If you care about the country as people, then median is better as you point out. But if you care about the country as country, then total is generally more interesting (to understand, say, military power).
China's a big deal despite not being particularly rich per capita. On the other hand, the leaders in per capita GDP, outliers like Macau and Luxembourg, are not usually countries people are interested in.
As the grandparent post correctly stated, median GDP cannot be computed. In cannot even be defined!
GDP is not income.
Personal GDP is not defined.
OTOH, we can see that curve in a global context, of GDP per capita across countries. It's a boring curve, very power-law ish with slightly odd peak in the 30K-40K region.
As one of many examples.
Or how much oil will gush out of the ground if you drill a hole in the right place.
>labor
I believe you are saying the same thing
There's a whole Disney movie that demonstrates not all holes are created equal.
A useful measure would be GPD per billionaire. Since they amass political power alongside the economic one, they are de facto political leaders.
I've closely compared my own standard of living with someone else in a developing country. And, my country's GDP per capita was over x20 her country's. And, I was surprised to find how closely our material standard of living was: it was pretty much even: (taking into account, number and type of appliances, living space, eating out frequency, quality of food, access to education, water and electricity).
Well I'd say that GDP is much more like revenue than income. You're certainly correct that they are related, as income is typically some percentage of revenue (even negative) however the actual percentage is different for every entity, so it somewhat meaningless.
> But I think that the article's author suffers a fundamental failing of understanding of why people look at GDP per capita. It's not because they're trying to understand the experience of individuals within the country at all -- it's because they're trying to understand how rich the country is, normalized to its size.
Completely agree. Generally there are better metrics if you want to look at the income distribution for a country, e.g. the Gini index.
There isn't a great analogy for it on the individual or corporate level. GDP is a measure on transactions within a system. A person can't meaningfully transact within themselves.
So do a million other measurements. I'm pretty certain you could find some level of correlation with virtually any measurement and income levels. Thus, this is an irrelevant statement.
But I think that the article's author suffers a fundamental failing of understanding of why people look at GDP per capita. It's not because they're trying to understand the experience of individuals within the country at all -- it's because they're trying to understand how rich the country is, normalized to its size.