== The trouble with economic comparisons == 

 A user has recently added a short paragraph about comparisons between socialist and capitalist countries, which I intend to remove. As an explanation for this removal, I give you the following reasons why most such comparisons are inherently inaccurate and generally useless: 

 #Which countries were "socialist"? Which countries were "capitalist"? There is no agreement among self-described socialists regarding the list of countries that can be described as "socialist". Likewise, there are many libertarians who argue that the so-called "capitalist" countries are not capitalist at all, but mixed economies inspired by socialism. When you compare West Germany to East Germany, are you comparing capitalism to socialism, or are you comparing a social democratic welfare state to a Stalinist deformed workers' state? 
 #What exactly are we comparing? Total GDP at a given point in time? GDP growth over a certain period? GNP? Some other economic performance indicator? Broad statements such as "the economy of country X performed better than the economy of country Y" give no information whatsoever. 
 #Which countries are we comparing? We might compare East Germany with West Germany, or we might compare post-WW2 East Germany with pre-WW2 East Germany. Some would argue that it is more accurate to compare the economic performance of the same country under different economic systems than to compare different countries. 

 Besides, we should not give undue weight to the Marxist-Leninist version of "socialism".