OK, a brief thread that's totally nonpolitical and also is basically about something that confuses me. I've been hanging out with May Cheng, Uwe Reinhardt's widow, and we're talking about the economy of Taiwan — and the numbers look weird 1/
According to standard international comparisons of GDP per capita at purchasing power, Taiwan is rich — much richer than Korea, and a bit above Germany (!!) But on a market value basis, it's well below Korea 2/ 
And Taiwanese wages are far below Korea, just 25 percent of US level. 3/ conference-board.org/ilcprogram/ind…
Fwiw, the walking-around test suggests that Taiwan, while certainly not poor, is less advanced than South Korea (while the same test suggests that Korea is more or less comparable to Japan or W Europe) 4/
So what the heck is going on? The numbers don't seem consistent either with each other or with general appearances. Honestly, I don't even have a hypothesis here. Anyone out there who understands this puzzle? 5/
