EU AND UKRAINE REVISITED . . . THREE DAYS AFTER THE INVITATION DECISION--FROM A MACROSOCIOLOGIST'S SCRAPBOOK ON
I am cordially inviting you to consider the inequalities and trajectories included in this graph, a visualization of economic performance data obtained form the IBRD World Development Indicators , a publicly available dataset. The variable is per capita GDP (at constant 2015 USD ). Please tell me--perhaps in comments, if you are so inclined--if you think I miss or misread something. Since this is just a research note, something I am doing quickly "on the side," I don't want to / can't get into more detail here--but there are a few things in these data that I feel I must point out, and do so now , especially in the context of the recent EU decision to begin full membership negotiations with Ukraine. The EU continues being on a global downslide. In the time period reflected in the graph, that slide began, in earnest, around 2002, that is, two years before the "Big Bang Accession" of 2004 (which brought in 8 erstwhile-state-socialist countries from east-cent