this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
1043 points (83.3% liked)

Political Memes

5484 readers
2275 users here now

Welcome to politcal memes!

These are our rules:

Be civilJokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.

No misinformationDon’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.

Posts should be memesRandom pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.

No bots, spam or self-promotionFollow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] CallumWells@lemmy.ml 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

EU is slightly over 448 million people vs 332 million in the USA.
4.233 million km² in EU vs 9.833 million km^2^ in the USA.
91 billion USD equivalent support from EU (including the EU organization and EU members) versus 75 billion USD from the USA.

91/75 = 1.213...
448/332 = 1.349
If you want per capita you get 0.203 (unit not given, they are the same for each comparison) per capita from EU, versus 0.225 per capita from the USA. The numbers based on area will be a lot worse for the USA.
To be clear; yes, the USA has contributed a little more per capita, but less in absolute terms. There's a maximum of 35% difference in the populations between the EU and the USA. That's "very comparable" when it comes to such large populations.

[–] Fenrisulfir@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Then there is a lot of varying census data. When I searched, the site said 780 million. I wonder if some sites still include the UK and others are maybe restricting the definition to the Schengen area.

[–] el_abuelo@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's because some people are using Europe in its proper continental usage, and some people using it really mean the EU. In this thread we're discussing the EU because it's a comparable entity to the US as covered in a previous reply.

FYI the UK is a shade under 70m population the last time I checked - nowhere near enough to add 300m to Europe's population.

[–] Fenrisulfir@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago

Correct but I also know the Schengen area doesn’t include all European countries too. So my guess was that combined with the UK might be the missing 300M

[–] bitwaba@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Any count of Europe's population that is over 700 million is including Russia, which is 140~150 million that shouldn't be included when trying to answer the question about who has contributed more per capita to fighting Russia.

If someone wants to give an explicit list of the countries that should be counted for populations regarding the question of "who has given more to help the war in Ukraine, the US or Europe?", we can get to the bottom of this real quick.

[–] CallumWells@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)
[–] Zibitee@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I mean, he's right in that the population of EU seems to have two very different numbers. If you Google it, the first two results agree on over 700 million and it isn't until the third result that you get 400 millon. Your argument literally goes either way depending on the definition of "Europe".

[–] CallumWells@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago

There's no definition of Europe at all in play here. It's the EU. A specific subset of countries, which is not the same as Europe. So what I wrote only goes one way. I'm not quite sure it's an argument, really. I presented the facts, and said that something with a maximum difference of 35% is very comparable. The first result I got through Google was the numbers I have given, which are also the official numbers from the European Union itself. That should be a lot more correct than other numbers you could find.

If you want to google it, make sure you use "EU population", not "Europe population". Or you can look at that link I gave, which gives data not just for the EU, but a lot of other European countries as well.

[–] el_abuelo@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago

We're talking about EU here. Europe is a continent and so if people are using that in its proper usage it will encompass a lot more people - hence the discrepancy.