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How the World's Richest Country Lost 90% of its GDP
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- Published on Dec 23, 2022 veröffentlicht
- In the 1980s Nauru was the richest country in the world on a per capita basis. Nauru's wealth can be entirely attributed to its deposits of Phosphate, a substance used in fertilizers. However, by the early 2000s they had completely run out of Phosphate the country's GDP declined by more than 90%.
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Wait, so Australia is sending the people they find undesirable across the seas to essentially a penal island? I wonder where they got that idea from.
It's kind of funny, though 😄
@The Gorntell me how many afghans can come into Australia legally every year and by which system?
Australians invaded and killed many Afghans in Afghanistan and now they are sending them to concentration camps. They WILL be held accountable!!! One day.
*cough* Great Britain*Cough*
@Be Low Below At its worst.
Is there such a thing as a country being too small to be self-sustaining? I know places like the Vatican and Monaco survive because they've found ways to bring in a constant stream of foreign money, but at some point of smallness it must become impossible for a country to function by itself.
@SeanDesmond "because prejudicial America would not want a small island as such having a higher GDP then" - If a country set out to create a higher GDP than America there is not much America can do about it
Businesses can manage
So tiny nations can also manage as say even 10 people that’s enough to have some form of leadership and civilisation even if it’s just a couple of huts
@SirVantaNite actually its been shown that as society gets smaller their ability to perform certain tasks is greatly diminished. After the Romans they lost how to make concrete.
Why would it become impossible to function? Smaller population simply means smaller scale. If humanity got wiped and only like 10 thousand people remained, they'd still have a functional society. Just greatly diminished.
@badiart Singapore may be small but it has a population of 5.5 million. Its a central hub for shipping distribution. Its also big in finance, R&D and IT. Nauru has none of those important infrastructures.
As an Australian I remember that Nauru owned most of the prime realestate in the City of Melbourne.
It was a very sad day when we learned about what happened to them.
The country was forced to sell this prime realestate during the worst recession and they lost on the sale of the property.
if only their one economist wasn't always choosing to stay at home drinking caviar & racing sportscars this coud have all been avoided
@Economics Explained 03:50 In case of natural resources it needs the natural resources so thats factor 4!
05:00 GPD per capital doesnt measure how rich people are!
@TristanExists I would describe Australia as Socialist Democracy because most of our political History is just that.
@Truwu watch the honest government ads, and you'll see you were actually kinda correct in the fact their kinda authoritarian
@Truwu They the country went Bankrupt it was a sad state of affairs and for that reason they needed to sell their assets in Australia to survive.
Nauru House was the tallest building in Melbourne for a very long time.
It is a hexagonal building, the new owners didn’t know that it was poorly constructed and they were forced to close the building and spend a fortune on repairs. The building was extended late nineties into early two thousand additional six floors were added.
Anyone else find it a bit frustrating that they deemed it too expensive to make any efforts to fix the farm land while also importing sports cars for everyone and allowing folks to just retire whenever. Seems like one of those situations where people were comfortable with their life style and not that it was actually too expensive to prevent an inevitable problem.
What farm land? It's tiny! Land mass is only 8 square miles
Wpuld be interesting just how much of OZ's often nutrient sparse farmland was able to support agriculture thanks to phosphates from Nairuu
- any Ozzies in here who were about in 60's/70's?
(those who emigrated from UK were called '£10 tourists' -now they won't let us Brits in for >6months, lol)
@Mzz Mz Europeans weren't driving sports cars around a tiny island and quitting their jobs to live on phosphate payments
Europeans
As President Franklin Roosevelt once stated, “A nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself."
@Andrew Ayers thank you
@Jamiel De Abrew Apart from phosphate there is very little soil, most of the surface is crushed coral or phosphate.....there isnt any area you would regard as truly arable to create a farming area. Traditionally food came from trees growing around the fringe of the island near the beach (coconuts, paw paw although there was some limited growth of breadfruit in the upper inner island at Buada Lagoon) Wandering pigs, chicken and local fishing comprised the rest of the diet. At least it was like that when I first visited in the late 1960's and I doubt its got any better in that regard
@A White Guy No historical leader is perfect, and we should hold them accountable to the standards of their day instead of modern morals, but FDR definitely did some awful things. The Japanese internment comes to mind, particularly the racist undertones if not intentions of the Roosevelt administration during the supreme court cases Andrew
Nauru is also interesting because it raises the question of can a country be too small? I doubt there's much you can diversify the economy with when you're on a tiny island with only 10, 000 people, and large portions are uninhabitable.
I think the remoteness is more of an issue than the size. It makes import and export just too expensive. If it was just a country on a continent it might just keep going
Moral: If you want to start a country, make sure to diversify your country's economy
Choose selfless competant politicians irrespcetive whether they are communists, socialists or democrats.
Are we just ignoring the colonisation then?
@Art Manthe fishing could still employ most of the population
@Larry Cand I don’t think anything could make the bad guys happier
Moral: Colonisation bad.
The Nauru Tower in Honolulu is considered one of the most luxurious condos in Hawaii. It was funded by Nauru phosphate wealth. If still owned by the Nauru Government it should be bringing in a fair amount of revenue. There's also Nauru House in Melbourne. In early 2019, the then under-construction development was purchased by Dexus for a reported $1.4 billion. Not sure if that went to the Nauru Government.
Minute 10:00, he mentions it
I think it would be useful to point out the parallels between the reliance on the resource wealth of Nauru and that of Australia.
@RiverRaven As I said in reply to Edward, I only claim there are 'parallels' between Australia and Nauru; I did not think these two economies are the same.
Also, I assume it's a fairly uncontroversial opinion that no country should be overly reliant on one sector to derive its economic growth.
Australia has land and connections to leverage in expanding new industries. Nauru doesn't. Solar and tidal power generation alone will be growth sectors .
Australia was also a big enough nation to steal wealth and resources from other like Nauru and not be punished.
@Edward Evans That is why Australia should learn from what happened to Nauru.
I don't think they're still published, but I highly recommend reading Maarten J. Troost, he spent a number of years in the Pacific and lived with the locals on Vanuatu and I can't remember where else. The reliance on outside help is incredible, they have issues with obesity and alcoholism and gambling in some nations. They can't grow anything that would sustain the local population because some parts have been transformed into resorts and tourist attractions for wealthy Westerners. They have issues with plastic and cans polluting some bays and creeks, and the remoteness of some of the smallest inhabited islands makes it hard to get access to help and healthcare during hurricanes/typhoons. Oh hi! Let me colonise your island, strip natural resources, give it back to you when we done, oh and here's your membership to capitalism and now you're technically poor. YOU NEED ME.
It seems you don't know the difference between capitalism and imperialism.
This is actually a better lesson in how GDP per capita isn’t the best measuring stick for wealth when talking about a nation with one of the smallest populations and areas on Earth which should be obvious. It’s a great tool when looking at complex economies with tens to hundreds of millions of people…but when looking any 10,000 People stuck in a way of living forced on them by dead assholes.
What is better?
@Bean Z timor leste is another nauru in the making. same resource curse, same corruption even the same australian-managed sovereign wealth fund 😅 papua new guinea is also another australian vassal state but this one is huge so it will take a while.
They guy who invented gdp measure said it should not be mused to measure progress adb wealth, but here we are.
@Bean Z
Nope, that's wrong.
It's also an absurd statement that all nations, even the powerful ones, have a year one
This is great as an analysis and also because it shows the absurdity of the scoring systems in use by economists and politicians, whatever they are. Many comments reflect this.
The the score makes Nauru look like better than Argentina.
Argentina though in a terrible state is realistically only hard reforms and 5-10 years away from being fine.
This is like a real life version of Tropico 6. There's actually a scenario where you turn your country into a prison colony as a way to make money. Who knows, maybe this country is where the developers got the idea from?
Don't Read My Profile Photo Ok
@Paulo Souza
There's a lot of countries that gave Tropico ideas. The racist anarchy and gang-state of Haïti, the Dominican republic under Trujillo, the money laundering paradise of Tobago, some others as well....
No, the country they got the idea is Cuba.
That mission takes place in the World Wars era. So it was probably based on something else
Love that game, one time i relied a bit too much on agriculture for food and export and when s drought happened i went $530.000 in debt
I was wondering why Brazil was so low, but I think there is an error in the average for Brazil.
Brazil = (9+5+3+3+6)/5 = 26/5 = 5.2
Checking, Nauru = (1+5+3+9+2)/5 = 20/5 = 4.0
So yeah, Brazil, not quite as bad as Nauru, phew!
@Nishant gouging*
@Chak Lee Agreed, but it logically does
@Orion Tails Absolutely it's fair to prevent price gauging and scamming customers.
@Nishant ah, yes. Regulating prices are definitely fair in a capitalist society.
Nauru 🇳🇷 has the unbeatable world record, when it comes to crashing your own economy in less than 20 years.
Did you conveniently forget the previous centuries of German and Australian colonialism and exploitation before Nauru became independent?
@ironcito True but their situation in the 1990's until about 2008 was very good compared to now.
@SunriseLAW Argentina didn't do it quickly. There have been temporary ups and downs, sometimes seemingly crashing overnight, but the real decline has been going on for almost a century. Headline-grabbing crashes, like currency devaluations and such, are bad but can be overcome rather quickly if the foundations are good. Here In Argentina, we've been gradually and steadily dismantling the foundations. There are collapses every now and then, but those are not the real problem, they're consequences.
@Jason Hall It was already on the GPD listed next to this country
Very interesting video, but a shame you didnt show any actual footage from Nauru. You show the open cut mines, but the moonscape of Nauru is very different, with the most of the island covered by massive pinnacles. I was in Nauru a few years ago and they talked about the good old days of when they could just go into the bank and take thousands of dollars out of the bank and nobody cared when the wind blew a few hundred away. They also said the police commissioner's car was a Maserati. Very interesting country to visit, their policies of land ownership massively complicate things. When people disagreed with the president they set fire to his house and pushed his car into his pool.
I worked as an advisor to Nauru. This video has missed out a lot of things, especially the miss- advice by a series of economic cowboys (some of who should have known better and others who were just criminals). It also misses the cultural challenges. I was once chased by a man in his underpants, waving a machete. Apparently I had “got too close to his garden”. Why? The people don’t trust banks and bury money in jars in the garden. This is the answer to one of the mysteries - where did all of the money in the island go after the banks closed? It was taken and buried.
You also missed the fact that when it failed the bank left its vault open and everyone stole the money.
There is still a fortune in phosphate left on the island, and it is still mined an exported.
it is sad to see that rich countries turn poor. it takes a mindset to build wealth. Countries can be doomed to bad financial skills, like individuals. On top of that, there is always greed from politicians, standing in the way.
@Zero X Failed artist
Isn’t UUF some sort of mixed martial arts thing?
UUF
Pity the footage and illustrations have mostly nothing to do with Nauru. I went there many times, during their low days. I helped them manage themselves their ccTLD, may be at the time one of their biggest source of revenue, and that was not much. So many stories. Once they had to find me a room in the hotel because it was full of personnel for the detention camps…
@Repent and believe in Jesus Christ GTFO
He calls the country "barely bigger than Central Park," a bit manipulative considering its over 6 times larger than Central Park, and "park" makes people think of tiny when Central Park is massive. You could also call Nauru over 10 times bigger than Monaco or 50 times bigger than Vatican or call its length 4 times that of the Golden Gate Bridge's main span, but not sure that fits this guy's narrative.
@Pir ShahYou included China and Africa as well in your brown fantasy 😂 75%? 🤣 I thought it was 99% 🤡
"Increased wealth and poor food choices"
Interestingly most developed countries have the opposite problem, where most people in the middle or poorer income brackets tend to eat cheap, unhealthy food such as from fast food restaurants.
@DiePie that does not exist what are you talking about most of the poorest towns have the most ready access to food its grown there
Yea and they're dumb because fast food is very expensive and junk food is very expensive compared to healthy foods like vegetables
@Jane Justin raw eggs beans and rice will always be cheaper than 100% beef mcdonalds burger that somebody else has to cook for you to claim otherwise is just making excuses because people are to lazy to cook and mcdonalds taste way better
If these people were in the poor income, thus poor food bracket, thus unhealthy bracket, how come they were considered the strongest people in the world per capita by the British media reporting on the power-lifting competition in Britain in as recent as 2019 ?
Nauru has to import 90% of their food due to the exhaustion of phosphorus in the top soil. The soil in the past was described as one of the richest and offered subsistence farming. Most of the food imported today is processed as said in the video because of cheapness, but has increased obesity rates to more than 90 percent for both genders.
@Andrew Ayers Andrew are you a Nauruan and do you live on the Island ? Black top soil is a layer of rich soil found around most of the Island not just topside.. There is no natural crushed coral anywhere on Nauru except where it was laid down by people who wanted crushed soil covering the black soil around their dwellings. Crushed soil is just that it is crushed soil, crushed by heavy machinery.
@Leonard Halstead the rich black soil is a very minor area on the island known as topside, whereas the fringe where everyone lives, is mostly crushed coral
Yes Nauru imports most of its commodities, maybe 90 percent is correct, The top soil is not phosphate it is a very rich black soil which is very rich in properties for farming. Phosphate is under this top soil and it can be dug up to sometimes more than 50 ft deep The Phosphate itself is not good for growing anything. It only gains its amazing plant growing properties when processed and chemically mixed with other elements and it becomes super phosphate.
While processed food is certainly a huge health problem, obesity itself can be easily helped by an ancient technique called "eating less".
Wow. Worst economic drop in history and an economy wholly dependent on Australia using it as a penal colony, and yet Nauru somehow *still* manages to be better than Argentina. XD
I laughed when I saw the scoreboard at the very end
@Michelle when Messi himself gets their wrath for a decade you know they wouldn't treat random poor brown people in neighboring countries any better lol
Except in football.
@J O if anything the reason why the world cup matters so much is the fact that it's the last glimmer of hope for Argentinians to at least have pride in their country. They don't forget the triple digit inflation or the continued decline of their economy, but a single relief in the sea of problems grant them the will to go on even if just a little bit more.
Great lessons for us to learn how to take care of our environment. Very sad for the people that live there.
Interesting video! I have not known that Nauru was the richest country 50 years ago because of phosphate. But the ranking at the end makes no sense. Either you want compare economies by size or by strength. In the first case you can give points for GDP, in the second case only for GDP per capita. And to praise Nauru for 7% growth, if this is based on refugee camp financed by Australia, is also mindless.
Zee heeppopotamoose, he is not born saying, "Cool beans. I am a heeppo." No way, Joesay. So he try to paint zee stripe on him to be like zee zebra, but he fool no one. Then he try to put zee spot on zee skin to be like the leopard, but everyboody know he is a heeppo. So, at certain point, he look himself in zee mirror and he just say, "Hey. I am a heeppopotamoose and zere is nothing I can do about it." As soon as he accepts zis, he live life happy. Happy as a heeppo. You understand zis
The phosphate mined during the German colonial days all the way to the end of WWII was used for both fertilizer and explosives. The loss of Nauru was one of the major resource losses that hurt the German war effort in WWI.
The phosphate was never mined by the Germans even though they would have wanted to and that their intentions was to mine it. Unfortunately for the Germans they bombed (Ship Canon fired) the cantilever which was used to convey the phosphate to ships. The Japanese also intended to mine the phosphate but were never able to because of the constant bombing of the island by American bombers.
Would you attempt a top 10 worst economies to round out the bottom of the list? A lot of struggling economies or low GDP countries might not hit the news often so it's a little depressing to see Argentina. Maybe add something like pre-industrial Europe since economies do change and it'd be helpful to have reference points based on specific time periods.
So what you're saying is if Scotland was to become independent they should put some refugee detention centres on an island or two and undercut Nauru to avoid the trap of resource curse?
@The Gorn in the middle of the north sea. if i was a prisoner there, i would ask for transfer to nauru.
I volunteer as guard, I love the Scottish Isles!
@The Gorn prison ok, but haggis !! This is human rights abuse
I think living in Scotland would be deterence enough.
I've heard about this island before, but I appreciate the emphasis you put on colonial exploitation. I hadn't realized what a *short* time these people got to profit from their own resources before it ran out.
@雷 It was, 66% was depleted. 1/3rd mined out. Next 1/3rd locked into "mate" rate contracts that paid Nauru poorly, and only the most expensive stuff left to mine for Nauru's own profit. Nauru did have investments but they had mixed results, and investments aren't guarantees.
@Monang Agustian It wasn't almost depleted when it got independence. Yes, compared to the gulf states it didn't last long but it still lasted awhile. And Nauru could have made proper investments into a sovereign wealth fund to stay rich.
@Kevin - Colonization is a kind of parenthood. We have a responsibility to those colonised until independence is given. Then it is just friendship, but then we are not our brother's keeper. We then can just give advice. If the advice is not taken up, it is not our problem. But kindly Australia gave them an income flow in their greatest need - bravo Australia.
@Kevin - Nothing you have said, Kevin (May I call you Kevin?) has contradicted what I said, the moral is don't give people not capable of looking after themselves independence.
You were very lenient. I’ve had the fortune of visiting Nauru. Actually for a holiday (oddly). Both Nauru and Niue. It has very good scuba diving. There is a way out other than detention centres. Eco tourism. Teach the consequences of unregulated development coupled with a beautiful marine environment. There are areas where a resort could be built.
Wonder if they could have developed the island into a luxury seaside destination when they were rich
@DRENS2131 They have a monsoon season, typhoons are rare to non existent, where did you get the idea they suffer from typhoons?
Not really because it was already destroyed by mining.
@DRENS2131 Seasonal Typhoons and Hurricanes don't stop other small Islands that depend on Tourism. Occasional bad weather is not the issue here. At this point they simply don't have the resources to become a resort destination, plus most of the Island has been mined and desolate.
@I Eat Trolls For Breakfast For a native english speaker your post is remarkably incoherent.
Starting early is the best way of getting ahead to build wealth, investing remains a priority. The stock market has plenty of opportunities to earn a decent payouts, with the right skills and proper understanding of how the market works.
Her successful stories are everywhere
Investment is that tiny line that separates the rich from the poor.
Ever since I lost my job with the ministry, I have been surviving through my investment with her, I am so glad I invested when I did. I’m earning $25k weekly with her
She has changed my financial status for the best. All thanks to my aunty who introduced me to him
My man is doing the diversification of content into lighter and more specific niche topics. Very few get it right, there's a bright future ahead!
The really sad thing is they probably could have just invested the money into the S&P 500 and all live really nice lives without having to work for the next several generations.
@Jeff C 1/3rd of the resources were gone by independence, and another 1/3rd were locked into extremely low cost contracts. Norway would be broke too, if Danes took 66% of Norwegian oil.
@Michael Albis The value of the Nauru Phosphate Royalties Trust (NPRT) was $1.3 billion in 1990. It's standard retirement advice that you can safely take out 4% of your portfolio every year. If the 4% is distributed evenly among Nauru's 11,000 citizens, that's $4700 per person per year in 1990 dollars, or $10,800/person/year in 2022 dollars. Nauru's current GDP per capita is $12,200/person/year. So Jeff C is right.
Someone always have to work. The fact that they did not understand that is key to the decline.
@OhNotThat well u cant call it robbery if it was consensual.
Nauru made the same mistake that lots of people with sudden wealth do. They become prime targets for shysters and con men, more than eager to part "a fool from his money" with sweet whispers of nothing. The financial industry got them to hand over all their earned income and wealth (with commissions on top) for bad investments nobody else would buy into (cause they knew better) and trusted their financial advisors in giving them good faith advice when in reality they were taking them for everything they got. Selling of prime real estate in the middle of downtown melbourne for a loss. They were robbed by Australia and New York City.
My father worked here for two years, he was sent by the UN. He was an agriculturist and taught people how to grow crops on hostile environments. People there were very lazy, not even interested in growing crops or practice sustainable fishing. His project never took off, but its not his loss, its the people that failed him.
@Jose Luigi Piccio Nauru does not import phosphate, it only export phosphate.
@GTC2 The lagoon isnt where they fish and never has been - they fish the ocean
@Leonard Halstead Many years ago I went out on one of the outriggers, you are very close to water level. Flying fish were caught by light and net at the front of the boat. I managed to catch two yellow tail tuna (which was extremely lucky given the sharks trying to take them off the line when I caught them). I agree, Nauruans are skilled fishermen. We left by early light and it was a real adventure taking it out into the middle of the pacific at full ocean depth. Squalls of seabirds were the ultimate clue as to where the fish were. It was a trip I will never forget.
Didn't even mention how phosphate mining(which made them rich) also destroyed their environment making less than 20% of the land unsuitable for agriculture. Which is also ironic since phosphate is needed in fertilizers which they now import.
big fan of the channel, could you do a video on unionization and it’s impacts on the economy? such as the risk posed by worker strikes and the effects of the influx of money in the hands of more people. are there more efficient ways to fight inequality?
@joshua saidian
Well, it doesn't help that a lot of anti-union voices can be pretty US-conservative style and quite unreasonable.
It's easy to get a sort of guilt-by-association where everyone who says something is presumed to be a raving mad libertarian rich kid in the US.
And if you look at some things in the context of the US, you have Amazon forcing people to work in tropical temperatures (over 35 degrees celsius) and a government that is not allowed to step in and stop it.
Within that context a union has a use. And I wouldn't want to pretend all unions across the whole world are the Dutch and French style criminal syndicates run by boomers.
Heck, until fairly recently I was a member of the union of military officers (and ex-officers).
Then again, last labour dispute we had, they.....sat down and talked about it like normal people. And the MOD saw the point and agreed with them.
@Fred Puntdroad thanks for the reply i appreciate it, i tried to explain this to my AP us history class when we had a debate on unionization and everyone thought i was crazy including my teacher, seems like no one understands that they are better ways to fight inequality then creating divide and unnecessary economic instability and supply chain issues. your views remind me of the Gospel of Wealth by carnegie
In the Netherlands the unions are dominated by the boomers. Up to 93% of union members are retired. The result is a very perverse sense of priorities where the unions are fighting against the interests of the workers, and for the interests of the boomers. They'll easily sacrifice a wage increase to prevent a current-pension decrease, even though that's bad for the workers.
They fought raising the pension age tooth and nail, while keeping that at 65 and earlier for pre-pensions is very harmful to the economy and the interests of the workers.
Union activity is definately harmful for the macro economy. Look at France, no company goes there if they can afford it, because hyper-militant unions dominated by boomers strike basically every week and even use violence. Their pension age is still 49 years in some cases and France is going utterly bankrupt as a result.
A much better way is through the proces of democracy. That's how we went from the Industrial Revolution levels of poverty in the early 1800's to the effective social-democracies we've got in most of Europe. All of that is due to the rise of liberalism in politics 1830 and onwards, where extreme inequality and poverty were seen as inherently bad things.
These movements were also powered by the same rich upper class that had previously ruthlessly exploited others, so it became a society-wide movement that all wanted the same regardless of background.
This liberalism is a much better model than the idiotic idea of socialism and their deeply antagonistic 'class war' where succesful and unsuccesful people fight and murder eachother until one side wins, opresses the other and apropriates everything the other had.
People prefer to work together happily over being brutally opressed, who knew? 😆
I hope you continue to cover more small economies
I live in Hawaii and we have a tower called Nauru Towers. Not sure if the nation once owned it but its a pretty decent tower in a good neighborhood in Honolulu.
A very interesting look at Nauru. I remember when Nauru used to own the Southern Cross Hotel in Melbourne, one of the most exclusive hotels in Melbourne at the time. Even the Beatles stayed there.
The only thing that marred it was the glossing over of the Tampa affair. The MV Tampa picked up the refugees who had left from Indonesia to Australia. When the MV Tampa picked them up, Indonesia had asked for them to be dropped at Merak ferry port. The refugees refused to go there and told the captain to go to Christmas Island instead and threatened to jump overboard or riot if he didn't. Technically, this is a hijacking. An Australian Navy boat actually delivered them to Nauru.
"and threatened to jump overboard"
We Europeans suffer from the same lack of a "This doesn't sound like a problem. Illegals, by all means carry out your threat" mentality in response to that sort of stuff. 😆
Can you do an African nation next (ideally one of the west African countries). Ghana for instance has seen an influx of international economic activities and I would love to see your view on Ghana’s economy.
Must have been tense for Argentinian viewers watching while EE was announcing Nauru’s ratings, to see if somebody would rank below them. Perhaps they’ll request EE to put North Korea or Afghanistan on the leaderboard?
Argentina was the richest country on Earth, when measured on GDP per capita, in 1900. Or in the top 10, if measured in absolute numbers. And yes, almost a century of populism (mostly left wing gov'ts, but the right wing military dictators weren't much better stewards of the economy) destroyed all that wealth
I think Argentina was quite rich once, at least top 10 GDP per capita then something went wrong. Populist politicians probably. Right or left I did not fully understand, probably doesn't matter once on decline corruption will make sure it continues down.
I imagine Nauru is blessed with a very large Exclusive economic zone around their island. Surely there is fishing, aquaculture and oil out there and I am guessing they have the port for exporting their excess production
Yes Nauru has a 200 mile EEZ which is raking in revenue from the US. Japan and other major fishing countries. This could become Nauru's biggest revenue when the refugee intake comes to a complete halt. Remember that Nauru is also getting economic aid from Australia and Taiwan. Australians are bickering about this but they don't realise that Australia exploited Nauru's phosphate for more than a hundred years and never paid the correct royalties to Nauru claiming that there wasn't a world price for phosphate when there was. This was only discovered when Nauru gained it's independences and threatened to take Australia to the International Court if they did not compensate for the damage they did to Nauru, but that's another story. Notice that Australia used to pay Nauru 1/2 a penny per ton for the phosphate. You can only imagine their profits for selling the phosphate on the world market. As I write this Nauru with the financial aid from the ADB has 70 percent built a wharf that can berth large cargo ships.
Just out of curiosity does Nauru not have any fishermen? Surely being an island nation means they can feed its population with seafood, which can be a healthy option. So what is wrong with its fishing industry (assuming they have one at all)?
Nauruans are some of the best fishermen in the Pacific. They still are . A Pacific fishing competition was held in mid 2000s between some Pacific Islands and Nauruan fishermen came out on top. Today Fish is 85 percent of Nauruan's staple diet.
@ronnel acido oh they did try, just that the execution went bad
Local people spear fish. I had a roommate from Nauru during my semester abroad in New Zealand and he was telling me about it.
Too fat for the boats at this stage, they are doomed...Spam, it's what's for dinner, and breakfast errr and lunch!
Commercial fishing is extremely physically strenuous. If a bunch of fat pacific islanders tried it, they’d probably have heart attacks.
I am gonna share this to my native fellows to let them learn how such a method could enable a temporary enrichment but a permanent scar to their place.
Just like what's happening in Sibuyan Island. the illegal minings for natural resources have been hectic there, transferring soil to another country(China) for testing a nickel deposit yet those test consumed 50000 tons(or more)(not sure of this info) of soil already. not really environmental friendly, and yet the government still continues to stay quiet.
Australia using another distant nation as a prison. They grow up so fast
@Aw F haha, give 10 take 50 ✌️😄
@Hotmen _pro_ Thats actually how it went down. Asylum seeker claims used to be processed normally here in a.. It was a prison but the environment wasn't explicitly designed to be a punishment and processing was fairly quick, a few months rather then many years.
Then there came a point where the state wanted the processing centres to act as a deterrent.. The kind of deterrent capable of making people fleeing warzones balk at the prospect. But people got wind of it and even those wary of immigration were starting to became concerned and there were several legal rulings against this and other new practises/lowered standards.
So then the government started paying other sovereign nations a lot of money to build these deterrence prisons and process the claims under their own legal jurisdiction's.
So no more visits from inconvenient journalists or pesky human rights lawyers. And the situation became "out of sight out of mind".
Non disclosure agreements became mandatory in these facilities and the media narrative has been relegated to the hands of people who directly profit from the situation financially and politically.
@Glenn oh I bet, as hypocrite as the Australian government 🤡🤡🤡
@Hotmen _pro_ the hypocrisy of your comments seriously gave me a good laugh. So thanks for that at least
@Glenn the slave argument is so old Its literally catching dust at this point. Portuguese were the first to ban slavery, so what is your point?? 🥱🥱
Great work. So Argentina lower? That would be a good subject for an analysis. Why is Argentina in economic basket case territory? And is the poor state of economics in South America related to "outside factors?"
The Southwest US used to have the greatest yield of cotton per acre than anywhere in the world. Farmers grew pecans, oranges, lettuce, dates. Today, there is no water for agriculture. The southwest may be the next Nauru.
There seems to be a couple of tech manufacturing outposts out there already. If they spin up all that solar and wind, it's all free energy and cheap land for more development for that. Not a bad deal.
@James Taylor helllllooooo u want to buy verrrrry goood pill no risk 100% guaranteee???
Ouch. What a shame.
Bot alert
Wow, an absolute sea of shill-bots in this thread.
Honestly, there are significant parallels to be drawn between collapses like these and people who win big in the lottery only to spend way too much and end up dead broke. It's not steady income, it's a glorified cash injection.
Australia is also suffering from a similar reliance, too. But the Aussies seem aware of it now and are trying to diversify it. However, I think they should be faster or more troubles will come.
Australia suffered hugely from brain drain, if you're an Aussie individual and you want to make something out of yourselves, you will eventually move to US or EU, if you're an Australian business, if you want to make big bucks, you will eventually move your operation aboard to US/EU/China etc.
Can you do a video on the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and what a wellbeing-focused economy would look like today or in the near future, also how it would handle a really weird crisis like the one we're seeing now differently?
A valuable case study. Hope they're able to repair some of the damage to their island and incorporate more tourism and agriculture in the future.
No chance . They mined their soil so much that they exposed the coral underneath which left the land unusable . The people who want to farm would have to import their soil . They only have 30 yrs of phosphate mining left before it’s exhausted .
Thank you for the high quality video it was really good. However, I think that the points on growth should be lower, because smaller countries tend to grow at a higher %.
Hey EE, could you do the fictional economy of Tropico? You could use the game's wiki as a source for its economic information, would love to see it!
That would be a good April fools video.
When are you doing one for Mexico? It would be interesting to see how it ranks on your list.
Hi there 😄 Thank you for watching! *Let's have a conversation, please write me on my official TLEGRAM above* ✍🏻
Phosphate compounds are also very useful in the production of both high and low explosives.
Also fertiliser
I wonder if the Russian military knows about that 🤣
Heard wood is better than C4
Hey EE, I was just wondering if you could explain or make a vid on what would happen if a country all of a sudden paid off it's national debt. Hypothetical Australia could pay off it's 1 Trillion dollars of debt using half of its citizens Superannuation, which apparently grosses 3.3 Trillion.
Obviously folks would be unwilling to part with their super, but surely the 70 billion that would otherwise be spent on the Nat debts interest and more on repayments would cover those out of pocket for their retirements for the next decade or so?
Hi there 😄 Thank you for watching! *Let's have a conversation, please write me on my official TLEGRAM above* ✍️
I applaud the creativity of this video, I don't think I've heard Nauru pronounced as nay-roo before
because Straya
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought this
Interesting! Ty! If one wishes to look at the actual quality of life a country possesses with GDP, should one divide GDP by different matrixes and give it a weighted average? For example, GDP/90% of population less upper 10%;. GDP / bottom 10% less upper 90%, etc etc. This weighted average would eliminate countries who's almost entire wealth is held by 10% of the population. Ty!
@Shankar Sivarajan One thing that a weighted average would do, that politicians would hate, is to point out clearly that a population where the entire wealth is contained by a few men while the rest are in abject poverty and/or very low income. For example of 1000 men are surviving off $100 and one man is a billionaire, GDP looks like everyone in the country are millionaires. A weighted average could weight the bottom 10 men with the same weight as the top 10 this greatly lowering the avg GDP so non politicians and others can see how the population is really doing, and not just the billionaires. This wDGP is a way to show how healthy a country is actually doing, rather than the distribution of wealth amongst a few selfish people who are falsely honored for doing so.
@Shankar Sivarajan If it makes sense any idea will stand on its own merit even if the idea comes from a donkey.
Are you trying to reinvent the Gini coefficient?
Did he just say "What he lacks in size more than makes up for in economic lessons"?
That has to be one of the sickest country burns.
Second only to dedicating a video to a country but completely mispronouncing the country's name.
Since Nauru is a small island encircled with ocean, in my view, fishing can a job for the unemployed masses.
Besides, when they had huge money, they should've built some industry.
This small island can be turned into a port city, also refueling station for ships that passes nearby.
Reminds me of Kraut's video "Why Saudi Arabia is Doomed"
The lessons here being economies based on natural resources are, almost without exception, doomed to fail.
@inyobill They have been getting into exporting Islamic extremism to Western countries for years. The sooner this state and Qatar etc go gown the better
The only Gulf nations whose economies are really diverse by now are Iran and the UAE, with Qatar getting close. All others depend way too much on oil, and will likely implode once it runs out
@Kalo Arepo Solar cannot bring in the same wealth oil can though. It's great for domestic energy consumption, especially in a place where more energy is required at the hottest time periods, but it won't bring the Saudi's to the same export heights as oil.
I'm sure Saudi will go massive solar in the future as the country is largely an immense very hot sand box -solar and perhaps wind would ensure their future
@Ian Dakar exactly. If you want even more nuance I highly recommend the channel.
Can you cover Mongolia next? Getting stuck in a very similar predicament.
Hey would love to hear about Guyana. ExxonMobils newest milking cow. We just got oil rich and I wonder if we have a chance to escape the resource curse
Bhai, you guys will get badly phuked, only way is to go the Norwegian way but corrupt politicians will destroy.
The Adviser Buddha is doing that for free now
The Adviser Bot spammers🤡are everywhere
Norway is the best way
Go the norway way
Who else thinks Economics explained should start talking about companies?
@barbiquearea Really just a few big US states only and thats it though.
Texas and California have country scale economies and semi independent governments.
@MultiLangCoder Haven't they already done that with certain states in the US such as Texas and California?
no
He should also do regions of countries that have quite different economies from the rest of their country.
Nauru is like Gulf countries set to 2x-3x fast forward, complete with widespread obesity and laughable infrastructure (Burj Khalifa relies on septic holding tanks that need to be pumped and trucked to the treatment plant). Only difference is the Gulf Royals will abscond to Europe with their counties’ wealth, if they manage to escape Arab Spring 2.0.
Exactly. Gulf countries are extremely underdeveloped considering they've had wealth for decades. Only the city centers are developed. You can pull it up on google maps. The sidewalks are not paved, the asphalt is not even. But they are worried about competing on a global stage. They have a major issue regarding mismanagement of funds and it will eventually catch up to them. Diversification is not easy to do. Their leadership makes it sound so easy, but most countries cannot diversify due to a variety of factors. On top of that, there is a massive wealth gap. The people in those countries are not rich at all. They are all on government assistance.
Just ignore the fact that until 1968 Nauru was exploited by European colonists (Germany, Australia) and Japan during WW2. When they got Independence, 1/3 of the land already barren of forest and valuable minerals.
Hardly any of these images have anything to do with Nauru. I lived there as a kid for almost two years, and was an amazing experience. They are called Nauruans, not Naurusians, and they have one of the highest rates of diabetes per capita because almost all of the food is imported, as there is no farming or agriculture systems on the island.
This channel has a tendency to post content worth the price we've paid to consume it.
As an argentinian it pains me to see this disaster scoring better than my home country.
Can you do an explainer on Pakistan's economy too? I'm in dire need of a good video to understand things properly. Thanks!
“Nauru: At least we’re not Argentina!”
@QUEEN This is an economics channel so might be kinda unrelated but also ''rampant racism''? Lots of immigrants here and stories about losing job opportunities or the like because of 'color' or 'race' are very rare. Heck most here are mestizos anyways
@QUEEN I doubt it.
@Maximiliano Penadon't forget the pronounced social issues such as racism which is rampant in argentina
Thank you. It would be interesting to watch a video about Baltic states too.
The story of Nauru 🇳🇷, a little 21 km² island-state with about 10000 population.
Colonialism + Greed + Corruption + Ecological plunder + Ignoranca + Waste ...
A mikro example, preview of what we are doing to our planet earth.
Thank you @EconomicsEx 👏
If Earth was sentient it would consider us to be parasites, no doubt about that.
You forgot "Globalization".
'And while phosphorous mining had made the island a lot of money, most of it at this point had been claimed by the nations that held the island as their colony.'
Would love to see you make an explainer for Lebanon's ponzi style money plan that has been in place since the 90s and what led to the current massive collapse
As George Bernard Shaw once pointed out, "If All the Economists Were Laid End to End, They Would Not Reach a Conclusion".
Kept saying NAIRU instead of Nauru….true economist 😂
I almost gave up on this based on the pronunciation of neigh-roo
@Bob Dole The irony of you not using punctuation, while whinging about the rules of language is brilliant. Pot meets the kettle.
For all those making comments about Australian accent, as an Australian, I have to let you know you're wrong. It's got nothing to do with accent, it's a straight up mispronunciation. Nobody else in history has ever pronounced it Neigh-roo. I'm Australian and that hurts my ears. Nauru is commonly in the news here so it's a common word, generally there are two variations: some people say it exactly as it's spelled and others pronounce it more like "Nah-roo". I don't know which of those is more correct.
I don’t know where he’s from in Australia but I’m Australian and I’ve never heard an Australian pronounce it as ‘neigh-roo’ until this video. We say ‘nah-roo’
people getting mad over an australian accent and invalidating the rest of the video's point proves that these people have the highest iq in human history
How do some countries with a finite resource boom, manage to chart a wise course (e.g. Norway), whereas others like Naaru corrupt themselves into oblivion? Obviously both can afford good financial, political, and social advice. Naaru even had good schools. Is it just a random toss of the dice, or is there something about cultural attitudes that can explain the difference?
66% of Nauru's resources were gone by the time they took over.
He explained it in the video.
Norway would be poor too if its old colonizers took 66% of all its oil resources.
@Dumebi Okosa The base industries (agriculture and fishing) of Nauru were destroyed by the colonial masters. Europeans first destroyed the traditional society by selling them firearms, which led to years of civil war before the Europeans agreed among themselves that the German Empire should take over. After that the destructive mining began.
Cultural differences play a huge role.Lot of people blame colonialism too much even though many of the base industries in these countries were built by colonial masters.
Colonisation plays a big part.
As someone who worked there for 2 years as an expat... It's pronounced "Nah-roo" and they are Nauruan, not "Neirusian".
Please do a similar video about Egypt, it's so tragic right now.
It's a sad story.
I hope they find their way. I also hope the offshore detention ends, there has to be a better solution.
Could you please do Jamaica . As the economical changes in the country has been a really up and down story
I live in Jamaica?
Question from a noob. How much did/does Nauru spend on trying to turn itself into a getaway holiday location? It had/has so much beauty so you would have thought that would have come to mind. Other than not being a diverse economy, is having an economy based mainly tourism be a "bad" thing?
I has some great fishing charters.
@hernandayolearyallda they have to close the main road every time a plane lands or takes off so you make a valid point.
@hernandayolearyallda Thanks mate
It’s just not suitable for tourists. It has nice beaches but you can’t swim at most because there’s giant coral pillars everywhere that will cut you open on a very minor touch. It’s hot all year round. Average about 36c during the day and about 30c at night. A lot of the island is barren from the mining. Some effort is being made to reclaim land but not much. It’s covered in rubbish as the locals just toss garbage wherever. It’s expensive to fly there and , at the moment, impossible to get a visa. Anything you could do on Nauru you can do somewhere else cheaper, easier and better.
It is depressing when a small country ends up running a prison island as its current industry. ☹️
Excellent ... I talked to a medical professor who visited and subsequently described the conditions in the concentration camps as "horrible".
They could put one or two spaceports on these damaged barren lands. Their location near the equator kinda) looks pretty advantageous for this and they won't need to deforest for it.
nice video mate but giving nauru's economy the same mark as brazil's economy and giving the Vatican city's economy a better mark than Spain's is kind of outrageous
I enjoy these vids but yea, the scoring is weird.
It would be interesting to do a similar assessment of post Brexit Britain 🤔
Nauru should try to diversify its economy by starting the tourism industry right now as lockdowns are over and ready to release millions of tourists from the northern hemisphere to the south. We know Nauru is almost a prison state but sure there will be room for something else. Of course, investment is needed to bulldoze the terrain next to the coastal areas and clean the ground of pollutants. But still may be attractive for its original beauty. Clean white beaches and warm waters.
@youxkio You are the author can you find the very good and reasonable reasons and write it so we know ?
@Leonard Halstead There must be very good and reasonable reasons.
You can call Nauru a prison state but a recent news report revealed that some of the refugees who were repatriated to the US complained bitterly that they want to go back to Nauru. Now why would these refugees rather be in the prison state Nauru than in the US ? I wonder.
@Neku Yep. Honestly, beside trying to sponsor some fishing ships i can't imagine what they could do out of their land.
even with hotel's this country would not be a major tourist attraction. it is just too remote and thus too expensive for the average person and not prestigious enough for rich customers. if all you want is warm water and beaches there are many many offers in first world countries where you get much more for your money.
You're really cranking them out, well done!
Ok this is weird. Some days ago, a random thought came to my mind thinking about whatever happened to Nauru after the pandemic? And voila! A new video about Nauru. I must be a psychic.
Love your vids! Can you please do a video on the economics of Bolivia?
Hi there 😄 Thank you for watching! *Let's have a conversation, please write me on my official TLEGRAM above* ✍️
To be honest, it's not that bad. The damage done to the environment is tragic, but I think they can still have it back sometime in the future. 12000 per capita GDP is actually still good.
Please make a review of the State of Sabah. Despite producing the most oil, oil palm and timber in Malaysia, it is by far the poorest in the world, with per Capita GDP of us6,000, half of Nauro that has no resources at all.
So, I'm a Naurusian now (and not Nauruan anymore) I guess 🤷♂️. Good vid with straightforward criticism.
@Prashanth B Naruto?
Hey man.. how's the world today like in Nauru?
A preview of the global trajectory...
Especially the minister's take on reality really hits hard
Looks like a great place to start a brick factory. Free bricks for citizen entrepreneurs to build with? Also, a place that might need a soil enrichment facility. Free dirt for farmers? Perhaps rejuvenation could be their next big money maker? Neat place.
EE is always make great video that I enjoy every time. The only thing that lacking mybe is further reading material and reference
Its really a contradiction the global division of labor and the diversification of an economy, people say countries like mine (Argentina) should focus on what it can produce, but also to diversify
Argentina needs to become the banking centre of South America. Having a safe, reliable banking system like Switzerland would allow it to generate financial wealth without relying on natural resources so much.
This is exactly whats happening in Argentina. Exports play a mayor role in our economy and bring in the big bucks, but out goverment continues to punish all exporting companies with absurd taxes and doesnt use that money to help producers produce more (like building better roads, trains, ports, etc) but instead uses it for political campaigns.
How the World's Richest Country Lost 90% of its GDP
Growth: 9/10
Hahaha should be -9
I think one of the biggest things to come to light is that Naaru is not capable of being independent, especially due to the lack of the island being capable of being self sufficient.
Nauru 's phosphate was 70 percent dug out by the colonialists before Nauru became independent. So the damage was 70 percent already done by foreign powers. Nauru's 'richest in GDP per capita' status came after Nauru gained their independence not before, so your analysis is wrong. Nauru lost its wealth through later governments who brought in scrupulous western advisers that gave wrong advice and profited from it. If Nauru never gained independence from the colonial powers who did not pay Nauruans a correct and fair price for their phosphate in the first place and so when the phosphate had exhausted, do you think the Nauruans would be in a better state today ? I don't think so.
Hey Economics explained.. great video.. When are you going to put Nigeria on the Economics explained national leader board?
Fun fact: Nauru in Finnish means laugh, so you could in theory call it the funniest nation on Earth