Just as I found in a Hungarian article by portfolio.hu, Hungary has stepped up quite a bit in the ranking of EU countries based on GDP growth figures, accomplishing 1.3% for 2017 Q1, making it 5-6th, tied with the Czech Republic.
Browsing through the chart provided there, it becomes quite clear that those big income western countries, such as the UK, didn't perform too well. It is easy to cough up some intuition though! Perhaps the higher an absolute performance has risen from the mean abs. performance of others, the more difficult it becomes to maintain a relative increase, a steady relative development rate?
Similarly, it has crossed more than one mind already that any relative growth figure over 100% is actually even theoretically unsustainable on a finite-sized Earth. But instead of philosophising, for now, let's just examine what those poorly growing countries had already achieved before they got seemingly stuck with their progression, and put that in contrast with the recent relative GDP growth numbers (source).
This chart already reveals a definitive downward trend - the more you earn, the harder it becomes to stretch it farther, at least proportionately.
The second chart even underlines that the GDP change (estimated) is almost uniform.
The two key takeaways are
- the relative growth of the Hungarian economy is apparently nothing short of usual in its category
- the amazing Finnish performance diminishes all other top ranked countries
I'd say it's highly advisable to keep an eye on how this performance was rolled out by Finland.
Their progressive educational system is already famous - otherwise blame Salmiakki?
(Finland for president! The workbook for the charts can be found here.)
