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I personally think it’ll be another 30-50 years before it’s clear whether it’s actually smart or not.

by Jgrubb 9y ago

mistermann 9y ago
My guess is it should be obvious much sooner, 20 years or so.
natural219 9y ago
It seems abundantly clear at this point that China's economy is vastly "smarter" than ours, in terms of aligning productive resources to where the country needs them most.
- SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
  At what cost though.
- logicchains 9y ago
  Is that why China still has hundreds of millions of extremely poor subsistence farmers? Not all of China is Beijing/Shanghai/Shenzhen.
  - LoSboccacc 9y ago
    partly yes, it's managing strategically their move to the city/middle class to a) avoid starvation and b) keeping an healthy supply of fresh internal market not that I condone the various atrocities and general suffering happening there, but yes from the economical point of view that's why and that also makes sense, as cruel as it might be. you simply cannot "industrial revoluzionize" a country that big as England did in the 1800. they maybe can do more and faster, but that's very hard to model.
    - jernfrost 9y ago
      Sure you can and they are are much faster rate. England had growthof 1.3% during the industrial recolution. That was rapid growth back then. China has been doing 10% for many years. So what England did is not impressive by todays standard. Event the most backwards developing countries today can achieve that growth rate.
      - LoSboccacc 9y ago
        gdp growth != rate of urbanization
  - natural219 9y ago
    Are you asking "why hasn't a country lifted a billion people out of poverty overnight?", or, "why have they only lifted 500 million people out of poverty in 30 short years?"
  - pcnonpc 9y ago
    The current number of extremely poor people in China is less than 30 million, less than 2% of population. From Google: "According to the World Bank, more than 500 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty as China's poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 6.5 percent in 2012, as measured by the percentage of people living on the equivalent of US$1.90 or less per day in 2011 purchasing price parity terms." In 2017 there are around 600 million people in rural area. Their average monthly income is 3300 yuan or around 500 USD, more than $15 a day. Cost of living there is cheap and this is middle income, not poor.
    - adventured 9y ago
      China has radically more extremely poor people than that. The number is closer to 500 million, so long as absurd numbers like $3 per day are not your line. 75% of China's middle class is in the $2 to $10 per day income bracket. And that's their middle class, the bottom 1/3 are even worse off. https://chinapower.csis.org/china-middle-class/ https://chinapower.csis.org/china-middle-class/ (Oct 2014) “Poverty is still a salient problem in China,” Zheng Wenkai, a vice-minister at a government office responsible for poverty alleviation and development, said at a news briefing Tuesday, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper. About 200 million Chinese, or 15% of the country’s population, would be considered poor by international poverty measures, set at $1.25 a day, Mr. Zheng added. https://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/10/15/more-than-82-million-chinese-live-on-less-than-1-a-day/ https://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/10/15/more-than-82-... Two simple questions that make the point easily: What's the median income, in non-purchasing parity terms, for the bottom 50% of people China? How many people does China have living below $5 per day, in non-purchasing parity terms? Answer those please.
      - Lutrinae 9y ago
        Why non-purchasing parity? The cost of most goods is significantly cheaper in China, even more so in the relatively poorer rural areas.
      - pcnonpc 9y ago
        I answered the comment which used "extremely poor" and "subsistence farmers" so I used the international poverty line ($1.90). At $3.2 (World Bank's lower middle income poverty line), it was 12.1% or 160 million people, but that was 2013. The number dropped rapidly every year. It should be lower now. http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/country/CHN http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/country/CHN Purchasing parity is a good measure for living standards. You can buy a full meal for 10 yuan or $1.5 in rural China. It is not fair to measure their income with no adjustment. Cooking for a family may cost less than that. $1 in rural China is worth much more than $1 in the US. Your quotes were from 2014. China is improving every year. You can Google for more recent statistics and quote them here if you disagree.
l5870uoo9y 9y ago
Is that 50 years on top of ~40 years with stagnant wages? I don't think there is time for that. > Real wages in the United States, have stagnated since the mid-1970s contrary to expectations that real wages should raise in line with increases in productivity. Between 1973 and 2013 productivity in the United States grew by 74% whilst compensation for workers grew by 9% in the same period. The stagnation of real hourly wages has resulted in a Middle-class squeeze as increases in inflation and the cost of living exceeds the growth of real wages for members of the middle and lower classes.
- twoodfin 9y ago
  This assertion doesn't pass the smell test, unless you believe that the median working-age US household by income had a worse standard of living in 2013 than it did in 1973. In reality, the distribution of employment income has shifted from cash wages to expanded benefits. There has been substantial growth in two-earner households which indeed puts downward pressure on individual wages but increases household income and wealth. Productivity gains have resulted in much cheaper goods in a variety of sectors, leading to a couple of decades of historically low inflation. We've also had big demographic shifts in immigration and aging over 40 years that make point-to-point comparisons potentially misleading.
  - _Tev 9y ago
    > This assertion doesn't pass the smell test, unless you believe that the median working-age US household by income had a worse standard of living in 2013 than it did in 1973. Actually you are the first one I see to dispute this. Do you base these smell tests/beliefs in any public data? I would like to see the source to have something to dispute this frequently stated claim.
    - twoodfin 9y ago
      Let me reverse this: What do you think was better about life for the median working-age US household in 1973? Their house was smaller. Their car was less safe, less reliable and guzzled gas. They had no internet, no mobile phones and only 3 television networks. Eating at a restaurant was a monthly indulgence at best. Air travel was a luxury. Their children could expect to have seven fewer years of life, and were markedly less likely to go to college. Think about how much someone would have to pay you to live a 1973 lifestyle, and it should be obvious why claiming there have been 40 years of “stagnation” is nonsense.

I personally think it’ll be another 30-50 years before it’s clear whether it’s actually smart or not.

by Jgrubb 9y ago

I personally think it’ll be another 30-50 years before it’s clear whether it’s actually smart or not.

mistermann 9y ago

My guess is it should be obvious much sooner, 20 years or so.

natural219 9y ago

It seems abundantly clear at this point that China's economy is vastly "smarter" than ours, in terms of aligning productive resources to where the country needs them most.

SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
At what cost though.
logicchains 9y ago
Is that why China still has hundreds of millions of extremely poor subsistence farmers? Not all of China is Beijing/Shanghai/Shenzhen.
- LoSboccacc 9y ago
  partly yes, it's managing strategically their move to the city/middle class to a) avoid starvation and b) keeping an healthy supply of fresh internal market not that I condone the various atrocities and general suffering happening there, but yes from the economical point of view that's why and that also makes sense, as cruel as it might be. you simply cannot "industrial revoluzionize" a country that big as England did in the 1800. they maybe can do more and faster, but that's very hard to model.
  - jernfrost 9y ago
    Sure you can and they are are much faster rate. England had growthof 1.3% during the industrial recolution. That was rapid growth back then. China has been doing 10% for many years. So what England did is not impressive by todays standard. Event the most backwards developing countries today can achieve that growth rate.
    - LoSboccacc 9y ago
      gdp growth != rate of urbanization
- natural219 9y ago
  Are you asking "why hasn't a country lifted a billion people out of poverty overnight?", or, "why have they only lifted 500 million people out of poverty in 30 short years?"
- pcnonpc 9y ago
  The current number of extremely poor people in China is less than 30 million, less than 2% of population. From Google: "According to the World Bank, more than 500 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty as China's poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 6.5 percent in 2012, as measured by the percentage of people living on the equivalent of US$1.90 or less per day in 2011 purchasing price parity terms." In 2017 there are around 600 million people in rural area. Their average monthly income is 3300 yuan or around 500 USD, more than $15 a day. Cost of living there is cheap and this is middle income, not poor.
  - adventured 9y ago
    China has radically more extremely poor people than that. The number is closer to 500 million, so long as absurd numbers like $3 per day are not your line. 75% of China's middle class is in the $2 to $10 per day income bracket. And that's their middle class, the bottom 1/3 are even worse off. https://chinapower.csis.org/china-middle-class/ https://chinapower.csis.org/china-middle-class/ (Oct 2014) “Poverty is still a salient problem in China,” Zheng Wenkai, a vice-minister at a government office responsible for poverty alleviation and development, said at a news briefing Tuesday, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper. About 200 million Chinese, or 15% of the country’s population, would be considered poor by international poverty measures, set at $1.25 a day, Mr. Zheng added. https://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/10/15/more-than-82-million-chinese-live-on-less-than-1-a-day/ https://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/10/15/more-than-82-... Two simple questions that make the point easily: What's the median income, in non-purchasing parity terms, for the bottom 50% of people China? How many people does China have living below $5 per day, in non-purchasing parity terms? Answer those please.
    - Lutrinae 9y ago
      Why non-purchasing parity? The cost of most goods is significantly cheaper in China, even more so in the relatively poorer rural areas.
    - pcnonpc 9y ago
      I answered the comment which used "extremely poor" and "subsistence farmers" so I used the international poverty line ($1.90). At $3.2 (World Bank's lower middle income poverty line), it was 12.1% or 160 million people, but that was 2013. The number dropped rapidly every year. It should be lower now. http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/country/CHN http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/country/CHN Purchasing parity is a good measure for living standards. You can buy a full meal for 10 yuan or $1.5 in rural China. It is not fair to measure their income with no adjustment. Cooking for a family may cost less than that. $1 in rural China is worth much more than $1 in the US. Your quotes were from 2014. China is improving every year. You can Google for more recent statistics and quote them here if you disagree.

l5870uoo9y 9y ago

Is that 50 years on top of ~40 years with stagnant wages? I don't think there is time for that. > Real wages in the United States, have stagnated since the mid-1970s contrary to expectations that real wages should raise in line with increases in productivity. Between 1973 and 2013 productivity in the United States grew by 74% whilst compensation for workers grew by 9% in the same period. The stagnation of real hourly wages has resulted in a Middle-class squeeze as increases in inflation and the cost of living exceeds the growth of real wages for members of the middle and lower classes.

twoodfin 9y ago
This assertion doesn't pass the smell test, unless you believe that the median working-age US household by income had a worse standard of living in 2013 than it did in 1973. In reality, the distribution of employment income has shifted from cash wages to expanded benefits. There has been substantial growth in two-earner households which indeed puts downward pressure on individual wages but increases household income and wealth. Productivity gains have resulted in much cheaper goods in a variety of sectors, leading to a couple of decades of historically low inflation. We've also had big demographic shifts in immigration and aging over 40 years that make point-to-point comparisons potentially misleading.
- _Tev 9y ago
  > This assertion doesn't pass the smell test, unless you believe that the median working-age US household by income had a worse standard of living in 2013 than it did in 1973. Actually you are the first one I see to dispute this. Do you base these smell tests/beliefs in any public data? I would like to see the source to have something to dispute this frequently stated claim.
  - twoodfin 9y ago
    Let me reverse this: What do you think was better about life for the median working-age US household in 1973? Their house was smaller. Their car was less safe, less reliable and guzzled gas. They had no internet, no mobile phones and only 3 television networks. Eating at a restaurant was a monthly indulgence at best. Air travel was a luxury. Their children could expect to have seven fewer years of life, and were markedly less likely to go to college. Think about how much someone would have to pay you to live a 1973 lifestyle, and it should be obvious why claiming there have been 40 years of “stagnation” is nonsense.