A lot of macro economic statistics should be taken with a grain of salt, or more literally: approximations with a measurement error.
PPP GDP is useful to compare, particularly politically because if the cost of goods in a country is lower people are more likely to be healthy / comfortable with less income. I think it is a little dubious when you use PPP to compare th3e size of two economies because 1) you are taking two approximate measurements and multiplying them 2) countries with lower GDP / person typically have higher relative purchasing power.
In "rich country" (high GDP /person) you can charge a lot for a cup of coffee. In "poorer country" you are likely to charge less. Therefore you can say that person in the poorer country is not as badly off as the absolute numbers suggest. However, if "poorer country" got to the same GDP / person purchasing parity might end up being almost the same. Or, countries with lots of poor regions will have a better PPP, but the cost of living in the places where people have high income may have similar costs.
And in general the most valuable purchasing power differences don't happen for the most valuable and traded goods. An equivalent airplane is going to cost as much in India as the USA, on average. At some point the absolute number is also important.
gdp is really bad, countries don't even use the same counting methods.
I think in the Netherlands they started using criminal activity to pad up gdp growth. Also money printing and inflation is a good way to up gdp.
I like energy production and consumption a lot more, modern economies pretty much come down to using energy to either transfer or modify goods, services or data.
Except for when it doesn't. E.g. lightbulbs are now 20x more efficient than in my childhoos. But I certainly don't use >20x more light(bulbs). In fact, I'm quite sure it's 1x.
This is actually my preferred measure too. I was happy to use GDP PPP figures because they tell a similar story to the energy statistics on ourworldindata.org. Asia miles ahead, China the most dominant, then the US and then EU. India looking to overtake the EU fairly rapidly if they follow China's footsteps.
Of course the per-capita numbers favour the US still. But by absolute figures, the crown goes to Asia. And per capita the Europeans can realistically be said to be behind China for policy making purposes, the trends are clear.
PPP GDP is useful to compare, particularly politically because if the cost of goods in a country is lower people are more likely to be healthy / comfortable with less income. I think it is a little dubious when you use PPP to compare th3e size of two economies because 1) you are taking two approximate measurements and multiplying them 2) countries with lower GDP / person typically have higher relative purchasing power.
In "rich country" (high GDP /person) you can charge a lot for a cup of coffee. In "poorer country" you are likely to charge less. Therefore you can say that person in the poorer country is not as badly off as the absolute numbers suggest. However, if "poorer country" got to the same GDP / person purchasing parity might end up being almost the same. Or, countries with lots of poor regions will have a better PPP, but the cost of living in the places where people have high income may have similar costs.
And in general the most valuable purchasing power differences don't happen for the most valuable and traded goods. An equivalent airplane is going to cost as much in India as the USA, on average. At some point the absolute number is also important.