Comment by Anon84
17 years ago
8. Mark Zuckerman buys Portugal (worldnews.com)
51 points by larryz 14 hours ago | 16 comments
NO WAY! Portugal has been for sale for centuries without any takers. I can't believe that will change in a mere 10 years!
(FYI, I am portuguese)
Recently I compared Portugal's GDP with the revenue of a couple of companies. A workforce of 5.52 million from a population of 10.71 million produces around $244.64 billion; Microsoft, Apple and Google combined employ around 148 thousand people and have $112.71 billion revenue.
So the point is perhaps that Facebook will make Zuckerberg (where does Zuckerman come from?) wealthy enough to be able to afford a developed yet relatively poor country, some time in the future.
That the example happened to pick Portugal is a funny coincidence (I'm portuguese too). For those who don't know, mocking the country's politics and economy is the all-time favourite national sport here.
(BTW: the source for the numbers was Wikipedia)
You can't really compare the output of a tech company with that of a country. For instance, according to your example:
That boils down to about 750k per employee, much, much higher than the GDP per capita of any country in the world. Even the US, with a labour force of 155 Million and a GDP of 14.441 Trillion, or about 93k per worker (or 44k per capita), still about 8x (17x) less than the MAG trio.
Sounds about right.
you're obviously also fairly unaware of the history of your own country - both when it comes to politics and economics. May the new year be an opportunity for you to man up.