It's sort of like a company that has 100 units of revenue and 20 units of costs versus a company with 150 units of revenue and 90 units of cost, the one with greater revenue may still have more economic power (e.g. ability to leverage suppliers, etc) despite having lower profit margin.
If you want to measure who has the most resources either to potentially trade with them, or decide if you have the resources to fight them, GDP becomes more useful.
The only thing one can agree from this article is that some countries are expected to grow at a higher rate than others only due to a larger population. I think this only makes sense if everyone is educated and the unemployment rate is low.
and this company isn't able to pay the employees with much compared to company A (read: country is poor even if GDP is high). But, with smart re-investment or debt structure, a country with high GDP low per-capita can rise out of poverty. But company A isn't just gonna sit idly by and let it happen.
By GDP per capita, Liechtenstein and Qatar is number 1 and 2
GDP is proportional to population, so if you have a larger population, your GDP can be proportionately larger. The question is, what's GDP per capita or GDP per capita PPP? China per capita GDP is 1/7th-1/8th of the US, and India per capita GDP is 1/30th of the US, will they make it up in 10 years? China could, if they can keep up their growth and not experience a major recession or depression, which seems unlikely.