alt Hacker NewsThat all sounds reasonable. My concern was with your quote
> GDP/capita aligns very closely with material standard of living for the median person
GDP per capita is an average. This means it does not align with the _median_ person, but with the average. I believe this is factual and undeniable. No doubt it is interesting too to try to find other metrics for different usages as well.
> For purposes of comparing countries to each other and the same country over time, it’s not 30% off
You said the ratio for the same country between gdp mediand and average is 1.30. That means it is 30% off. Again, we can keep moving the goalposts and I could agree, but for the quoted statements i believe the above is true.
> GDP per capita is an average. This means it does not align with the _median_ person, but with the average. I believe this is factual and undeniable.
That’s why I used the word “align” instead of the word “is.” If the ratio of mean to median is 1.3, if the mean doubles, the median also will double—the movement of the two values will be “aligned” even if one is offset from the other.
That means when you’re talking about the economic growth of a country, Poland in this case, the mean is a reasonable proxy for the median unless there has been a massive change in the ratio of the median to the mean.