[skrebbel]

Yep! A nice example is Equatorial Guinea, which has a GDP per capita comparable to Croatia's, and yet, "the UN says that less than half of the population has access to clean drinking water and that 20% of children die before reaching the age of five" [0]

There's few trickle down effects because the ruling family spends it all on stuff like shopping trips to Paris.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_Guinea

[ThrowAway19233]

Means are one of the more powerful weapons in a statisticians toolbox, in a previous life I often used means to show prove points that weren't actually true, the average person is shockingly unaware of the power of outliers and how easy it is to show almost whatever you want with the right tools.

[hutzlibu]

Thats why the average persons actually do not really trust statistics (anymore).

Negative sideeffect of your precious profession also shows with climate change disbelieve etc.

[moorhosj]

Any evidence of these claims? From my view, people have plenty of trust in statistics, they just make sure the stats reinforce their pre-existing bias first.

[emptyfile]

I just searched for GDP per capita on wikipedia, and as a citizen of Croatia I find it astonishing that Russia's GDP per capita is exactly the same as these two countries! And that's in PPP, in nominal its actually lower!

Even with its vast resource extraction industry which contributes to GDP, their worker productivity is on par with Greece!

[ido]

I was surprised for the opposite reason - I was recently in Croatia and from the outside it seems ("developmentally") indistinguishable from any nearby rich country such as Italy or Germany. We live in Germany and used to live in Austria and the main visible difference was that it seems Croatians don't mind littering their archaeological sites (which is more cultural than economic I guess).

Maybe Russia is as well these days, and my perception of it as a bit of an industrial/economic shit-hole is due to now-outdated western propaganda.