Maths + Poverty + Wealth = Ignorance

antrobus

zagubov wrote: »

In what way?

The prediction was "that eventually communist and capitalist countries would be neck-and-neck". That didn't happen. The communist countries ended up being so far behind the capitalist countries that they gave up on communism and took up capitalism instead.

Apart from North Korea and Cuba. And Cuba is on the verge of giving up.

Generali

antrobus wrote: »

The prediction was "that eventually communist and capitalist countries would be neck-and-neck". That didn't happen. The communist countries ended up being so far behind the capitalist countries that they gave up on communism and took up capitalism instead.

Apart from North Korea and Cuba. And Cuba is on the verge of giving up.

And North Koreans are starving to death in their millions.:mad::mad::mad:

antrobus

Generali wrote: »

And North Koreans are starving to death in their millions.:mad::mad::mad:

I'm not sure that there are any reliable statistics on the extent of poverty, wealth, or anything much in North Korea. The World Bank won't even hazard a guess as to their per capita GDP, although the CIA think it's about $1,800. Which compares rather unfavourably with its southern neighbour at about $33,000, putting it well ahead of many western countries. Such as Greece, for example.

Conrad

Why is it the subtext to all this is that having a western lifestyle equates with a better life?


I found Turkish rural peasants far happier, sipping home made wine and enjoying a smoke on their porch with neighbours after a day spent tending their peppers and melons. A stripped back fairly uncomplex life.


Is my life really so great what with it's complexity, legality, tax returns, general angst, direct debits, passwords and keeping up with the Jones's?
Most British people seem always to be wanting everything to be 'better', and endless futile quest. The NHS will never be good enough, how we deal with prisoners will never be good enough, we will still be saying an even better education service is needed a million years from now. We're when all said and done pretty infantile and greedy for all things to be 'better'.

zagubov

antrobus wrote: »

The prediction was "that eventually communist and capitalist countries would be neck-and-neck". That didn't happen. The communist countries ended up being so far behind the capitalist countries that they gave up on communism and took up capitalism instead.

Apart from North Korea and Cuba. And Cuba is on the verge of giving up.

Eastern Europe and Russia generally did give up on communism (in fact at one point I think it even banned the communist party), although the outcomes don't seem to have been equally good.

China brought in market mechanisms but I don't know how much of it is funded by state banks and whether the bulk of the workforce is employed in the private or state sector. Vietnam took a similar path. I hope Cuba brings in market reforms. Do they still have five-years plans and the like?

North Korea is a disaster masquerading as a country.

All these places are still constitutionally one-party states with sufficient control over society to change the ownership pattern on whim. I hope they continue with their market reforms, but it's not a given. I can't see their governments giving up their communist political structures after seeing what a mess Russia became.

antrobus

Conrad wrote: »

Why is it the subtext to all this is that having a western lifestyle equates with a better life?...

No, the subtext to all this is that having a western scale standard of living equates with the elmination of extreme poverty.

antrobus

zagubov wrote: »

Eastern Europe and Russia generally did give up on communism (in fact at one point I think it even banned the communist party), although the outcomes don't seem to have been equally good.

China brought in market mechanisms but I don't know how much of it is funded by state banks and whether the bulk of the workforce is employed in the private or state sector. Vietnam took a similar path.

They all abandoned communism aka the Bolshevik heresy.

zagubov wrote: »

...I hope Cuba brings in market reforms. Do they still have five-years plans and the like?

Cuba did have a five-years plan for market reforms, so I'd guess so.

zagubov wrote: »

...North Korea is a disaster masquerading as a country.

They have yet to abandon the Bolshevik heresy.

zagubov wrote: »

..
All these places are still constitutionally one-party states with sufficient control over society to change the ownership pattern on whim. I hope they continue with their market reforms, but it's not a given. I can't see their governments giving up their communist political structures after seeing what a mess Russia became.

The variety of political structures that currently exist in ex-communist countries, does not change the fact that they are ex-communist countries.

zagubov

antrobus wrote: »

They all abandoned communism aka the Bolshevik heresy.



Cuba did have a five-years plan for market reforms, so I'd guess so.



They have yet to abandon the Bolshevik heresy.



The variety of political structures that currently exist in ex-communist countries, does not change the fact that they are ex-communist countries.

Is your definition of being/staying or abandoning communism based on the changing ratio of the public sector to the private sector?

Loughton_Monkey

Generali wrote: »

.......The problem of inequality of wealth isn't so much that the rich have so much it's that the poor have so little. Almost everyone in the UK is in the richest 50% of the world's population as they have a positive net worth (DFW board members notwithstanding).

If you seriously want the problems of inequality of wealth to be fixed then you need to look a bit further than the 1% as to whose wealth is to be redistributed.

Or are we saying that the problem, if it is a problem, of wealth inequality only extends as far as Dover?

Personally, I see wealth inequality as less of a 'problem' and more of a necessary part of a world getting wealthier.

Comparing the wealth of countries is not very meaningful. It's like pointing at a household of brain surgeon father, top barrister mother, and 1 child, with another family of two unemployed parents with 6 children. Which of the two households will have the greatest average net worth per person? We can have all the social security you like (within reason) and the relative wealth position will change hardly at all.

If someone invented (God forbid!) some kind of "world benefits system" under which we 'taxed' rich countries at 20% of GDP and threw this money into the world's poorest nations, the cash would be quickly wasted, spent unnecessarily, and find its way back to the rich countries again.

When talking about those 85 or so wealthiest individuals in the world, nobody seems to audit trail how much of this is "share value" [or full ownership etc.] of large companies - and how much this combined investment brings in turnover, which pays a huge amount of wages, income, suppliers, and dividends to others......

I wouldn't mind betting that around 25% of the world population rely directly or indirectly on this 'invested wealth' to earn their own living..... and probably around half the public employees depend upon the taxes paid by these workers, their pension schemes, and [to a smaller extent] on the taxes paid by Google, Apple, Microsoft & Co.

antrobus

zagubov wrote: »

Is your definition of being/staying or abandoning communism based on the changing ratio of the public sector to the private sector?

My definition of 'communism' is irrelevant.

What was a 'communist country' in the 1980s is a matter of fact not opinion. It simply was the case that there were a number of countries who adopted the Marxist-Lenist state capitalist model, were ruled by parties that called themselves Communist, and were thus known as communist.

Therefore the prediction "that eventually communist and capitalist countries would be neck-and-neck" has turned out to be wrong. Had this chap with a "military background" qualified this statement by adding that "but only when communist states adopt methods of economic organisation that are quite different from the prevailing Marxist-Lenist orthodoxy" he'd have been half right. Had he added the further qualification, "and it will take some time, particularly in the case of China for example" then he might have qualified for a chocolate biscuit.

But was it was, he was just wrong.