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On September 10 2015 06:44 REDBLUEGREEN wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2015 06:34 dismiss wrote:
Yeah, the Wirtschaftswunder had very little to do with immigration. Rather than the Marshal plan, the fact that Germany already possessed a highly skilled workforce, and the German economy being hindered directly post war by having been bombed to bits making it seem even more impressive. That might be true, still Germany managed to have the Wirtschaftswunder even after accepting 12 million refugees, but now people fear that a couple hundred thousands per year will break our economic back.
Who believe that refugees in Germany will create any bad economic outcome ?
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The Wirtschaftswunder would have been impossible without massive immigration and the resulting workforce. Even with all the immigration everybody was pretty much working full-time and unemployment was practically at 0%.
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On September 10 2015 06:45 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2015 06:44 REDBLUEGREEN wrote:On September 10 2015 06:34 dismiss wrote:
Yeah, the Wirtschaftswunder had very little to do with immigration. Rather than the Marshal plan, the fact that Germany already possessed a highly skilled workforce, and the German economy being hindered directly post war by having been bombed to bits making it seem even more impressive. That might be true, still Germany managed to have the Wirtschaftswunder even after accepting 12 million refugees, but now people fear that a couple hundred thousands per year will break our economic back. Who believe that refugees in Germany will create any bad economic outcome ?
Countless germans on the internet and also several of my RL friends.
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On September 10 2015 04:47 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2015 00:11 dismiss wrote:On September 10 2015 00:00 RvB wrote:On September 09 2015 22:32 LegalLord wrote:On September 09 2015 22:17 RvB wrote:On September 09 2015 20:50 Faust852 wrote:On September 09 2015 20:45 Simberto wrote:
Of course a dictatorship can work well if you have a dictator who is both competent and benevolent.
The problem here is to make sure that every single dictator in your line of succession has both of these quantities. Because if you have a dictator who lacks any one of them, he can fuck the country up even more than a benevolent dictator can improve it. And in a dictatorship, there are no safeguards against that happening.
If you want a good example of this, take a look at the history of the Byzantine Empire. You have a long line of Emperors here, with the competent ones greatly increasing the prosperity and the safety of their citizens, and then a bad one turns up who manages to just fuck everything up totally. Yup, the difference now is that the rest of the world can have a big impact on the politic of a country, especially a small one. And a benevolent dictator would also understand when to step down and transition its country to a democracy or similar system. A better system than an autocracy though is a one party system, like China where if one leader were to be a fucking dumbass, you could evict him easily. Incredibly corrupt, censored press and the rule of law being a pipe dream. I don't see how this is a good system in any way. I don't really see how it's easy to get rid of the rulers either. Mao ruled untill his death, Deng was also an incredibly powerful figure untill his retirement and the currect president Xi is the first one to purge someone from the politburo standing commitee. You're missing the forest for the trees. In truth, corruption and censorship in the press is an ultimately minor issue compared to stability and a strong economy. It's a luxury that comes only after the necessities are satisfied. And not sure why you think the rule of law isn't being respected, because to a very large extent it is. Sure, dictators can also make things a whole lot worse, while no person can make things a whole lot worse in a democracy. I will also note that it's unlikely that any person will make things significantly better in a democracy. In short, that sounds like a system that works when things are already stable, which is exactly how it works in the real world. Corruption and censorship are hardly minor issues although I agree food on the table comes first. Anyway you're assuming one party rule is better for the economy than a democracy something not true according to this paper: We provide evidence that democracy has a significant and robust positive effect on GDP. Our empirical strategy relies on a dichotomous measure of democracy coded from several sources to reduce measurement error and controls for country fixed effects and the rich dynamics of GDP, which otherwise confound the effect of democracy on economic growth. Our baseline results use a linear model for GDP dynamics estimated using either a standard within estimator or various different Generalized Method of Moments estimators, and show that democratizations increase GDP per capita by about 20% in the long run. These results are confirmed when we use a semiparametric propensity score matching estimator to control for GDP dynamics. We also obtain similar results using regional waves of democratizations and reversals to instrument for country democracy. Our results suggest that democracy increases future GDP by encouraging investment, increasing schooling, inducing economic reforms, improving public good provision, and reducing social unrest. We find little support for the view that democracy is a constraint on economic growth for less developed economies. www.nber.orgA lot of China's super growth is also because of being massively depressed after Mao's era and them simply playing catch-up. Really what rule of law is there in China? The courts are massively corrupt and you basically need party connections to get anything done. The current president is kicking out corrupted member by shovel.
You should also mixed your feeling against China with a bit of rationality. China is at 1.35 billion inhabitants, with a lot of ethnicities, and a lot of disparity in ressources. It's really playing a civ game in its hardest mode, yet with the burden of the massive real death that any bad decision could ensue.
China is evolving at a huge pace, yet still projecting very far into the future. Having a single party leading a country of this size will obviously reak of corruption, yet it is definitly the only system viable until all the disparities are evened out.
China is investing massively in renewable energies, isn't that much into pressuring people with laws. They are really shitty about freedom of expression and stupid in a lot of way, but currently, getting a full on democracy in China would be neigh impossible. It needs to raise a lot of standard which is ficking hard to do at this level.
Mao was long ago, Deng did ok to redress China.
Let's just say that currently, China is leveling the ground to a potential democracy in the incoming 50 years, in my opinion. The curent president is kicking out corrupt political opponents by the shovel yes. His allies not so much. Anyway I'm not saying the one party system is all bad since they obviously also brought some good stuff. But calling it better than democracy when seeing all the massive problems it brings (bigger than we have in the west by a long shot) does not make any sense to me. I think it's more about evaluating it in a comparative context. Do you think China would have done better/similar under a democratic government overall? How about for let's say the decade post revolution/civil war, what's the impact of the great leap? If things would have worked out in a democratic society with great civil liberties, obviously that'd be preferable. We'd have to weight the potential societal improvements against the likelihood of a country regressing because of political instability. It's probably impossible to statistically quantify that to a degree at which it'd make sense though. : / China does have a country which we can compare it to. Since the alternative to the communist party state which we have now would've been the KMT which fled to Taiwan. It's obviously not a perfect comparison but it's the best we've got. In the end they did a lot better both economically and politically. So yes I do think China would've fared way better under an alternative government than they did under the communist party.
This is a joke, right? The population of China is some 60 times larger. How on earth are they comparable?
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On September 10 2015 07:30 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2015 04:47 RvB wrote:On September 10 2015 00:11 dismiss wrote:On September 10 2015 00:00 RvB wrote:On September 09 2015 22:32 LegalLord wrote:On September 09 2015 22:17 RvB wrote:On September 09 2015 20:50 Faust852 wrote:On September 09 2015 20:45 Simberto wrote:
Of course a dictatorship can work well if you have a dictator who is both competent and benevolent.
The problem here is to make sure that every single dictator in your line of succession has both of these quantities. Because if you have a dictator who lacks any one of them, he can fuck the country up even more than a benevolent dictator can improve it. And in a dictatorship, there are no safeguards against that happening.
If you want a good example of this, take a look at the history of the Byzantine Empire. You have a long line of Emperors here, with the competent ones greatly increasing the prosperity and the safety of their citizens, and then a bad one turns up who manages to just fuck everything up totally. Yup, the difference now is that the rest of the world can have a big impact on the politic of a country, especially a small one. And a benevolent dictator would also understand when to step down and transition its country to a democracy or similar system. A better system than an autocracy though is a one party system, like China where if one leader were to be a fucking dumbass, you could evict him easily. Incredibly corrupt, censored press and the rule of law being a pipe dream. I don't see how this is a good system in any way. I don't really see how it's easy to get rid of the rulers either. Mao ruled untill his death, Deng was also an incredibly powerful figure untill his retirement and the currect president Xi is the first one to purge someone from the politburo standing commitee. You're missing the forest for the trees. In truth, corruption and censorship in the press is an ultimately minor issue compared to stability and a strong economy. It's a luxury that comes only after the necessities are satisfied. And not sure why you think the rule of law isn't being respected, because to a very large extent it is. Sure, dictators can also make things a whole lot worse, while no person can make things a whole lot worse in a democracy. I will also note that it's unlikely that any person will make things significantly better in a democracy. In short, that sounds like a system that works when things are already stable, which is exactly how it works in the real world. Corruption and censorship are hardly minor issues although I agree food on the table comes first. Anyway you're assuming one party rule is better for the economy than a democracy something not true according to this paper: We provide evidence that democracy has a significant and robust positive effect on GDP. Our empirical strategy relies on a dichotomous measure of democracy coded from several sources to reduce measurement error and controls for country fixed effects and the rich dynamics of GDP, which otherwise confound the effect of democracy on economic growth. Our baseline results use a linear model for GDP dynamics estimated using either a standard within estimator or various different Generalized Method of Moments estimators, and show that democratizations increase GDP per capita by about 20% in the long run. These results are confirmed when we use a semiparametric propensity score matching estimator to control for GDP dynamics. We also obtain similar results using regional waves of democratizations and reversals to instrument for country democracy. Our results suggest that democracy increases future GDP by encouraging investment, increasing schooling, inducing economic reforms, improving public good provision, and reducing social unrest. We find little support for the view that democracy is a constraint on economic growth for less developed economies. www.nber.orgA lot of China's super growth is also because of being massively depressed after Mao's era and them simply playing catch-up. Really what rule of law is there in China? The courts are massively corrupt and you basically need party connections to get anything done. The current president is kicking out corrupted member by shovel.
You should also mixed your feeling against China with a bit of rationality. China is at 1.35 billion inhabitants, with a lot of ethnicities, and a lot of disparity in ressources. It's really playing a civ game in its hardest mode, yet with the burden of the massive real death that any bad decision could ensue.
China is evolving at a huge pace, yet still projecting very far into the future. Having a single party leading a country of this size will obviously reak of corruption, yet it is definitly the only system viable until all the disparities are evened out.
China is investing massively in renewable energies, isn't that much into pressuring people with laws. They are really shitty about freedom of expression and stupid in a lot of way, but currently, getting a full on democracy in China would be neigh impossible. It needs to raise a lot of standard which is ficking hard to do at this level.
Mao was long ago, Deng did ok to redress China.
Let's just say that currently, China is leveling the ground to a potential democracy in the incoming 50 years, in my opinion. The curent president is kicking out corrupt political opponents by the shovel yes. His allies not so much. Anyway I'm not saying the one party system is all bad since they obviously also brought some good stuff. But calling it better than democracy when seeing all the massive problems it brings (bigger than we have in the west by a long shot) does not make any sense to me. I think it's more about evaluating it in a comparative context. Do you think China would have done better/similar under a democratic government overall? How about for let's say the decade post revolution/civil war, what's the impact of the great leap? If things would have worked out in a democratic society with great civil liberties, obviously that'd be preferable. We'd have to weight the potential societal improvements against the likelihood of a country regressing because of political instability. It's probably impossible to statistically quantify that to a degree at which it'd make sense though. : / China does have a country which we can compare it to. Since the alternative to the communist party state which we have now would've been the KMT which fled to Taiwan. It's obviously not a perfect comparison but it's the best we've got. In the end they did a lot better both economically and politically. So yes I do think China would've fared way better under an alternative government than they did under the communist party. This is a joke, right? The population of China is some 60 times larger. How on earth are they comparable?
This doesn't necessarily matter. If Taiwan had China's population and followed the same policy and China had Taiwan's population and followed the same policy, Taiwan would still be vastly richer, per capita, than China.
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I'm Taiwanese American and am very proud of my country, but saying that Taiwan is *naturally* more awesome than China ignores the fact that Taiwan took most of China's foreign currency and gold reserves, had significant U.S. and foreign aid, and had a state-run economy and what was more or less a dictatorship for the first few decades. Oh, and the waishengren/ KMT people were (if not the intellectual elite) probably fairly educated and affluent.
It's like saying that if the top 10% of people from the U.S. or Europe just decided to leave, take a good chunk of reosurces and found their own nation they'd do better.
We are awesome though.
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come on dude, everyone knows that taiwanese were just lucky...
luck bestowed upon them riches and awesomeness.
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On September 10 2015 06:45 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2015 06:44 REDBLUEGREEN wrote:On September 10 2015 06:34 dismiss wrote:
Yeah, the Wirtschaftswunder had very little to do with immigration. Rather than the Marshal plan, the fact that Germany already possessed a highly skilled workforce, and the German economy being hindered directly post war by having been bombed to bits making it seem even more impressive. That might be true, still Germany managed to have the Wirtschaftswunder even after accepting 12 million refugees, but now people fear that a couple hundred thousands per year will break our economic back. Who believe that refugees in Germany will create any bad economic outcome ?
Germany is a different case, but I can tell you why this would not work in Italy. Youth unemployement (we are talking about people who came out of school, knowing the language, having some kind of proficiency) is 43%. How will they provide work to all these immigrants is a mystery.
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Yep, Germany has a lack of birthrate, so the demography is slumping, but that's not the case for a lot of EU countries.
Also, Germany has a really low unemployement rate, while in Spain or Italy you reach the 10%+, and much higher rate in the younger bracket.
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I wish our government did the same as Hungary to be honest. I mean, I have nothing against to 'adopt' people who are really escaping from war, families, kids, women but I say no to these who are migrating to improve their economic situation. We were supposed to take 1k-1,2k refugees, now UE tell us to increase the number to 12k. Come on.
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24 000 more unemployed people in France, it won't make a lot of differences in our 3millions+ unemployed workforce.
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On September 11 2015 03:00 Makro wrote:
24 000 more unemployed people in France, it won't make a lot of differences in our 3millions+ unemployed workforce.
What is 24,000 migrants, seriously, 240,000 isn't that much, it's our duty to accept 2,400,000 people.
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On September 11 2015 03:29 Faust852 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2015 03:00 Makro wrote:
24 000 more unemployed people in France, it won't make a lot of differences in our 3millions+ unemployed workforce. What is 24,000 migrants, seriously, 240,000 isn't that much, it's our duty to accept 2,400,000 people.
Why stop there put an extra zero or two since it's our duty.
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On September 11 2015 04:30 Bizaraciel wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2015 03:29 Faust852 wrote:On September 11 2015 03:00 Makro wrote:
24 000 more unemployed people in France, it won't make a lot of differences in our 3millions+ unemployed workforce. What is 24,000 migrants, seriously, 240,000 isn't that much, it's our duty to accept 2,400,000 people. Why stop there put an extra zero or two since it's our duty.
Though anyway countries that aren't Germany or Sweden could accept the whole 22M syrian populations, they won't stay here even with free housing and income.
http://natemat.pl/154243,parafia-przyjela-uchodzcow-z-syrii-a-oni-w-nocy-uciekli-do-niemiec-dalismy-im-mieszkanie-i-oferte-pracy-to-niepojete "Polish parish took Christian refugees from Syria and ...at night they escaped to Germany. "We gave them an apartment and a job. It is incomprehensible.""
They left in the night to go to Germany, lol. Refugees right ? So much war in Poland.
And now EU want to force Switzerland to take their share of economic migrants
http://www.20min.ch/ro/news/suisse/story/L-UE-veut-forcer-la-Suisse-a-accueillir-des-refugies-15142125
What the fuck EU, pls stop
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On September 10 2015 06:34 dismiss wrote:
Yeah, the Wirtschaftswunder had very little to do with immigration. Rather than the Marshal plan, the fact that Germany already possessed a highly skilled workforce, and the German economy being hindered directly post war by having been bombed to bits making it seem even more impressive.
Two short comments:
First, the essential sources of German industrial strength was never irretrievably damaged by the destruction of the war; indeed, during the later phases of the war itself, Speer's economic planning demonstrated the possibilities of industrial expansion even under the duress of constant bombing and blockade. The modernised German industry achieved during the Third Reich and the war, its trained technocratic elite, the infrastructure of German firms, banks, distributors, etc. all survived the war, and were well-disposed to recover their natural level of efficiency once industrial quotas were relaxed by the Allied Control Commissioners.
Secondly, the resettlement of the refugees from the East after the war involved enormous sacrifices on the people who assimilated them. The Lastenausgleichsgesetz, which confiscated up to half of the real estate of settled West Germans for the benefit of the refugees was a confused, bitter process accompanied by the bureaucratic nightmare of settling refugee claims. It was grumbled at, but accepted due to the residue of National Socialist ethos pervading the postwar population. A draconian measure completely unimaginable in modern society.
The asymmetry of compassion in the world is a thing which, if unpleasant, must be recognised.
Thumbing over the media in the past few weeks, I have traced an enormous disconnect between the idealistic representations of the kinds of people whom we are inviting into our safe harbours, and the reality witnessed by my own eyes and ears. On the BBC the other day, there was run a clip expressing in sentimental terms of gratitude the kindness given to them by their German neighbours, who endowed them with gifts and all the necessary accoutrements of life. There was this weird and comical image being plastered all over our news,
![[image loading]](http://bilder.bild.de/fotos-skaliert/wir-lieben-dich-angela-merkel-wird-zur-heldin-der-syrer-47372706-42357930/2,w%3D650,c%3D0.bild.jpg)
undoubtedly reinforcing what the Germans wish to believe about their relationship with their new guests. Without doubting the possibility of genuine sentiments on each side, or accusing the media of deliberate distortion, I want to say plainly and directly that such impressions are very far from the truth.
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I don't understand you arguments at all. Germany lost tons of factories in the war ; in fact economists even evaluated the loss in production potential (around 60 % if I reckon). If you agree with that number but still argue that the industry was not that touched by the 2nd WW, then you are basically arguing that fix capital is not important in the industrial production.
But sure, no one can disagree that german industrial strength was never "irretrievably damaged"... when there's life, there's hope.
There is a clear lack of vulgar historic materialism in all the analysis and comment I saw about either the greek fiasco and now the refugee question. The europe has a disease and that is to always try to find cultural meaning and reasons to situations - the refusal of refugee from Poland and eastern countries is enlightened as a proof that those countries are "closed" (and every day I hear a "specialist" explaining on the radio/tv that they don't want to do that because of their "history" and their "culture") much like the entire greek question was presented as the opposition of two cultures (the southern mediteranean culture that "spend" and enjoy life and the northern rigorist culture that "save" and work).
In reality, it was in Germany's interests to prevent Greece from restructuring its debt, and it is now in Germany's interests to welcome migrants (due to its demography and lack of unemployment). But sure, facts are secondary, it must be compassion.
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On September 11 2015 06:38 WhiteDog wrote:
I don't understand you arguments at all. Germany lost tons of factories in the war ; in fact economists even evaluated the loss in production potential (around 60 % if I reckon). If you agree with that number but still argue that the industry was not that touched by the 2nd WW, then you are basically arguing that fix capital is not important in the industrial production.
But sure, no one can disagree that german industrial strength was never "irretrievably damaged"... when there's life, there's hope.
Except nowhere near 60% of Germany's permanent industrial capacity was destroyed by the war. The war damage itself was made good within a couple of years. By the outbreak of the Korean war, the bottlenecks on German production were not lack of capital assets, but the shortage of raw materials. Take a look at Richard Bessel's book Germany 1945 for a succinct summary in English of this.
There is a clear lack of vulgar historic materialism in all the analysis and comment I saw about either the greek fiasco and now the refugee question. The europe has a disease and that is to always try to find cultural meaning and reasons to situations - the refusal of refugee from Poland and eastern countries is enlightened as a proof that those countries are "closed" (and every day I hear a "specialist" explaining on the radio/tv that they don't want to do that because of their "history" and their "culture") much like the entire greek question was presented as the opposition of two cultures (the southern mediteranean culture that "spend" and enjoy life and the northern rigorist culture that "save" and work).
In reality, it was in Germany's interests to prevent Greece from restructuring its debt, and it is now in Germany's interests to welcome migrants (due to its demography and lack of unemployment). But sure, facts are secondary, it must be compassion.
You have no facts, only suppositions. Explain to Nyxisto that his arguments are actually motivated by the forces of Historical Materialism, that you have, by force of theory and deduction, come to know his mind better than he does himself.
As with individuals, so with nations. The materialist superstructure of thoughts and sentiments is an intellectual fraud.
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On September 10 2015 07:43 warding wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2015 07:30 maybenexttime wrote:On September 10 2015 04:47 RvB wrote:On September 10 2015 00:11 dismiss wrote:On September 10 2015 00:00 RvB wrote:On September 09 2015 22:32 LegalLord wrote:On September 09 2015 22:17 RvB wrote:On September 09 2015 20:50 Faust852 wrote:On September 09 2015 20:45 Simberto wrote:
Of course a dictatorship can work well if you have a dictator who is both competent and benevolent.
The problem here is to make sure that every single dictator in your line of succession has both of these quantities. Because if you have a dictator who lacks any one of them, he can fuck the country up even more than a benevolent dictator can improve it. And in a dictatorship, there are no safeguards against that happening.
If you want a good example of this, take a look at the history of the Byzantine Empire. You have a long line of Emperors here, with the competent ones greatly increasing the prosperity and the safety of their citizens, and then a bad one turns up who manages to just fuck everything up totally. Yup, the difference now is that the rest of the world can have a big impact on the politic of a country, especially a small one. And a benevolent dictator would also understand when to step down and transition its country to a democracy or similar system. A better system than an autocracy though is a one party system, like China where if one leader were to be a fucking dumbass, you could evict him easily. Incredibly corrupt, censored press and the rule of law being a pipe dream. I don't see how this is a good system in any way. I don't really see how it's easy to get rid of the rulers either. Mao ruled untill his death, Deng was also an incredibly powerful figure untill his retirement and the currect president Xi is the first one to purge someone from the politburo standing commitee. You're missing the forest for the trees. In truth, corruption and censorship in the press is an ultimately minor issue compared to stability and a strong economy. It's a luxury that comes only after the necessities are satisfied. And not sure why you think the rule of law isn't being respected, because to a very large extent it is. Sure, dictators can also make things a whole lot worse, while no person can make things a whole lot worse in a democracy. I will also note that it's unlikely that any person will make things significantly better in a democracy. In short, that sounds like a system that works when things are already stable, which is exactly how it works in the real world. Corruption and censorship are hardly minor issues although I agree food on the table comes first. Anyway you're assuming one party rule is better for the economy than a democracy something not true according to this paper: We provide evidence that democracy has a significant and robust positive effect on GDP. Our empirical strategy relies on a dichotomous measure of democracy coded from several sources to reduce measurement error and controls for country fixed effects and the rich dynamics of GDP, which otherwise confound the effect of democracy on economic growth. Our baseline results use a linear model for GDP dynamics estimated using either a standard within estimator or various different Generalized Method of Moments estimators, and show that democratizations increase GDP per capita by about 20% in the long run. These results are confirmed when we use a semiparametric propensity score matching estimator to control for GDP dynamics. We also obtain similar results using regional waves of democratizations and reversals to instrument for country democracy. Our results suggest that democracy increases future GDP by encouraging investment, increasing schooling, inducing economic reforms, improving public good provision, and reducing social unrest. We find little support for the view that democracy is a constraint on economic growth for less developed economies. www.nber.orgA lot of China's super growth is also because of being massively depressed after Mao's era and them simply playing catch-up. Really what rule of law is there in China? The courts are massively corrupt and you basically need party connections to get anything done. The current president is kicking out corrupted member by shovel.
You should also mixed your feeling against China with a bit of rationality. China is at 1.35 billion inhabitants, with a lot of ethnicities, and a lot of disparity in ressources. It's really playing a civ game in its hardest mode, yet with the burden of the massive real death that any bad decision could ensue.
China is evolving at a huge pace, yet still projecting very far into the future. Having a single party leading a country of this size will obviously reak of corruption, yet it is definitly the only system viable until all the disparities are evened out.
China is investing massively in renewable energies, isn't that much into pressuring people with laws. They are really shitty about freedom of expression and stupid in a lot of way, but currently, getting a full on democracy in China would be neigh impossible. It needs to raise a lot of standard which is ficking hard to do at this level.
Mao was long ago, Deng did ok to redress China.
Let's just say that currently, China is leveling the ground to a potential democracy in the incoming 50 years, in my opinion. The curent president is kicking out corrupt political opponents by the shovel yes. His allies not so much. Anyway I'm not saying the one party system is all bad since they obviously also brought some good stuff. But calling it better than democracy when seeing all the massive problems it brings (bigger than we have in the west by a long shot) does not make any sense to me. I think it's more about evaluating it in a comparative context. Do you think China would have done better/similar under a democratic government overall? How about for let's say the decade post revolution/civil war, what's the impact of the great leap? If things would have worked out in a democratic society with great civil liberties, obviously that'd be preferable. We'd have to weight the potential societal improvements against the likelihood of a country regressing because of political instability. It's probably impossible to statistically quantify that to a degree at which it'd make sense though. : / China does have a country which we can compare it to. Since the alternative to the communist party state which we have now would've been the KMT which fled to Taiwan. It's obviously not a perfect comparison but it's the best we've got. In the end they did a lot better both economically and politically. So yes I do think China would've fared way better under an alternative government than they did under the communist party. This is a joke, right? The population of China is some 60 times larger. How on earth are they comparable? This doesn't necessarily matter. If Taiwan had China's population and followed the same policy and China had Taiwan's population and followed the same policy, Taiwan would still be vastly richer, per capita, than China.
Care to elaborate what policies you mean? Because as far as I know, post-Deng China used very similar policies to Taiwan during the years of its "economic miracle". Both heavily relied on indicative planning, used import substitution, subsidized key, prospective sectors of economy, and so on. They certainly seem to have more in common than either of them does with policies advised by the Washington Consensus.
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My point was merely that the population size is not a very significant factor when analyzing the impact of economic policy (except in cases like very small countries with a lot of mineral wealth/oil). I have no intention of getting stuck on another debate over trade liberalization on this thread.
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On September 11 2015 06:38 WhiteDog wrote:
In reality, it was in Germany's interests to prevent Greece from restructuring its debt, and it is now in Germany's interests to welcome migrants (due to its demography and lack of unemployment). But sure, facts are secondary, it must be compassion.
The refugees are here. we can ignore them, shoot down their boats, or do the only humane thing which is grant them asylum. They are not going to go away and we can't turn Europe into a fortress and we really shouldn't even if we could. The question is not if, but how to distribute the refugee stream over Europe.
That you smell some kind of German plot behind literally everything is fucking hilarious. There is a war in Syria going on, people will flee the country no matter if it is "in our interest" or not.
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EPT
