How "important" is -insert country/region-?

[metroid composite]

I remember seeing a debate on whether, say, California was more important than Spain, which got me interested in how you would measure such stuff.  I was recently linked to "the 2008 global city index" and after a few rants of how they're doing it wrong (Toronto is the 4th best cultural experience in the world, but no other Canadian cities are even mentioned in the top 60???) I figured I should share the various available measures I found on...well mostly wikipedia.

GDP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_GDP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_(nominal)

GDP is "is the total value of all final goods and services produced in a particular economy".  For all that it is purely economic, so it can't tell you, for example, which countries have nukes (for all that the countries the UN allows to have nukes are...every GDP top 8 country from 2008 except for Japan, Germany, and Italy--a.k.a. the countries that lost World War 2.  Funny how that works).

GDP, PPP

This tries to adjust for the fact that the cost of living isn't accurately reflected by most currency exchanges:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

For the most part, I don't find it as helpful as GDP for gauging "my country has a lot of money to throw around."  Where it is helpful is if you're trying to gauge standard of living, in which case you look at GDP-PPP per capita:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

Exports
Imports

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_exports
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_imports

These kinda suck as a measure.  I've had a few people tell me "oh, GDP is a bad measure of economy; you should look at Exports".  There's a huge gaping hole in that strategy, though.  There was one point last year when I looked at an export table, and "Germany" was ahead of "European Union".  It's easy to see how this happened--Germany exports to other EU countries, but since these goods don't leave the EU, this doesn't count as an export for the EU.

I mean, imports/exports mean something, but need to be taken in context (of course they're going to be lower for island countries).

Population

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population

Well, the idealist viewpoint would be that all people are equal.  The reality is that power is not evenly distributed among every person on the earth; for instance, the UK is 22nd in population, yet a member of everything (G8 country, has nukes, is home to the effective European stock exchange).

Area

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_outlying_territories_by_area

Yeah, there isn't even really an idealist viewpoint that every square kilometer is equal.  For example, the United states has a lot of natural resources like oil; China has very few.  Similarly sized countries.

Education/standard of living

Is...not well-measured at all; there's some stuff out there:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index

But I would assume a large margin of error with this.  (Countries have been known to jump several ranks on HDI over very short time periods).

Game Developers

Hey, it's a field most of us are familiar with, that is present in most major countries.  Always better to go with something you can measure fairly well than to go with something you can't.

Gamedevmap is a decent measure of this:
http://www.gamedevmap.com/

Places that have GDC conferences:
San Francisco, USA
Vancouver, Canada
Cologne, Germany
Austin, USA
Shanghai, China

Other notable videogame gatherings:
PAX: Seattle, USA
E3: Los Angeles, USA
Leipzig Gaming Convention: Leipzig, Germany
Tokyo Game Show: Tokyo, Japan
OSL: Seoul, South Korea

Car Manufacturing

This is another major industry that people tend to know a lot about (most people can name an American car, a German car, a Japanese car, etc).  Much like presence in the game industry, it would be silly to take it completely in isolation when judging a country, but it's interesting information, and actually has documented statistics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry#World_motor_vehicle_production

Might also be informative to look at this on a per-company basis to get a better idea of company headquarters (as opposed to which countries house manufacturing plants).  For instance, while a fair few car manufacturing plants are located in Canada, there's no such thing as a "Canadian car".


---

Anyhow, just some metrics that I've found available and played around with.  Might be of interest to other stat nuts here.

[Shale]

GDP, PPP is the sort of standard I've been looking for for a long time. It's absurd to hold up a country's per-capita income in dollars as a measure of standard of living when it doesn't account for the fact that when you're looking for staples or housing, a a dollar might buy five or six times there what it does in the US.

[NotMiki]

doesn't even have to be a country-by-country thing, you know.  The money you need to live comfortably in an eastern state makes you flat-out rich in a southern one.

[Cotigo]

Yeah.  Part of the reason so many Hollywood types buy houses out in Santa Fe or other areas of NM is that it's so damn cheap, even in its only real urban area.  I make ~700 a month and live fairly comfortably (and would even without student loans here).  I wouldn't even make rent in the cheap parts of LA or NYC, much less be able to eat.

Though, that's mostly because the US is so large that different regions will have different costs of living; in a smaller country like the UK the regional differences like this are on a much smaller scale and thus much less noticeable. 

[Yoshiken]

Though, that's mostly because the US is so large that different regions will have different costs of living; in a smaller country like the UK the regional differences like this are on a much smaller scale and thus much less noticeable. 

That's not strictly true. The general rules still apply - the more desirable an area is in itself, the more it's gonna cost to live there. I live in a very tourist-central area of England, and monthly rent for a single-bedroom flat here is about £600. Was talking to a friend who lives a bit north of London and he said it was usually about £200 there.
Add into that the fact that wages should play a part - the average wage in Devon is the lowest in the country, and Torquay has the second lowest average wage for any town/city within Devon.
'Course, I've no real idea exactly how different that is to the US - all I know is that the difference is quite definitely very noticeable.