Ok so let’s look at the countries highest on the Economic Freedom index.
Hong Kong tops the list right? It has what you would expect...
Capital has flowed in and normally that would have pushed blue collar workers and children and elderly out, with people commuting 2 hours each way as in SF. But since these are islands, the poor live in coffin like shoebox apartments, far smaller than anything allowed in US cities. Millions form entire communities of poverty around there, raise children there etc.
How large an effect are we talking? 20% of Hong Kong is below the poverty line. I did the math and any four people below the poverty line cannot together afford a studio apartment in normal areas of Hong Kong.
Hong Kong has had to aggressively increase its welfare and safety nets. It has over 40 public hospitals and 20 private ones.
Suffice it to say that around the world, government-run and single-payer healthcare and schooling has been compatible with high scores on economic freedom. It’s only in the USA do we have this ridiculous fearmongering about that.
Hong Kong has, in many measures, a very strong safety net and strong public sector. Ditto for Singapore etc. And larger countries in Scandinavia, and Canada and Australia etc. are similar.
Much of the centrally coordinated infrastructure investment has paid off - in the US we had the interstate highway system, China lifted more people out of poverty in 20 years through centrally planned “ghost cities” than any place on Earth ever, and the USSR did a great job of increasing literacy, electricity, bringing universities, rights to women and minorities, to countries like Uzbekistan and that whole region. Child mortality declined greatly, as people got better access to healthcare.
Not to say that everything is black and white, but “economic freedom” and capitalism isn’t the only way science and technology and prosperity moves forward.