[AnIrishDuck]

Growth is trivial to achieve when you are starting from zero. My footnote very much alludes to this. This is incidentally what the US did to powers like Britain a century and a half ago.

I just find it amusing that in this theory of trade China has found a way to do all the work while the US does nothing and takes all the value. Perhaps all that extra money is not as easy to claim as the OP suggests.

Maybe economies are changing and purely physical goods are becoming less valuable...

[motorest]

> Growth is trivial to achieve when you are starting from zero.

China currently reports the second highest GDP in the world.

[AnIrishDuck]

> For decades, China's GDP growth towered over the US's.

It's much easier to 100x $1k than to 10x $1m.

This is not to take away from the achievements of the Chinese economy, which are gargantuan. You just can't linearly extrapolate growth rates.

[oblio]

> It's much easier to 100x $1k than to 10x $1m.

That's kind of goes against the conventional wisdom, which largely feels true in my experience, that "the rich get richer". Countries are a bit different, but China looks poised to avoid the middle income trap up to a point, and even if they don't, their "middle income" is a lot more likely to fall somewhere near the Japanese levels, which would make the Chinese economy massively bigger than the US one, by 2050.

[motorest]

> It's much easier to 100x $1k than to 10x $1m.

China's GDP is the second largest in the world, and is around two thirds of US's. China's economy is growing continuously over 5% whereas the US already discussed facing a recession.

In some metrics, such as PPP GDP, China already towers over the US.

I think you're trying ver hard to diminish the second largest economy of the world at a moment where it's expected to be a few years until it's the single largest.