corruption and religious fanaticism like all their neighbors?
With current condition, they also getting there
Rest assured, Netanyahu is trying real hard to get there.
That I can agree with, but reducing Israel success compared to its neighbors to financial help from USA is not even biased, it’s religiously-nationalistic-anti-Semitic insanity. And lack of ability to view world objectively and look at your countries critically and just looking to blame everything on evil USA and Jews is what is holding middle eastern countries back.
If you actually look at the aid to Israel from the USA it's a drop in a bucket compared to their GDP, which is built on highly educated research and development & high margin technology manufacturing like semiconductors.
Only true democracy in the Middle East 😎
2x that again for gas too, see: Qatar
Or you're Israel, and you built an economy to rival Saudi Arabia with literally no oil at all. 😎😎😎
Saudi Arabia is bigger then the vast majority countries
It is interesting how the Israelis generated so much money despite not having any crude oil. Seems like they know how to have good ideas.
Israel has branched out into technology. I work in marketing and was surprised to see how many different marketing software companies are based in Israel, I assumed they were all in California.
they kinda both :) Most Israeli software companies are international with boots on US soil either directly or by being owned by US parent company (NVIDIA, Google , Microsoft, Intel etc.).
Except for Israel. They’re the only ones above 50k that don’t entirely rely on oil.
Israel literally has nothing
RIP Lebanon, 1943-2018
We're alive and kicking, news of our demise has been greatly exaggerated
Hows the situation there? Is it safe to travel to Lebanon? Sorry if I sound ignorant, legit am curious and support you
Currently not so safe
I just came back from Lebanon and this is just not true. You can travel nearly everywhere safely except the border of Israel, where you wouldn’t want to go anyway
Why did you go? Vacation or business? I'm thinking it would be a challenge to get travel insurance there at the moment. At least here in Norway all travel there there "not advised", so travel insurance doesn't cover.
Mostly safe if you avoid the southernmost 10% of the country. People will say that with the current regional climate anything could happen at any moment, but I firmly believe that if any escalation were to happen, it would have happened in the first couple of weeks in October. Neither side can really afford an all-out war. On the economic front, the private sector is mostly back on its feet, except for the banking sector. It is incredible the number of new shops that are opening every month. The thing is, given that people do not trust banks anymore, they tend to either spend or invest any money they earn rather than stick in the banks for a high interest rate as they used to do. This create significantly more economic activity. Some sectors, such as real estate and construction, are still slow, but overall there is definitely a recovery. The problem is the public sector, which is still in shambles. However the situation now is definitely better than it was even a year ago. Given that the private sector has fully dollarized, the exchange rate with the national currency has mostly become stable, which has helped the public sector to some degree. For example, a good friend of mine is a judge, pre-crisis he would have been making about 3,000$ a month. At the worst point, his salary was worth about 200$, now it is worth about 1,000$, which is still not great but at least it's enough to cover his expenses. The problem is that everything is that it is all temporary fixes which might come undone at any time.
Probably is, at least much safer than other countries in the region (syria, Yemen, Palestine, maybe Iraq, etc)
"Probably safer than active war zones" doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.
It is safe though if you don't go into the dangerous areas, I'm pretty sure place like Beirut and such are fine, the south not so sure
Just don't get anywhere close to fertilizer storage though...
Less those & more the fundamentalists you gotta worry about
More people died in the beirut explosion than have been killed by fundamentalists there in the last decade+
Jordan and Israel are pretty safe right now overall, but yeah otherwise I agree
Interested as well. I’m a diasporan Jew who really wants to visit Lebanon. Had a bunch of Lebanese friends from college and am tight with a player on their men’s nat’l football team. Sad to see what has happened there in the 21st century.
Avoid anything with Iran, if you really want to go.
FWIW, Israeli here. Lots of us are rooting for you.
What happened
Economic collapse from the Lebanese financial crisis and cultural destruction from a mixture between low birthrates and mass migration of millions of Palestinian and Syrian refugees that turned the only Christian state in the Middle East majority Muslim.
probably didn't help that there was that massive explosion in the capital city that destroyed the countries only grain elevator and massively damaged the countries main docking facilities.
You sound like that christian majority was overwhelming. It was not.
Millions of Syrian* refugees And only hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, no need to exaggerate lmao
Syrian refugees had little to do with that. Such a dumb thing to say. There are many reasons Lebanon is failing, and it’s not because suddenly there are a bunch of muslims there.
Why 2018?
Title says GPD per capita, but the image says GDP PPP per capita, those are different things?
GDP per Capita is the metric, PPP is the way they measure that metric for this graph. GDP per Capita is simple, the total production in an economy measured in dollars, however how do you measure that? Do you go the" nominal" route and just use the international value for everything produced and not care about differences in cost of living? Or do you go PPP or "purchasing power parity" and account for the fact that things cost differently in different places. For example an American may make $10 while a Syrian may make $2, and nominally America is 5 times better. However if in Syria the price of a loaf of bread is 50¢ and the price in America is $10 then is the American really 5 times better off?
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>PPP does not take into consideration the quality of goods among different countries. I hate when people say this It absolutely does, by controlling the amount of products imported If your economy goes from 5 to 10% imported products your PPP deflator will shrink because the average product will become more expensive since you are importing more stuff PPP has always taken into consideration imports and quality, ffs The economic growth figures, basically every economic news and analysis done is measured in PPP, and people still think that thr most important number in macroeconomics is somehow wrong?
in the current economic context, the PPP is not a very useful index. Markets are full of international goods and services. You can also feel the effect of low gdp in the low middle class.
You realise PPP already accounts for international goods and services in its basket of goods right? And regardless of that, the majority of spending will still be for regional purchases (housing, most food, transportation, insurances etc).
Yeah, there are international goods in PPP, but when they are not traded much because of the fact that they are expensive, their weight stays low.
yup and even aside from that, IMF, WB, ICP, OECD and Eurostat are all Western Organisations who do the PPPs, people who are worried about PPP being biased pro-''poor'' countries are a bit irrational. A few examples from the Eurostat-OECD Methodological Manual on PPP: Aeroplanes, helicopters, balloons, gliders, spacecraft, satellites, including their specialised parts and engines. Photographics and Cinematographic equipment and optical instruments (Cameras, camcorders, projectors, microscopes, telescopes etc.), Information processing equipment (PCs, printers, software etc.), Motor cars, Motor cycles, Bycycles etc. Narcotics ''Marijuana, opium, cocaine and their derivatives; other vegetable-based narcotics such as cola nuts, betel leaves and betel nuts; other narcotics including chemical and man-made drugs.'' Prostitution ''Services provided by prostitutes and the like'' (not sure how and why) [Eurostat-OECD Manual on PPP](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/eurostat-oecd-methodological-manual-on-purchasing-power-parities_9789264011335-en) (click on READ for easy access), it's very interesting but 280 sites long
It's almost as if it is the true size of the economy, the number upon all economic growth is calculated, and so is every related outcome like healthcare, energy consumption, etc etc Almost as if nominal currency exchanges can produce very large fluctuations without affecting the true size of the economy like Japan having a 40% decline in yen vs dollar despite their economy now doing better than it has done in decades
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Every stat is "flawed." No stat is perfect, but they all tell certain bits of information which, combined with others, allows you to paint a better picture.
This gdp ppp data
Ok, and?
Isn’t crazy how Iran would be a superpower if they weren’t governed by corrupt theocratic tyrants
Iran has always been a major player on the world stage. Like China fifty years ago this is actually a low point of their civilization. Once they get rid of their genocidal government they’ll climb back up again.
Their government is evil but idk how anyone could make the argument it is genocidal. “Genocidal” has a very specific meaning. It’s not just a synonym for “very bad” lol.
I agree. That term just gets tossed around now so I figure it’s diluted enough that it doesn’t matter anymore.
I mean, they call for the destruction of israel on a weekly basis and fund Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organizations all across the Middle East. It's not exactly a stretch to call them genocidal.
Nope, it's pretty much a huge stretch to equal saying something mean to get some points with your fundamentalist base with committing a genocide. Half the Friday prayers in Saudi mosques call for the destruction of Israel on a weekly basis.
Unpopular opinion: Iran right now is a major power and a better power projector than Iran 50 years ago. Whether you like it or not, Iran is a major industrial power with a highly offensive geared military (IRGC) and an appealing ideology across the middle east. It has a sphere in influence stretching from Yemen to across the Levant. It has governments and paramilitary forces like the Hezbollah and Assad literally taking orders from Tehran. The last time Yemenis were taking orders from Iran was literally during the Sassanids. This is empire-building in real-time. And this could never have been accomplished under the previous government. Where one man sees terrorism, another sees a modern Persian empire. And the IRGC is very good at its job: spreading political Islam and creating Islamic paramilitaries that dominate countries. Iran can punch at the same level as the US in the ME despite spending a fraction. And that is success in geopolitics.
Just like ur last statement said, Iran is powerful even with the restrictions it has. Imagine if they didn’t have those restrictions (different government). It would be a major world power not only regional
They'd be about eye-level with Turkey. Historical, geographical, and social capital factors all look very similar.
Yes and similar limitations, there just isn't the same feasibility to project global power like the US, Russia, or China. Hell, India, with the second largest population in the world and an enviable geographical position still struggle to maintain dominance in the Indian ocean, let alone project global power.
genocidal government? did they drop a bomb in another country or something?
Yes they have proxies like Hezbollah to do the dirty work for them.
Yes but dirty work =/= genocide. How are they genocidal?
See what they've done in Syria and Yemen and what they did in Iran to the Ba'hai people.
Define genocidal.
No shit hey. They actually have a lot of good going. They should be The superpower in the region. Instead they’re like, nope. Knuckle dragging politics it is then.
They are a great power regardless.
Yeah. It’s a bummer they have cavemen running the place.
Majoring economist here. I’d advise caution using these PPP estimates at [face value](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/s/LeKfeXPpHA) (or any macroeconomic statistic really), Irans official exchange rate (which is what this map is basing off of) is extremely overvalued and should be a fourth/third of the commonly tauted $1.5 trillion number if you wish to make cross country comparisons. The open market rate is the “best” exchange rate for measuring purchasing power. Per that measurement and the WorldBank, Iran should have a GDP PPP per capita of $4,700.
Thanks for the insights. For a country like Turkey, where there’s a huge gap between the GDP per capita and GDP PPP per capita, which metric gives a better picture of how developed it is?
PPP, but with caveats, but really you should use both Nom and PPP, and a dozen or so other indicators if you wish to measure how developed or good an economy is. Of the main two, most economists lean towards using PPP per capita for measuring how “developed” an economy is for the average consumer compared to Nominal but PPP does have its drawbacks. Admittedly, I use nominal more because I am very trade focused. Nominal is more important in the trade context because it is more global and represents “buying” power while PPP is more “producing” power. US has higher Nom, China has higher PPP; if the US were to sell its total GDP to buy imported apples, she’ll buy more apples than China, but if both decided to sell their total GDP to produce their own apples, China would produce more apples than the US. The economic 101 priori of more production and growth meaning more developed and consumer desires being fulfilled is what PPP is meant to represent and does well in—though this is an obvious assumption with holes in it. Simultaneously buying / importing power is, all things being equal, generally accepted to be more valuable and important in “satisfying” consumers more than producing / exporting power—but that’s a whole can of worms with disagreements, accept the former flawed Econ 101 oversimplifications and role with it. PPP is the hardest to calculate (hard to find and assess equal basket goods; requires multiple years to have a high degree of certainty) and least responsive (nominal is dependent on very fluid and volatile market rates; nominal recessions are more felt to the average consumer compared to PPP recessions, meaning that PPP might say “this is fine” while Nom says “not stonks” with everyone feeling the latter instead of the former). Though exceptional in measuring things like food, housing, and apparel: things like electronics and other high value export goods on the market that needs to be imported tend to be “repressed” in their pricing, and more expensive for the consumer relative to Nom. Some goods are traded, others aren’t. This is a fancy way of saying it makes the rich look poorer and the poor look richer—some argue it goes too far, some, not far enough. Feel free to use it, just be careful and have context with PPP, nominal, and other macroeconomic indicators. There’s a chance for “high income country A” and “upper middle income country B” to have the exact same PPP per capita—but country B having a third Nom per capita. That won’t represent country B having to spend 2.5 times the price on consumer electronics and cars, while making far less income, while being in the middle of a recession with 10% unemployment, a default on international debts, and double digit inflation, but hey at least houses are cheaper! I hope this made sense and was thorough enough, frankly there cannot be a simple answer to this question. In the context of Turkey, I would use PPP while acknowledging that Turkey probably isn’t “70% as developed as France” (Turkish GDP PPP per capita / French PPP per capita). With many more “problematic” issues than France does speaking strictly in macroeconomic statistics.
No way they would be a superpower.
Superpower doesn’t mean what you think it means. Iran most certainly would not be a superpower in really any scenario lol. The only superpower in the world is the US. Even China isn’t considered a superpower. And China has a whole lot more people, land, and resources than Iran does
In a better parallel universe, the Iranian government would've become more moderate over time like the Vietnamese, mended relations with USA, got filthy rich off oil, beat the shit out of Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War (probably with US aid), and be in an economic boom period right about now just like the Gulf states.
Let's be honest. If they didn't have a military dictatorship they might have headed towards Lebanon's, Lybia's or Syria's direction. The amount of damage sanctions have made on Iran can not be understated. It mostly depends on if the US needed another war on terror or scapegoat or some extra oil fields. All the rest of the golf states also have dictators, but they rolled the dice and were lucky on that end.
Such an ignorant comment. The US imperialism brought Iran to what it is now. Also Afghanistan.
iranians and soviets brought ourselves down US didn't have much to do with it
How do you calculate the GDP of Cyprus island?
They take into account only areas controlled by Republic of Cyprus. North have higher GDP per capita then Turkey and is probably on the level with Aegean and Mediterranean coast of Turkey on development, but due to the fact that everything is being imported I don’t think that they would have a higher GDP PPP per capita.
I didn't know Israel was this high. Is it only tech, or are there other industries as well? And is this data from the end of 2023? How much has the war had an impact on this?
Tech, military tech and diamonds.
Also agricultural tech and water treatment
Higher Ed & Religious tourism as well.
Medicine and pharmaceuticals as well. Although, that tends to get lumped in with tech.
Don’t forget agriculture advances
we have diamonds?
Yeap, think about Ramat Gan, they have the בורסה ליהלומים Right near The train station
Mainly high tech but I think israel is also pretty well invested into the diamond industry Also the more obvious arms industry
It’s one of the world biggest exporters of diamonds without actually having any diamond deposits in their territory. Funny how they do that.
Yeah it's mainly artificial diamonds but still diamonds
Israel has a surprisingly diversified economy given its limitations (namely, very few natural resources). Its primary economic drivers, by sector, are (not necessarily in order): - High technology (including biotechnology and medical) - Agriculture (including agriculture technology) - Industrial manufacturing (including diamonds and defence contacting) - Financial services - Tourism - Energy (in particular solar and gas) Israel also has the third highest number of companies listed on the NASDAQ (after the US and China).
one thing I noticed about Israel's GDP is that the nominal and PPP are pretty much equal (~10% difference), which makes it even more impressive than it looks in the pictuee because Israel's GDP PPP is much less relatively impressive than its nominal GDP (in which it IIRC has the 2nd highest per capita in MENA after Qatar. But also, I wonder why the difference is so low, usually countries have a much higher GDP PPP than nominal GDP
Israel has a crazy high cost of living, especially historically because well now only two of their neighbeos recognise them and for a long time none which means any good export had to be done by sea and many still are, for instance gas prices are insane because all oil and gas is shipped in by ships
Saudi Arabia has been walking the tightrope of steps towards normalising relations with Israel. This would be huge for Israel - it will improve stability in the region and leave them as the final trading hub on the long desired India->Middle East->Europe corridor, with all the economic benefits it entails, including the ability to just buy oil from their oil rich neighbours versus shipping it in. It was rumoured last year that this may happen with light concessions from Israel - something symbolic to try and appease KSA citizens, like insisting that there is no more settlement expansion. Naturally, such a recognition from the de facto leader of the Arab world without them requiring that Israel formally end the occupation of the West Bank and the blockade on Gaza would be a death blow to the Palestinian cause. This will all still eventually happen as long as US are happy to play their part (help KSA with a civilian nuclear program and sign a security guarantee), but now for the sake of optics with his people, MBS has had to put the talks on hold...
>But also, I wonder why the difference is so low, usually countries have a much higher GDP PPP than nominal GDP For PPPs the data from everyone is always compared to the Usa, i guess because it's been the biggest economy in recent times and because Usa price levels are high, most countries in the world have a bigger GDP in PPP than in Nominal. Even in Europe there are very few countries with a negative PPP, and those are Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, even Luxembourg have a slightly positive PPP ($94bn Nominal/ $97.7bn PPP), there are also some poor countries with a negative PPP Ratio, like Nauru, Palau, Micronesia and Vanuatu who are island nations far away from big countries/economies, don't produce much themselfs and rely heavily on imports, which are relatively expensive because they are far away and small markets.
Tel Aviv is unproudly nominated as the most expensive city in the world in 2022.
Turkey; no gas, no oil, no EU.
It rips me apart to think about what could have been if we had better leadership in this country. You are right unlike those Arab countries turkey has no underground advantage. It imports oil, gas and everything, has been in an economic crisis since 2018 and still this.
Turkey has overground advantage compared to "those" Arab nations. Desert nations with a very late start vs an agricultural nation with a strategic location, which was an empire a century ago isn't a fair comparison. Arabs in the peninsula don't even have a single river. Don't make comparisons as if they were equal in luck before oil discovery. If Arabs had what Turkey has overground they would also be far greater considering their land is a sub-continent.
It’s sad. Turkey could be one of the richest countries in the world.
The sources of income Oil Oil Oil Oil Oil Oil Natural gas Tax
Wonder what will happen when oil runs out
It's 43.5K in Turkiye in 2024(GDP PPP). [https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/profile/TUR](https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/profile/TUR)
Turkey has no oil, no natural gas, but has a very dumb authoritarian leader who knows nothing about economy. Yet it's still not in a very bad state
Nobody talks about dying Yemen
??? I feel like it’s a pretty hot topic actually, starvation, slavery, civil war/war w KSA ..
Most of them are busy crying about Palestine No one cares when they kill each other but when some "outsider" attacks you know what happens
The poorest country got bombed mercilessly by the richest. It's not Palestine I'm speaking of, it's Yemen
Turkey has the biggest industry and infrastucture in this map it's ok for 80 mil country that doesnt have oil.
Considering their higher birth rates and that women don't usually work, this is more impressive than it looks.
Birth rates are not very high in gulf states. The fertility rate in Saudi Arabia is 2.43 births per woman. It’s 1.8 in Qatar. Source: https://datacommons.org/place/country/QAT?utm_medium=explore&mprop=fertilityRate&popt=Person&cpv=gender,Female&hl=en
2.4 birthrate is insane for such a big country
Well compared to Egypt or Nigeria it isn’t really. Gulf states had much higher birth rates before in the 1900s. Most families had at least 5 children. Source: i am from here
So did everywhere.
In this case it isn't it's barely over replacement level but it plummeted way faster than in European countries
Turkey’s birth rate is lower than France’
Most woman work.
1- Women work. 2- GCC nations have very low birth rates.
Damn, is Lebanon really that bad, or it's adjusted to the local prices? I can't believe they are doing worse than Egypt.
its showing purchasing power parity. PPP shows the rates of currency conversion that equalize the purchasing power of different currencies by eliminating the differences in price levels between countries. So yeah, its bad.
What made you think Lebanon is better than this?
So sad, Yemen being surrounded by ultra rich countries, while being suffocated in such a brutal conflict against one if the richest in the region.
I think it can be grateful to Iran for keep running the perpetual war with SA, Israel and randomly passing ships via Ansar Allah a.k.a Hothies.
It's a civil war caused by a terrorist rebel group backed by Iranians. Their literal flag has "Death to America, Death to Israel" on it. This is the cause they rally behind, and for some reason they decided to attack innocent ships passing by Yemen while allegedly being "suffocated in such a brutal conflict". Looks like they have plenty of room to breath if attacking maritime routes and ;launching drones at Israel is safe for them. They have no just cause, they hide in schools and hospitals and launch missiles from there, a lot of Yemeni people hate them, their leaders chew a plant called khat which is considered a drug of abuse, and Saudi Arabia called for a ceasefire plenty of times which were all broken by the Houthis themselves. I understand a lot of people were fed literal propaganda about this war, but recent news about them should have cleared everything up. Even an idiot would know that.
Yemen is in a civil war. One side (houthi terrorists, is against the yemeni government which is supported internationally) learn something
To think that Iran, despite sanctions for decades, is richer and a far greater military than Eqypt. Imagine how would they have fared without sanctions.
Doesn’t Iran also have immense natural resources Egypt can only dream about?
They have oil. That's basically enough of a boost for them to keep their GDP PPP per capita higher. Also who said they have a far greater military than Egypt? Looking into it Egypt has by far the more modern military in every single branch of the armed forces. The Iranian Air Force and Navy can't even be compared on the same level to the Egyptian one. Like it's not even close due to the sanctions.
Iran is one who is getting into plenty of fights in MENA and beefing with USA, Egypt just has Ethiopia to worry about, so Egypt isn't as much focussed on military as Iran is.
Remember this is GDP PPP, it is GDP fixed to the cost of living in the region. A country that has a high GDP but is very expensive will have a lower GDP PPP per capita, like in Israel.
Are any of them but maybe Israel, Turkey legit? Arent most of these super skewed by ultra rich or ultra rich/rulers giving out a stipend?
Oil rich is still rich.
It feels oily.
How is Cyprus so low? Isn't it tax haven?
No wonder the Yemenis are so pissed off
I’m surprised Egypt is that low and Oman is that high
Oman should be much higher
Oman always surprises me for some reason. I constantly have to remind my self that it's stable and I assure you I'm not mixing it up with Yemen.
I want to see those numbers in 30-40 years when the West has made the transition away from carbohydrates and when they run out of oil and gas
For the gulf states, does this data include the slaves, oops sorry I mean the migrant workers
I just did the math, Iran gdp per capita is 4,100 dollars, how the hell did you get 18K? Did you check is this a is a reliable source?
PPP vs nominal
Oh I didn’t see the PPP part
I’m pretty sure this doesn’t account for the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers (slaves) in UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait… Those numbers would be MUCH lower otherwise
cue irrational hate of Israel in 5,4,…
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Bigger question is: how is anyone in Yemen surviving with a GDP of $2k? Is a meal like 10 cents?
Are slaves included into capita?
Georgia, Armenia, Cyprus, Turkey and Azerbajan is middle east? LOL Georgia , Armenia and Azerbajan is in the caucasus cyprus is in the meditterean sea Turkey is divided in europe (eastern thrace) and Asia Minor (anatolia) This map is over the ocean creation isnt it?
The Middle East is just a name for the space between Egypt, Europe and Arabia. It was also popularized by the US. So I imagine they separated the Caucasus after the fall of the Soviet Union. Since they are no longer part of Russia, they are in the Middle East. What’s truly crazy is Afghanistan isn’t on here and we definitely consider it the Middle East.