Hooray for the one-party state!

[theaustinescorts]

China is now reported to be the second largest economy in the world, and shortly will overtake the U.S. as the world's largest manufacturer. For the past thirty years China has averaged around 9.5 percent per year production growth.

While the democratic U.S. has been divesting itself of it's manufacturing base and increasing it's debt to colossal levels, the single party authoritarian state of China is busy remedying the poverty it's billion plus population has suffered under for five thousand years.

The Chinese have a managed currency, protectionist policies, huge capital expenditures on infrastructure, and mercantilist inclinations, all of which were policies the U.S. previously had during its period of rapid growth and expansion, which is now all but ended under the free-market policies began in the 1980s under the highly ideological Reagan administration.

If the three percent or so yearly population increase in the U.S. is taken into account per capita GNP has been actually negative or flat in the U.S. for many years now.

The fact is the only engine the U.S. economy has recently had has been massive population increase from immigration, both legal and otherwise.

Frankly, it's this weakness in democratic governance which has led many countries struggling with economic depressions to have tossed democratic government away in favor of authoritarian governments which are able to chart out a logical course and force everyone to comply with it.

Is the government model of the future going to be the U.S. model or that of China?

[TexRich]

you forgot to mention how China pirated or stole other country's technology and the only reason there was no recourse because they have nukes and have a huge army.

[hungryjonny]

you also forgot to mention the gap between Chinese production and Chinese consumption. Unless the Chinese people can consume as much as they produce, the Chinese machine is headed for a breakdown. Consumption is not likely to increase seeing as how the average Chinese resident lives off the equivalent of about $3,600 a year.

[theaustinescorts]

On the contrary the excess production is sold overseas for hard currency that they loan back to places like the U.S. at interest. Chinese wages will continue to increase as well.

At this stage they will steal plenty until their indigineous R&D is developed. A few years ago who would have thought that Korean-labeled products would have better reputations that Japanese ones?

Of course if you listen to the gospels of the Chicago/Austrian school of free-market worshipping ideologues nothing like this should even be possible. Nor can traditional developmental economists explain how countries like Finland, Norway, Denmark, Australia or New Zealand, which are totally lacking in heavy industry have higher standards of living than their highly-industrialized neighbors.

When all the ores are pulling in the same direction economic performance can be surprising regardless of what kind of production is going on.

U.S. official unemployment announced today is 9.6 percent.

Until they were made legal by Reagan in 1982 financial derivatives were illegal, as they had been since shortly after their invention in the bubble of the 1920s.

[nuglet]

So, this is the new "hate immigrants" rant? Ya can't blame them.. The USA is a great "enabler".

[theaustinescorts]

I think you have this thread confused with a different one about illegal immigration.

Unfortunately the elites in this country are not nationalists. They have no concept of what a nation is. They consider themselves to be a part of super-rich class which transcends all national boundries, and that all others are the ones who must contend with national standards.

Financial elites care not whether their actions affect this country, or any other, for good or ill.

Until they are brought to heel places like China, where everyone is on the same page, will outcompete places like us.

The U.S. still has great advantages that China does not, but the people here have to wake up and rest control back from the financial and intellectual elites who have hijacked it.

I believe in democracy more than anyone on this board, but until people here take an interest in the republic that was given them by our revolutionary founders than we will continue to sink into an abyss from which we may never emerge.

[TexRich]

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

I believe in democracy more than anyone on this board

[Slotgoop]

Originally Posted by hungryjonny

you also forgot to mention the gap between Chinese production and Chinese consumption. Unless the Chinese people can consume as much as they produce, the Chinese machine is headed for a breakdown. Consumption is not likely to increase seeing as how the average Chinese resident lives off the equivalent of about $3,600 a year.

Have you been there lately? China has the largest growing population of middle class of any country I can think of next to maybe Brazil.

[theaustinescorts]

There's an awesome new film about social change in China arising from the growth, The Last Train Home.

Social change and modernization is never easy.

The point of my thread isn't that a totalitarian state performs better, but that the totally free-market "invisable hand" which has predominated in places like the US is very damaging to performance. A more mixed economy, like Australia, Germany or even Israel, or what the US used to have, definitely brings better results. After adjusting for population growth the US economy has been flat for decades. What we see now is not a recession as much as the face of globalism as a norm.