Or Perhaps...: G8 Countries & Most Populated Countries

2009-08-30

G8 Countries & Most Populated Countries

G8 and EU countries

Here are some basic facts and figures about the G8 and G20 to help demystify the nature and global location of these "economic clubs" -- i.e., imperialist networks -- established by and for elites in order to negotiate the expansion of capitalist greed at the expense of the working masses and Earth's fragile ecosystem.

G8 Countries
(from largest economy to smallest [i] with populations in parentheses)

The Group of Eight (started in 1975 as G6) most advanced industrialized nations includes [ii, iii]:

[1] United States (307.2M)
[3] Japan (127.1M)
[5] Germany (82.3M)
[6] United Kingdom (61.1M)
[7] Russia (140M) - limited participation from 1991 as USSR, became full member in 1998
[8] France (64.1M)
[10] Italy (58.1M)
[13] Canada (33.5M) - joined in 1976 resulting in the creation of the G7

POPULATION TOTAL: 873.4M (12.9% of the world) [iv]

Top 8 Most Populated Countries
(from most to least)

China (1338.6M) [i, v]
India (1166.1M) [i, v]
United States (307.2M) [v, vi]
Indonesia (240.3M) [v]
Brazil (198.7M) [i, v]
Pakistan (176.2M)
Bangladesh (156.1M)
Nigeria (149.2M)

POPULATION TOTAL: 3732.4M (3.7B; 55% of the world, 50.4% without the US) [iv]

NOTES

[i] Economy size according to GDP at purchasing power parity.

[ii] The European Union (EU; economy = largest in the world, population = 491.6M) is represented within the G8, but not as a fully participating member. The EU is also a member of the G20.

[iii] Large economy countries not part of the G8 include:
[2] China [iv], [4] India [iv], [9] Brazil [iv], [11] Mexico (111.2M), [12] Spain (40.5M)

[iv] World total = 6790.1M (6.8B).

[v] Member of the G20 (created in 1999). The other G20 members are: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, and Turkey. The 20th member is the European Union.

[vi] The US is the only G8 country in the Top 8 Most Populated Countries.

SOURCES

CIA World Factbook (accessed Aug. 30/09)
URL: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

UofT G8 Information Centre (accessed Aug. 30/09)
URL: http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/what_is_g8.html

UofT G20 Information Centre (accessed Aug. 30/09)
URL: http://www.g20.utoronto.ca/g20whatisit.html

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I am often described as "left-wing," "socialist," "Marxist," and the like. (Indeed, I often also describe myself using these terms.) However, such loaded terms are seldom clarifying because they are politically charged and historically contingent, and therefore mean different things to different people.

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I hold humanist values and I am committed to working towards a socially just and environmentally sustainable world. In general, I believe that the material basis of human life is paramount to understanding human behaviour and working towards social betterment.

Additionally, I believe that any conception of democracy must include a significant and meaningful role for all people to participate in decision-making that affects the organization of their society, and especially its economic organization.

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"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world."

—Jack Layton (1950-2011)

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—Barbara Smith

‎"If a man has an apartment stacked to the ceiling with newspapers we call him crazy. If a woman has a trailer house full of cats we call her nuts. But when people pathologically hoard so much cash that they impoverish the entire nation, we put them on the cover of Fortune magazine and pretend that they are role models."

—B. Lester (unconfirmed)

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"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy — ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness — that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what — at last — I have found.

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Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

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