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I like his cake comparison. Obvious Portal joke. 分蛋糕和做蛋糕哪个更重要呢？表面上来看，分蛋糕直接关涉公平，但从根本上来看，分蛋糕和做蛋糕并不是二者取其一，做大蛋糕是前提，公平分配蛋糕是结果，发展则是前提和关键，任何分配制度必须首先建立在做大蛋糕、有蛋糕可分的基础上

by araes 1y ago

I like his cake comparison. Obvious Portal joke. 分蛋糕和做蛋糕哪个更重要呢？表面上来看，分蛋糕直接关涉公平，但从根本上来看，分蛋糕和做蛋糕并不是二者取其一，做大蛋糕是前提，公平分配蛋糕是结果，发展则是前提和关键，任何分配制度必须首先建立在做大蛋糕、有蛋糕可分的基础上。(...) 另一方面，分好蛋糕，搞好分配制度改革是为了推进经济社会发展，而不只是为了完成消费。 Trans. by Firefox (w/ a little bit of G. Translate edits): "Which is more important: dividing the cake or making the cake? On the surface, the cake is directly related to fairness, but fundamentally speaking, the cake and making the cake are not one of the two, making the cake is the premise, the fair distribution of the cake is the result, the development is the premise and the key, any distribution system must first be based on the big cake, the cake can be divided." ... "On the other hand, dividing the cake well and carrying out distribution system reform is to promote economic and social development, not just to complete consumption." It works, and its a reasonable comparison, it's also just amusing to read some some Chinese position paper and then he starts wandering into cake discussions after a bunch of very formal propaganda stuff "superiority of socialism is ultimately to be reflected in its development of productive forces", ect...

alephnerd 1y ago
Honestly, it's sad and frustrating. It's literally a "let them eat cake" kind of statement. China is at the point where a social safety net is needed to ensure long term prosperity, and concentrating on an export first model isn't going to cut it long term, because high value industries are heavily automated and skilled, and simply don't demand or need that many employees. China has reached a point where the mean years of education amongst working age people (~8 years) has caught up with countries that used to be much richer than China 15 years ago like Brazil, Thailand, Turkiye, and Malaysia and it's mean life expectancy has outpaced all those countries except Turkiye and Thailand, which it is for all intents and purposes tied [0]. This is a MASSIVE win for global poverty eradication. Yet the median age is significantly higher than all of them except Thailand [1], and median disposable household income remains around $400/mo [2] - lower than Thailand [3], Malaysia [4], or Türkiye's [5] despite having a GDP per capita (~13.3k in 2024) that is comparable to the latter 2 and above Thailand's. Now is the time for China to expand its welfare system in order to make that leap into being a truly developed country, just like South Korea did in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Expanding the welfare state would help hundreds of millions of Chinese gain the ability to purchase higher value goods thus reducing the specter of "overproduction" leading to the current global trade war, while truly ensuring common prosperity. Otherwise, it will flounder like Malaysia and Thailand did, both of which used to be South Korea's peer until the Asian Financial Crisis, or Turkiye after it's peak in 2014. People mention "course correction" but what course correction can you do when disdain for a welfare system is so engrained in the upper echelons of leadership. This is not a statement on the "collapse of China" (that's dumb), but if this problem around domestic consumption and a lack of a safety net is not nipped in the bud in the next 3-5 years, it will be much harder for China to take full advantage of the capabilities it has and ensure common prosperity. [0] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/2022/lifexp+msch/BRA+CHN+MYS+THA+TUR/?levels=1+4&interpolation=0&extrapolation=0 https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/2022/lifexp+msch/BRA+CH... [1] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/median-age?tab=discrete-bar&time=2022&country=CHN~BRA~TUR~THA~MYS https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/median-age?tab=discrete-b... [2] - https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202501/t20250124_1958443.html https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202501/t202501... [3] - https://www.nso.go.th/nsoweb/storage/survey_detail/2023/20231018103954_32528.pdf https://www.nso.go.th/nsoweb/storage/survey_detail/2023/2023... [4] - https://ekonomi.gov.my/sites/default/files/2023-12/Jadual4-Pendapatan-Isi-Rumah-Kasar-Bulanan-Penengah-Mengikut-Kumpulan-Etnik-Ketua-Isi-Rumah-Strata-dan-Negeri-Malaysia-1970-2022.pdf https://ekonomi.gov.my/sites/default/files/2023-12/Jadual4-P... [5] - https://data.tuik.gov.tr/Bulten/Index?p=Gelir-Dagilimi-Istatistikleri-2024-53712 https://data.tuik.gov.tr/Bulten/Index?p=Gelir-Dagilimi-Istat...
- fspeech 1y ago
  Consumption habit is much more dependent on personal experience and has little to do with the safety net. Older retired people with state pensions still have little desire to spend or don't even know how to spend in the new online economy, while young people who never experienced hardship are happy to spend every penny. If you want to increase spending you need to steer income to young people (child credit e.g.). Healthcare is mostly accessed by old folks. Generous pension and healthcare benefits are not going to lift spending.
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    > Consumption habit is much more dependent on personal experience and has little to do with the safety net The per capita (not median, so skewed upward) yearly expenditure of a Chinese household in 2024 was Yuan 28,227 [0]. The per capita urban household in China had around Yuan 34,000 a year in expenditures in 2024, and the per capita rural household in China had around Yuan 20,000 a year in expenditures in 2024. 61% of a per capita Chinese household's expenditures are just on food, residence, and healthcare. And that becomes 75% when factoring transit and telephone/internet bills. Only 11% of a per capita household spend was on recreation, 5% on clothing, and around 3% on miscellaneous services. This means the mean household in China only had aroud Yuan 7,000/$1,000 in all of 2024 on anything that is a non-essential or discretionary purchase. This is abnormally low for a country with China's GDP per capita and highlights a very real problem for the bottom half of Chinese households. Heck, in Thailand in 2022, the median household only spends 1.4% of their income on medical care [1] and with a significantly higher household disposable income ($600/mo) and significantly better health indicators. Literally reducing the per capita Chinese household's healthcare spend to the same ratio as Thailand's would unlock an additional Yuan 2,200 a year that can be used on discretionary spend. That itself could unlock (back of napkin math) almost $161 billion in potential discretionary spending or an additional 0.7%-0.8% of GDP growth, thus allowing China to hit the 5% GDP growth target while also reducing overproduction and increasing health standards. And that's just healthcare. This is why China needs a LBJ and FDR style Great Deal and New Deal reform. China is growing much slower than it should be because of pigheadedness at the upper echelons of leadership preventing this kind of development. [0] - https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202501/t20250124_1958443.html https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202501/t202501... [1] - https://www.nso.go.th/nsoweb/storage/survey_detail/2023/20231018103954_32528.pdf https://www.nso.go.th/nsoweb/storage/survey_detail/2023/2023...

by araes 1y ago

alephnerd 1y ago

Honestly, it's sad and frustrating. It's literally a "let them eat cake" kind of statement. China is at the point where a social safety net is needed to ensure long term prosperity, and concentrating on an export first model isn't going to cut it long term, because high value industries are heavily automated and skilled, and simply don't demand or need that many employees. China has reached a point where the mean years of education amongst working age people (~8 years) has caught up with countries that used to be much richer than China 15 years ago like Brazil, Thailand, Turkiye, and Malaysia and it's mean life expectancy has outpaced all those countries except Turkiye and Thailand, which it is for all intents and purposes tied [0]. This is a MASSIVE win for global poverty eradication. Yet the median age is significantly higher than all of them except Thailand [1], and median disposable household income remains around $400/mo [2] - lower than Thailand [3], Malaysia [4], or Türkiye's [5] despite having a GDP per capita (~13.3k in 2024) that is comparable to the latter 2 and above Thailand's. Now is the time for China to expand its welfare system in order to make that leap into being a truly developed country, just like South Korea did in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Expanding the welfare state would help hundreds of millions of Chinese gain the ability to purchase higher value goods thus reducing the specter of "overproduction" leading to the current global trade war, while truly ensuring common prosperity. Otherwise, it will flounder like Malaysia and Thailand did, both of which used to be South Korea's peer until the Asian Financial Crisis, or Turkiye after it's peak in 2014. People mention "course correction" but what course correction can you do when disdain for a welfare system is so engrained in the upper echelons of leadership. This is not a statement on the "collapse of China" (that's dumb), but if this problem around domestic consumption and a lack of a safety net is not nipped in the bud in the next 3-5 years, it will be much harder for China to take full advantage of the capabilities it has and ensure common prosperity. [0] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/2022/lifexp+msch/BRA+CHN+MYS+THA+TUR/?levels=1+4&interpolation=0&extrapolation=0 https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/2022/lifexp+msch/BRA+CH... [1] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/median-age?tab=discrete-bar&time=2022&country=CHN~BRA~TUR~THA~MYS https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/median-age?tab=discrete-b... [2] - https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202501/t20250124_1958443.html https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202501/t202501... [3] - https://www.nso.go.th/nsoweb/storage/survey_detail/2023/20231018103954_32528.pdf https://www.nso.go.th/nsoweb/storage/survey_detail/2023/2023... [4] - https://ekonomi.gov.my/sites/default/files/2023-12/Jadual4-Pendapatan-Isi-Rumah-Kasar-Bulanan-Penengah-Mengikut-Kumpulan-Etnik-Ketua-Isi-Rumah-Strata-dan-Negeri-Malaysia-1970-2022.pdf https://ekonomi.gov.my/sites/default/files/2023-12/Jadual4-P... [5] - https://data.tuik.gov.tr/Bulten/Index?p=Gelir-Dagilimi-Istatistikleri-2024-53712 https://data.tuik.gov.tr/Bulten/Index?p=Gelir-Dagilimi-Istat...

fspeech 1y ago
Consumption habit is much more dependent on personal experience and has little to do with the safety net. Older retired people with state pensions still have little desire to spend or don't even know how to spend in the new online economy, while young people who never experienced hardship are happy to spend every penny. If you want to increase spending you need to steer income to young people (child credit e.g.). Healthcare is mostly accessed by old folks. Generous pension and healthcare benefits are not going to lift spending.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  > Consumption habit is much more dependent on personal experience and has little to do with the safety net The per capita (not median, so skewed upward) yearly expenditure of a Chinese household in 2024 was Yuan 28,227 [0]. The per capita urban household in China had around Yuan 34,000 a year in expenditures in 2024, and the per capita rural household in China had around Yuan 20,000 a year in expenditures in 2024. 61% of a per capita Chinese household's expenditures are just on food, residence, and healthcare. And that becomes 75% when factoring transit and telephone/internet bills. Only 11% of a per capita household spend was on recreation, 5% on clothing, and around 3% on miscellaneous services. This means the mean household in China only had aroud Yuan 7,000/$1,000 in all of 2024 on anything that is a non-essential or discretionary purchase. This is abnormally low for a country with China's GDP per capita and highlights a very real problem for the bottom half of Chinese households. Heck, in Thailand in 2022, the median household only spends 1.4% of their income on medical care [1] and with a significantly higher household disposable income ($600/mo) and significantly better health indicators. Literally reducing the per capita Chinese household's healthcare spend to the same ratio as Thailand's would unlock an additional Yuan 2,200 a year that can be used on discretionary spend. That itself could unlock (back of napkin math) almost $161 billion in potential discretionary spending or an additional 0.7%-0.8% of GDP growth, thus allowing China to hit the 5% GDP growth target while also reducing overproduction and increasing health standards. And that's just healthcare. This is why China needs a LBJ and FDR style Great Deal and New Deal reform. China is growing much slower than it should be because of pigheadedness at the upper echelons of leadership preventing this kind of development. [0] - https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202501/t20250124_1958443.html https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202501/t202501... [1] - https://www.nso.go.th/nsoweb/storage/survey_detail/2023/20231018103954_32528.pdf https://www.nso.go.th/nsoweb/storage/survey_detail/2023/2023...