Despite the US’s economic success, income inequality remains breathtaking. But this is no glitch – it’s the system
The Chinese did rather well in the age of globalization. In 1990, 943 million people there lived on less than $3 a day measured in 2021 dollars – 83% of the population, according to the World Bank. By 2019, the number was brought down to zero. Unfortunately, the United States was not as successful. More than 4 million Americans – 1.25% of the population – must make ends meet with less than $3 a day, more than three times as many as 35 years ago.
The data is not super consistent with the narrative of the US’s inexorable success. Sure, American productivity has zoomed ahead of that of its European peers. Only a handful of countries manage to produce more stuff per hour of work. And artificial intelligence now promises to put the United States that much further ahead.
This is not to congratulate China for its authoritarian government, for its repression of minorities or for the iron fist it deploys against any form of dissent. But it merits pondering how this undemocratic government could successfully slash its poverty rate when the richest and oldest democracy in the world wouldn’t.
Seattle alone has spent billions specifically on poverty and yet there is a very large homeless population.
Probably has to do more with the fact that the U.S. can’t force people out of poverty and sugar coat their numbers because there are a lot of checks and balances unlike a communist ran nation.
Apparently some users have misplaced the definition of communism or maybe are having brain farts from huffing too much copium, holy shit…
you are forgetting the fact that red states are literally truncating thier homeless to blue states burdening them, its not by accident theres sudden increases in the homeless population year after year.
I would agree with you on the information control that China has, however I would not call them Communists. They are definitely capitalists. It’s just capitalism without the perceived freedom lol
It is officially a “people’s democratic dictatorship” and a unitary state, where the CCP has a monopoly on political power.
Wtf do you mean “I would not call them communists”?
Do you call cats puppies too while you are at it?
People here really are out of touch with reality, holy shit…
They have “communist” in their name “Chinese Communist Party”, but they aren’t communist by definition.
You can say we are out of touch with reality but that does not make your reality actual reality. To be a communist country you cannot have billionaires. If you have billionaires then not everyone is equal. That is the end of the conversation
Communism mandates a single-party government, which inevitably becomes a corrupt dictatorship that does not follow the idealized plan. But that’s the problem: the plan is too idealistic and doesn’t account for human psychology. So, you can’t just say, “oh, that society isn’t communist because the outcomes aren’t right. Name one example of a communist country that actually produces the results you expect to see.
Not everything inevitably becomes corrupt. I agree that it is very idealistic for humanity. Greed is far too Irresistible.
Just because there have been no successful forms of pure communism, Doesn’t mean we can start calling China actual communism. That’s changing where the bar is.
China is SINO or, CINO I suppose in this context.
No, see, what you’re doing is making a No True Scotsman argument. Nothing is communism to you unless it achieves the pristine results dictated by the ideal, so any actual attempt that fails, you dismiss as “not communism,” rather than admit that communism is a flawed system that has always produced bad results at scale.
People say this forgetting that ‘Scotsman’ has a specific definition and the analogy of the No True Scotsman does not involve someone just calling themselves Scottish.
What you’re doing is seeing me call myself a Scotsman, seeing someone else say I have no Scottish heritage and have never been to Scotland, and you’re saying to the second person “No True Scotsman!”
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it calling itself a shark doesn’t magically make it a Scotsman.
Or do you think the Nazis were socialists?
So you would say the United States is a Democracy?
No, it’s a republic.
That just defines an authoritarian regime, not a communist society. We’re not out of touch of reality, we just know our definitions.
Communism is when the state gives you a home and this is a bad thing
Okay bud
That’s a Cliff’s Notes, high-level, distilled to one sentence version of the definition. The reality of what communism entails is much larger than that.
And the Chinese CCP is as much a communist government as the United States government is a democracy.
Whoosh
Ok, maybe I didn’t get the context of what you were saying. There’s a lot of craziness happening in these comments
That’s because the billions spent on homelessness/poverty doesn’t go to those experiencing it but to large non-profits so they can get their reservations at 5* restaurants.
Seattle specifically is facing multiple lawsuits such as Kicheon V Seattle for violating those “checks and balances”. However those violations always seem to be in one direction.