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The Soviet Union saw expansion of heavy industry at the expense of suppression the progenitors of long-term industrial expansion, which is human capital. Wages

The Soviet Union saw expansion of heavy industry at the expense of suppression the progenitors of long-term industrial expansion, which is human capital. Wages plummetted throughout the 20s to meet the central government's industrial goals: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol03/no03/wollenberg.htm https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol03/no03... >At 306 kronen, which are equivalent to 15 gold rubles, the present average Russian wage is about 68% of the average wage of the Russian factory worker under Czarism. That's not a successful industrialization by my criteria. Japan was had a very liberal economy post WW2. There is much evidence dispelling the mythologized account of MITI's role in the expansion of the Japanese economy through industrial policy: https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/JapanandtheMythofMITI.html https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/JapanandtheMythofMITI.h... The article notes much more foundational properties of the 50s/60s Japanese economy, like a smaller portion of private sector output being taxed to support the public sector, as more likely causes of its growth: >>"The fact that the tax burden is unusually low by the standards of other developed countries may alone be a significant factor in the explanation of the high rate of private saving and investment in Japan." From 1951 to 1970, while Japan's real GNP was growing at an average of 9 percent per year, total national and local taxes (excluding social security) fell from 22.4 percent of national income to 18.9 percent. This left more money for people to save and invest. Compare Japan's situation with the United States, where the proportion rose from 28.5 percent to 31.3 percent. Interestingly, Japan's two decades of greatest postwar growth were also its decades of lowest taxes. During the seventies, as Japan's taxes rose to 22.8 percent of national income in 1980, real GNP growth declined to only 4.8 percent. Higher taxes weren't the only reason for this deteriorating performance, of course; oil price increases also contributed. This graph demonstrates that Japan had the lowest levels of social welfare spending as a percentage of GDP among the advanced economies. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-longrun https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long...

paganel 3y ago
As per the Soviets, Stalin had set things straight back in 1931 when he had said that the USSR had 10 years in order to industrialise, because that's when they would get involved in the next big war. He was correct on that, had it not been for the big inter-war industrialisation push the Soviets couldn't have handled the German offensive in 1941-42. And had the Germans won, which they would have done absent Soviet heavy industry, any talk of Soviet human capital would have become moot as a result of Generalplan Ost getting implemented. Even so, I agree that the big losses suffered by the Soviets during the war were a big drag on their post-WW2 economy and on their society as a whole, it is my belief that the Brezhnev stagnation can partially be attributed to that. As per Japan, I was thinking more about the political regime when I was mentioning "liberal", or at least that's what I thought the OP had in mind. I know that, on paper, Japan was a liberal democracy post-WW2 (again, from a political pov), but they were a de facto one-party government a good few decades after MacArthur's imposed constitution came into being.
- ETH_start 3y ago
  Wages for workers in the Soviet Union declined in the 1920s as well, before the rise of Nazi Germany. This was due to the Soviet goal of transforming the country from an agrarian society into an industrialized socialist state, which ignored basic economics to devastating effect. The USSR received a colossal amount of aid from the US during WW2 through Lend-Lease, and following the war, carted off significant amounts of physical and human capital from Eastern Europe, especially East Germany. And despite all of this, by the 1980s it was clear that the USSR's command and control economy could not keep up with the West's liberal economy, especially as emerging industries like semiconductors were too complex to manage without markets.
  - paganel 3y ago
    They received trucks, which certainly helped, but the tanks and the artillery ammunition were certainly on the Soviets and the Soviets alone. You win a modern a war on the Russian/Ukrainian steppe with artillery, Napoleon and Hitler and now NATO would tell you the same thing, anything else is nice to have but if you don’t have artillery you’re toast.
    - ETH_start 3y ago
      Not just trucks, but train locomotives and railcars, planes and food.

paganel 3y ago

As per the Soviets, Stalin had set things straight back in 1931 when he had said that the USSR had 10 years in order to industrialise, because that's when they would get involved in the next big war. He was correct on that, had it not been for the big inter-war industrialisation push the Soviets couldn't have handled the German offensive in 1941-42. And had the Germans won, which they would have done absent Soviet heavy industry, any talk of Soviet human capital would have become moot as a result of Generalplan Ost getting implemented. Even so, I agree that the big losses suffered by the Soviets during the war were a big drag on their post-WW2 economy and on their society as a whole, it is my belief that the Brezhnev stagnation can partially be attributed to that. As per Japan, I was thinking more about the political regime when I was mentioning "liberal", or at least that's what I thought the OP had in mind. I know that, on paper, Japan was a liberal democracy post-WW2 (again, from a political pov), but they were a de facto one-party government a good few decades after MacArthur's imposed constitution came into being.

ETH_start 3y ago
Wages for workers in the Soviet Union declined in the 1920s as well, before the rise of Nazi Germany. This was due to the Soviet goal of transforming the country from an agrarian society into an industrialized socialist state, which ignored basic economics to devastating effect. The USSR received a colossal amount of aid from the US during WW2 through Lend-Lease, and following the war, carted off significant amounts of physical and human capital from Eastern Europe, especially East Germany. And despite all of this, by the 1980s it was clear that the USSR's command and control economy could not keep up with the West's liberal economy, especially as emerging industries like semiconductors were too complex to manage without markets.
- paganel 3y ago
  They received trucks, which certainly helped, but the tanks and the artillery ammunition were certainly on the Soviets and the Soviets alone. You win a modern a war on the Russian/Ukrainian steppe with artillery, Napoleon and Hitler and now NATO would tell you the same thing, anything else is nice to have but if you don’t have artillery you’re toast.
  - ETH_start 3y ago
    Not just trucks, but train locomotives and railcars, planes and food.