NO, NO, do not get me wrong here. I would really like to understand your PPP representation, and what it really means. For example Japan nominal is much higher today, but PPP is 4th how so...
The two most common ways to measure GDP per capita are nominal and purchasing power parity (abbreviated PPP). Nominal is an attempt at an absolute measure, a sort of immovable standard that remains the same from country to country. It is the original concept of GDP. In contrast, PPP is an attempt at a relative measure, taking factors of each country into consideration in order to put a number on a person’s standard of living within that country.
A rule of thumb for understanding GDP’s PPP and nominal is that PPP is how much of a local good (like real estate, labor, or locally grown produce) a person can buy in their country, and nominal is roughly how much of an internationally traded good (diamonds, DVD players, Snickers bars) a person can buy in their country.
Thus, developing countries tend to have a higher (better) PPP than nominal, while developed countries have higher nominal than PPP. You can get dinner for $10 or a DVD player for $100 in the US, or you can get dinner for $2 or a DVD player for $100 in China. If you compare a Chinese making $20 a day to an American making $150 a day, the Chinese is slightly poorer in dinners than the American (1/10 of income versus 1/15), but is a lot poorer in DVD players than the American (5x income versus 2/3 of income). See how that works?
Nominal and PPP are identical in the US, because USD is used as the benchmark. But in all of the most developed countries except the US, the nominal is higher.
Another way to think about this is that, as a country’s citizens get richer and richer, they are more easily able to acquire international goods, but any good that must be provided by others of its
own rich citizens, like college education, health care, taxis, etc. is going to get more expensive.