Economies at PPP?

 Right after WWII, the US GDP was more than 50% of the world GDP. The European colonizers kept the colonials very poor, and the war had destroyed most of Europe. The US were terrified that Western Europe would decide to join the Warsaw Pact, so they spent a lot of money rebuilding Western Europe on the Marshall Plan. As 6 economies recovered well  after WWII (with a lot of help from the US), they joined the US to be the G7, the 7 richest countries in the world. About 25 years ago, the G7 had much more than 50% of the world GDP, and today they figure they're still the G7.

And, in dollar terms, they're still on top, but that's because their prices are very high.

There is something called Purchasing Power Parity, or PPP. Suppose you have two islands. Both have livestock, crops, so enough to eat, also some manufacturing, but they don't know how to build a boat that could make it from one island to the other. Both produce exactly the same goods and services, and in the exact same amounts, but one island has twice as much gold as the other island, and everything is priced in gold, so the island with twice as much gold has prices of twice as many milligrams of gold for every good and service than the other island. Measured in gold, the island with more gold has an economy twice as large, but measured in goods and services, the two economies are the exact same size. The actual economy of a real country produces different quantities of goods and services than the economy of a different country, and some items cost more in one economy than the other, and some items cost less, so how does one calculate the PPP of different economies? Not altogether clear, but one can try. The easiest method is to look at a Big Mac. Almost every country has a MacDonald's (of course, Russia no longer does because of sanctions), so one can compare the price of a Big Mac in two countries and use the ratio of the prices to adjust the actual economies in the local currencies and get the two GDPs at PPP. Or one can use a larger basket of items than just the Big Mac. It's complicated, but economists somehow come up with a PPP economy for every country.

If one converts all the local currencies to US dollars and compares GDP, the G7 are still on top, but at PPP, the top 6 economies are The PRC, the US, India, Japan, Germany, and Russia. And, at PPP, the GDP of the combined BRICS is more than the GDP of the G7.

This is something that is vehemently denied by the Western media.

Officially, Secretary Yellen announced that the sanctions totally destroyed the Russian economy. Russia was just a cold Saudi Arabia, selling oil to the West and using the money to buy everything Russia needed from the West, so with sanctions, no money and no economy. But if one looks at the Russian economy at PPP, it is the world's 6th largest, and has not really changed much with the sanctions.

For 300 years, Russia wanted to be part of Europe. And Europe wanted Russia out. Edward Tufte wrote The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and said the best display of quantitative information is "Napoleon's March to Moscow" by Charles Joseph Minard, that shows Napoleon's great victory in 1812, celebrated in the "1812 Overture". And, of course, a German fellow sent the German Army against Stalingrad, and if one looks at a map, there is no longer a Stalingrad anywhere. So Russia have always been an easy target for the great European powers.

In any case, Russia were selling Europe oil and gas at below market prices, hoping to gain European friendship. But European leaders were happy to stop buying all Russian energy products. Somehow, the German economy has been growing, but not adjusted for inflation. Lots of German companies are moving to the US because energy is too expensive in Germany to run their plants and sell at a profit. But the German leadership, like the rest of Europe (with a couple of minor exceptions) are bought and paid for by the US, so they do what they're told. Switzerland and Sweden were strictly neutral for more than 200 years, but when the US ordered them to help fight Russia, their leaders all agreed to join the fight (the Swiss by agreeing that Russian assets in Swiss banks would all be frozen because of the war, something they never did to Germany in WWI or WWII, and Sweden by joining NATO).

And the top economies, at PPP, ain't what they used to be. As Scott Ritter keeps saying, the sanctions were like boomerangs: they came back to bite them what imposed those sanctions on Russia, while Russia had to make a bunch of changes, but they're getting by. One big problem in Russia is the shortage of chips. The hamburger chain that took over MacDonald's can't get plastic bags of frozen chips ready to be thrown into hot oil, and no place in Russia is up to producing the quantity of chips needed, so they're serving potato waffles with the burgers, but the Russians would prefer chips.

Meanwhile, the PRC and India are buying a lot of Russian energy and selling stuff to Russia that they used to get from the West. So Russia are muddling through much better than the West is.