this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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The EU has the second biggest economy in the world and contains 3 of the G7 nations (4 if you include the UK, which will almost certainly pivot back to EU membership in the next few years). All member states are part of NATO and France, Germany and the UK possess a significant nuclear arsenal.
But yeh, no real power.
PS 500 years ago, the economic power was Western European countries like France, England, Portugal, Spain.
The Ottoman Empire would like to have a word with you.
Ps, you're so confidently wrong. 1525 the economic powers of the world were India and china https://www.businessinsider.com/mckinsey-worlds-economic-center-of-gravity-2012-6
Here's a nice graphic to make it easy for your Eurocentric mind to comprehend
Bud how put of date your knowledge is? You from the 90s? Name the top 5 in order of GDP? Go ahead. Please. I know you're speaking of Germany but please try and back it up it in 2025 that they are the second biggest economy lmao
Also is Europe getting richer, is American or European manufacturing improving? No, it's going towards china, towards India, towards Africa. Europe became rich because of hundreds of years of exploitation and another 100 years of soft power to ensure cheap resources than be taken to Europe/America, produce high quality and sent back. Problem is, the world is now able to do a lot of it itself and Asia can make everything it needs and give to all other Asian and African Nations.
Military threat, yeah, 100% that's all Europe has, that's how you become rich was bombing and exploiting others. But the suprise factor is gone, nobody trusts you guys, look at the trade map, you think you're gonna challenge this?
https://howmuch.net/articles/trade-timelapse-usa-china
that is a fascinating map; i noticed that despite making projections about 2025 the date of that post is actually 2012; Business Insider attributes it to McKinsey, but via ZeroHedge (who charges for access to their archives).
I wanted more context so I spent a few minutes searching; in case anyone else is curious it comes from a report called "Urban world: Cities and the rise of the consuming class" by McKinsey Global Institute.
Here is their summary of it, and here is the 92 page PDF of the full report.
here is MGI's 'economic center of gravity' methodology
The center of gravity analysis is based on country-level historical estimates from Angus Maddison for the period AD 1 until 2007, and country-level growth rates from Cityscope 2.0 until 2025. We then allocated each country’s GDP value to the approximate center of landmass of the respective country. The same center of each country was used throughout the entire time frame. To calculate the global center of gravity, landmass radian coordinates were transformed into Cartesian coordinates with a tool from the UK Ordnance Survey that uses ED50/ UTM data and projection (see www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/gps). We then transformed these coordinates into respective momentums and averaged these to a true economic center of gravity for each year, located within the sphere of the earth. To illustrate the shift of gravity, we lengthened the vectors from the center of the earth to the center of gravity so that they lie on the earth’s surface. Although the concept of “surfacing” might create problems for interpreting data, both the resulting direction and the magnitude of the surfaced shifts were directionally consistent with the internal shifts, too. The four periods with the fastest shift, 2000–10, 1940–50, and 2010–25, maintain the same rank order, while the 1500–1820 period ranks 11th on surface but eighth on the “true” center of gravity.here is what they say about ~500 years ago
Until 1500, Asia was the center of gravity of the world economy, accounting for roughly two-thirds of global GDP. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, urbanization and industrialization vaulted Europe and the United States to prominence. We are now observing a decisive shift in the balance back toward Asia—at a speed and on a scale never before witnessed. China’s economic transformation resulting from urbanization and industrialization is happening at 100 times the scale of the first country in the world to urbanize—the United Kingdom—and at ten times the speed (Exhibit E2).but wait, where did they get that GDP data from?
They actually cite Angus Maddison's Monitoring the World Economy 1820–1992 which doesn't sound like something that goes to AD 1. It looks like Maddison also published The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective (currently only a limited preview on archive.org) in 2001, which this reproduces Appendix B of - which seems like probably their source:World GDP, 20 Countries and Regional Totals, 1-2001 AD
I'm not sure how Geary–Khamis dollars ("a hypothetical unit of currency that has the same purchasing power parity that the U.S. dollar had in the United States at a given point in time") are supposed to work for time periods prior to the existence of the United States, but i think I've spent enough time on this rabbit hole for now :)
Nope, they very clearly said The EU and not Germany, which is accurate. The EU is behind the US and in front of China in GDP, firm second place.
What's up with .ml users being shit with reading comprehension?
They're obviouslt just spitting vitriol in response what is perceived as a threat to their identity. Which apparently is the notion that someone somewhere might beattempting to live free and joyously while also being reflexive about past mistakes.
The audacity of those darned European! If I'm not happy, then nobody should!