Also, we can look at another alternative economy for comparison. Quality of life in China continues to steadily improve and the government is actively working on doing things like eliminating poverty, creating public infrastructure, providing healthcare, housing, food, and education for all citizens.

Chinese government practically eliminated poverty, and in fact China is the only place in a world where any meaningful poverty reduction is happening. If we take China out of the equation poverty actually increased in real terms:

If we take just one country, China, out of the global poverty equation, then even under the $1.90 poverty standard we find that the extreme poverty headcount is the exact same as it was in 1981.

The $1.90/day (2011 PPP) line is not an adequate or in any way satisfactory level of consumption; it is explicitly an extreme measure. Some analysts suggest that around $7.40/day is the minimum necessary to achieve good nutrition and normal life expectancy, while others propose we use the US poverty line, which is $15.

China does massive investments in infrastructure. They used more concrete in 3 years than US in all of 20th century and built 27,000km of high speed rail in a decade. 90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it's the most populous country on the planet. Finally, Chinese system results in high social mobility unlike western capitalist alternatives.

[–] sparseMatrix@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

When I was a child, a lot of things now made primarily in China and Taiwan were made in the United States or Japan. Things of particularly good quality and of advanced technology came from the US; cheap trinkets came from Japan, and China was literally starving. When we wouldn't finish our meals as children, our mothers would literally tell us 'there is a starving child somewhere in China right now who would love to have (insert child-hated food here).

China does so well because in the 70s and 80s the large corporations shipped manufacturing jobs and technologies to Japan and China. China literally does so well because Americans who needed things made got too greedy. Since then much of the skilled working class in America has disappeared, because if there are not jobs for you then what good is training and education? Until Americans stop subsidizing Asia without consumer-driven outsourced manufacturing, China will continue to do well. After that? Chinese policy will really matter to the Chinese, who still have not developed the means to feed their vast populations.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Large corporations shipped manufacturing to plenty of countries, yet they clearly haven't developed the same way China has. For a direct comparison, just look at China and India. Both started roughly in the same place in the 50s. Clearly, the system does matter quite a bit.