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Comment by assbuttbuttass | Hacker News Reader

This is a good article. But it's too kind to contemporary economics. Contemporary economics especially neoliberalism is simply a pseudo-scientific justification for crushing workers rights globally and maximizing profits for those at the very top.

Economists told us for decades that wages are tied to productivity, when all the data points in the exact opposite direction. Economists told us that opening up developing countries' markets would result in their development and increase in standard of living. How's that going in 2022?

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> How's that going in 2022?

It's brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty [0], drastically increased their life expectancies [1], and significantly improved their chances of making it to adulthood [2].

For more, see https://www.gapminder.org.

[0] https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$encodin...

[1] https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$encodin...

[2] https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$encodin...

If you're going to use those things as the yardstick for success, may I take a moment to point out that China has accomplished all that, much faster, on a much larger relative scale, via a distinctly non-neo-liberal economic system. (50x GDP/capita growth over the past 40 years, +13 years of life expectancy, a reduction in absolute poverty from 88% to 0.7%, etc, etc.)

But I generally don't see many Western economists singing their system's praises.

China did that by massively reducing the influence and scope of government control & influence over their markets. I don't care whether or not you call that "neoliberal" but it's the same root cause driving those improvements worldwide.

"Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" is just a euphemism for capitalism. Modern China isn't a democratic nation. but it is a capitalistic one by any standard.

The claims I made are not solely about China: they're true about very many other developing countries as well. See, for example, India.

That said, I would dispute the claim that China's economic system is distinctly non-neoliberal. In fact, most of the key elements of China's economic reform were about bringing it closer to neoliberalism rather than taking it further away.

> Economists told us for decades that wages are tied to productivity, when all the data points in the exact opposite direction.

That's because the data is based on salary and wages, when the actual number used needs to be "total compensation". Total compensation also includes so-called "employer paid" benefits. It includes other costly mandates required by regulation.

The other problem is productivity increases are very uneven. Productivity for some jobs has gone way up, for others it has not changes. The latter are not going to see compensation increases if their individual productivity did not rise.

Hasnt the economic story of 2020-2022 so far has not been "lets see what happens when we open up" but rather "lets see what happens when we close down"?

How does 2022 so far imply to you negative evidence of "here's what happens when you open economies?" I am sincerely curious.

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