How the World's Richest Country Lost 90% of its GDP

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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[DrDeFord]

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.

[brooishu]

As President Franklin Roosevelt once stated, “A nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself."

[cxncpjw]

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.

[michaelimbesi]

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

[gioni]

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.

[thebestcentaur]

So Nauru basically became the ship from WALL-E

[pcproffy]

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?

[marcusmoonstein]

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.

[shitbrick]

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.

[jesseferguson]

Moral: If you want to start a country, make sure to diversify your country's economy

[mattpackwood]

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.

[bobbymainz]

Economists and business leaders are voicing concerns at the start of 2023 that the year could be a difficult one. JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said that the Federal Reserve may need to raise interest rates to 6% to fight inflation, higher than the peak level between 5% and 5.5% in 2023 that most Fed officials penciled in after their December meeting. Although I read an article of people that grossed profits up to $500k during this crash, what are the best stocks to buy/short now or put on a watchlist.

[dreamcastH]

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.

[joshuapatrick]

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.

[neilritson]

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.

[maxkennedy]

Australia using another distant nation as a prison. They grow up so fast

[FranckMartin]

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…

[poppers]

How to read the leaderboard at the end when you put the recommendation videos over it?
Make a separate screen for that.

[s]

I think it would be useful to point out the parallels between the reliance on the resource wealth of Nauru and that of Australia.

[editedforprivacy]

Phosphate compounds are also very useful in the production of both high and low explosives.