The Soviet Economic Potential

1) From Colin Clark, Director of the Agricultural Economics Research Institute, Oxford:

My own estimate of the current net national product of the Soviet Union, restated in terms of dollars in present day purchasing power, would be about $125 billion. If you want Gross National Product, a somewhat less scientific measure for purposes of comparison, you should add about $12 billion. I thus agree fairly closely with the estimate made for the Secretary of State by the statisticians in the State Department. My figure would include about $60 billion of personal consumption and about $25 billion of net new investment. In reviewing military expenditure, we come up against some difficult statistical problems of definition, but it appears that Russia is maintaining forces which would cost $20-25 billion per annum, if they were paid at the same rate as the American servicemen. The remainder of the net national product represents public expenditure on health, education, etc. (I have tried to exclude expenditure on police and supervisory services.)

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1) From Colin Clark, Director of the Agricultural Economics Research Institute, Oxford:

My own estimate of the current net national product of the Soviet Union, restated in terms of dollars in present day purchasing power, would be about $125 billion. If you want Gross National Product, a somewhat less scientific measure for purposes of comparison, you should add about $12 billion. I thus agree fairly closely with the estimate made for the Secretary of State by the statisticians in the State Department. My figure would include about $60 billion of personal consumption and about $25 billion of net new investment. In reviewing military expenditure, we come up against some difficult statistical problems of definition, but it appears that Russia is maintaining forces which would cost $20-25 billion per annum, if they were paid at the same rate as the American servicemen. The remainder of the net national product represents public expenditure on health, education, etc. (I have tried to exclude expenditure on police and supervisory services.)