There are a lot of interesting and useful statistics on various U.S. Government websites and one of the most interesting sets of statistics is made available by the USDA. It is of GDP for most of the countries of the world going back to 1969. The USDA collects this data because they want to be able to estimate how much U.S.-sourced grain particular countries might be able to afford. This is what you get when you convert that data to a per capita basis and graph up some of the major countries and regions: What is immediately apparent is that the world is divided into two types of countries – those with GDP per capita in the range of $30,000 to $40,000 and those under $10,000. There is nobody in the gap between. And there is nobody moving out of the lower group. One would have thought that there may have been some convergence as the poorer countries copied what was done in the wealthier countries. But there has no copying and no convergence. Things hadn’t changed...(Read Full Article)