It would, but that's not happening. The rest of the world's professionals are beating our professionals. They mostly play in Europe, not in the NBA, but that doesn't mean they're amatuers by any stretch. The Puerto Rican guard that lit up team USA is the starting point guard for the Utah Jazz. Serbia's sucking without Peja and Vlade. Spain's been riding Pau Gasol. China would be a joke without Yao.Andrew D. Gable said:
I've been using the CIA world factbook at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ . As I said up-thread, it's very important to note the difference between purchasing power parity numbers and strict currency conversions; the latter are pretty much meaningless because of exchange rate fluctuations and because some things are just much cheaper in poor countries.Akrasia said:I know this is a complete thread-jack...... but I'd be curious to know where people are getting these numbers.
According to the Economist, China has $900 GDP per head, Mexico $6,150, Poland $4,570, and South Korea $8,970.
The U.S. has $ 35,000, Canada $22,390, and Australia $19,070. Most EU countries are around Canada's level. Norway, outside the EU, kicks all kind of arse with $ 37,020. (Switzerland also does better than the EU.)
The Economist is the gold standard for this kind of info. I'd be curious to know where this other data is coming from.
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Umbra said:G'day,
As has been said, Aussie's are sports mad. There is also the Australian Institute of Sport, a government funded body. A lot of money goes into training our athletes although few get the sponsorship deals or high paid positions some other country athletes do (the Dream Team
To quote from their website:
)While I think a lot of the Chinese success at the Olympics is manufactured (there's no way China even fields a women's softball, soccer, or hockey team without government intervention, and I suspect there are other sports like that, I just don't know enough about them), China's not that much richer than India. And there are a lot of very poor countries that have had success at a few sports. So I suspect that if there were a few Olympic sports that Indians really loved, they'd win a few medals.talinthas said:
It's probably also worth noting that college athletics is pretty much an American thing, and that in quite a few sports, top-division NCAA athletics tend to be the development programs. Most of the US teams in track, swimming, volleyball, rowing, soccer, basketball, and softball (and a good chunk of the rest of the world's, too) got athletic scholarships (and since most of the top schools are state schools, they're indirectly government-funded).Akrasia said:It is interesting that two radically different strategies -- the U.S. vs. Oz -- both produce such good results.
We Canadians bemoan the fact that we did not follow the Australian example. (But hey, we kick arse in the Olympics THAT MATTER
