Quote Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro View Post
By that logic, any and all stats on the financial structure of a country are essentially meaningless since they all differ in their political and fiscal systems, not to mention culturally and geographically.

Which country is poorer than the other? Which produces more than the other? Wheeeee, suddenly we can't tell since "stats don't prove anything". Your own words.

You just buried your own field of science. Congratulations
Your knowledge of statistics and science is worse than Alpha's. Whether country A is richer or poorer than country B is not a theoretical question; it's an empirical one. A theoretical question would be "what causes a country to become richer?" And you would answer that question not by simply comparing the traits of rich countries to the traits of poor ones, but by looking at the effects of every individual trait, while controlling for all the other ones. Seriously, you have absolutely no idea about this area, and I'm not using hyperbole here.