On top of that they haven’t touched retirement age, so they have a lot of leverage there.
See http://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/75355
But I’m not an economist.
You also inflate asset bubbles, some Chinese property is as expensive as Silicon Valley or NYC, per square foot.
Wrong. Fake GDP. It's estimated that 1/3 of their GDP is wasteful government spending. Many of their provinces also have confessed to 20-30% fake GDP, thus another 1/3 of their gdp is fake. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-19/this-is-h... https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/new-study-shin... so we're looking at maybe 1-2% gdp growth, and maybe their GDP is only about 70% of what they claim (9T vs 13T)
> Their wages are steadily increasing.
Wrong. Chinese graduates salaries have fallen for second year in a row. https://www.ft.com/content/fb5865e4-4993-11e7-919a-1e14ce4af....
> Their internal market is the healthiest of any g20 economy
Wrong. Consumer spending growth declined. https://www.google.com/search?q=chinese+spending+down&rlz=1C... . Beijing rent increased 25% !!! in july year over year. That's not a healthy sign of any economy. https://www.ft.com/content/6324fc2a-a445-11e8-8ecf-a7ae1beff... . and now we know Chinese consumers are taking on too much personal debt https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-15/chinese-c...
And did you forget China is about to be hit with tariffs from US on 200B worth, soon to be 500B? when their economy is export oriented?
> Investments both internally and internationally are up
Wrong. Yuan has lost 12% this year. Chinese stock market has crashed 30% this year. That's not a sign of increasing FDI. that's FDI leaving and screaming
> On top of that they haven’t touched retirement age
Wrong. Chinese demographics looks horrible, and will reach peak in 2025. Their population will shrink 1/3 in the next 60 years.
https://www.businessinsider.com/these-chinese-cities-are-gho...
So, healthcare + education + military accounts for around 27% of GDP and about 5.2% weighted average growth for that 27%. US GDP is up 4.2% annualized for Q2 this year, so that growth in our 3 categories is only accounting for maybe a third of total GDP growth.
[1] https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2017/02/16/spending-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_spending_...
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/19/u-s-m...
(Though I acknowledge that it's a newish account... So I put much more credibility on the linked content. Anyway, you deal with this BS way more than anyone else, so major hat tip to you regardless - keep up the good work!)
The core issue is the word primarily. It's one thing to occasionally comment on the politicized topics that naturally come up on HN. That's what most users do and it's fine. But there's a different class of account that exists primarily to do this, pushing a political or ideological or national agenda. That is what we don't allow, as the site guidelines are careful to say. We have to draw a line somewhere, in order to prevent flamewars from taking over HN entirely, and experience has shown this 'primarily' test to be the best place to draw it.
The reason we draw the line this way is that there is a bimodal distribution of accounts and the two categories behave differently. People in the first group are motivated by intellectual curiosity, so post on a wide range of things and tend to post curious, factual, open-minded comments. People in the second group are fighting a war. That destroys the curiosity HN exists for. Indeed, that's the first thing it destroys, because the point of political battle is not to curiously meander, but to blast enemies. This site is for curious meandering.
This second type of account often comes armed with pre-existing talking points and links, which can look like contributing to good conversation, and sometimes add good information. But their fixation on an agenda and the intensity with which they seek to destroy other views instead of—let's say—dance with them, make their cumulative effect on HN not just negative but toxic.
Figuring out how to moderate this kind of thing without excluding politics altogether (which is undesirable and impossible anyway) is a challenge, and the observable difference between these two kinds of account turns out to be a useful heuristic. So when we notice an account that shows the telltale signs of being agenda-driven and guideline-breaking, we ask them not to do it. We try to explain why, and we ban them if they don't change.
There's an aspect of this that isn't publicly visible. It's not uncommon for people we've banned for abusing HN in this manner to create new accounts to continue doing it. So sometimes, when we bring this issue up with a new user, we're looking at more of a track record than might appear.
None of the above implies that an account is wrong in its views or that the topic at issue is unimportant. On the contrary, it's almost always very important and legitimately intense. That's actually why we have to moderate these forces on the site-in the literal sense of 'moderate'. Otherwise they would dominate everything, which would turn HN into a very different kind of forum. It would also quickly kill it as a place for thoughtful conversation.
More on this at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....