As long as i have been alive, we have lambasted the inevitable failures of centrally planned economies. Frankly, Now It is an unexamined truism. Lets discuss this. What i see is that china has had spectacular economic performance over the last 30 years.... and they have done this with a massive amount of central economic planning. Singapore is another example of a highly successful country with a large role for central planning. Many people refer to the notably successful Scandinavian countries as being socialist...which implies a pretty significant role for the government Recently, i was listening to a german video which was talking about the adoption of electric cars. Basically this video had germans telling how china’s centrally planned economy was able to move much faster on such initiatives to implement new technologies as compared to the german economy.... which the video presented as dithering. Likewise if we look at mobile phone technologies.,. China has a clear lead in 5g.... and huawei phones appear equally good, and much cheaper than american phones. China is building a large network of bullet trains. And the Shanghai skyline looks spectacular Of course china also has problems.... i am sure many posters will race to describe thos problems. But given where china was 30 years ago.... and where they are now.... and the speed of their economy moving into the future..... it seems hard to describe what they are doing as a failure
You're using an example (China) that achieved a great deal of economic progress after it let up on centralized planning. Although nominally a communist country, China has been opening up to a private economy since the 1980's, however the government still is able to direct, and claim part ownership in, private firms. The ancient Chinese secret for their economy is corporate syndicalism, or in common parlance, fascism. Fascist economies have private property and private companies, but may be directed and controlled by a central government. This is a simplification of course since there are a lot of other factors involved in China's success, but that's what their system most closely resembles. So are you advocating for Fascism?
China is more like a centrally-owned economy, not so much centrally controlled. (Well, at least when it comes to their economy) The executives on state-run company boards are there to maximize profits for their individual companies they run, so it's very much market incentivized. Even if the government exerts direct control over them.
I'll also point out that not all Chinese citizens can afford to live in wealthy cities like Shanghai. Chinese people break cities in their country down into First Tier, Second Tier, and Third Tier, and there's a huge amount of competition from Chinese people trying to live in First Tier cities where the best opportunities and resources are. Many have to settle for Second or Third Tier, despite their best efforts. The people who move to and can manage to stay in cities like Beijing or Shanghai are not average Chinese people. They are typically the more successful ones. That's part of what makes these cities so prosperous, it's not just the cities, it's the people who can live there. (It's not necessarily easy to find a good paying job, find housing or afford the high cost of living in these cities, and China has a billion people so there's a lot of competition)
China is not a centrally planned economy. It is a market economy with government influence via majority stake in specific enterprises. Singapore is about as far from a centrally-planned economy as one can get. It's practically been characterized as a "free-market economy." And Scandinavian countries aren't socialist; they're welfare states. If they are examples of Centrally-Planned economies, they're not the ones you've listed...
Let mr get this straight A one party communist country that basically has no elections is not a centrally planned economy But Obama was running a socialist regime? https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulro...esident-obama-truly-a-socialist/#76e3c782bf2a Kinda interesting how the goal posts move around he economy of Singapore is best described as a mixed economy. Although the country strongly advocates free-market policies and practices, government intervention is also evident in macroeconomic management and major factors of production such as land, labour and capital resources. So, is it fair to say that you agree that such policies are not inherently destructive for an economy and those of us who propose such policies for the usa are neithe idiots nor traitors So you also agree that welfare states can be very successful I am fine with your analysis So long as you will apply a similar analysis to similar policies advocated in the usa Welcome aboard friend
Centrally planned economies have the greatest potential for efficiency. If the planners are competent and benevolent, there will be great prosperity. But thats basically the 'good king' theory applied to a commitee dynamic, and as we all (hopefully) understand, 'good' kings (and thereby, 'good' commitee members) are a one in a million. With rare exception, those who seek power cannot be trusted with it, and those who can be trusted with it do not seek it. And regardless the intent of the planner(s), efficiency can only ever be acheived at the cost of personal, individual choice, oka liberty.
None of this has anything to do with what I said... Did you Google this, because non of this is accurate. The Singaporean Ministry of Trade clearly defines the system they adopt, which is a Free Market System. What policies are you referring to? You're starting off with a premise that certain nations have a Centrally-Planned System, therefore, they are successful. However, none of the nations you have mentioned have centrally-planned economies. Your argument is flawed. Only if they're based on an economic foundation of Free-Market Capitalism, which is what the Nordic Model is.
Yes i did google it economy. East AsiaEdit The development models of the East Asian Tiger economies involved varying degrees of economic planning and state-directed investment in a model sometimes described as state development capitalism or the East Asian Model. The economy in both Malaysia and South Korea were instituted by a series of macroeconomic government plans (First Malaysia Plan and Five-Year Plans of South Korea) that rapidly developed and industrialized their mixed economies. The economy of Singapore was partially based on government economic planning that involved an active industrial policy and a mixture of state-owned industry and free-market economy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_planning And last time i checked, so is ours So why doest the gop say otherwise any time democrats are in office What you are missing is that central planning can include capitalist components... a mixed economy. I do not make the argument that central planning must be “pure” Otoh, free market advocates do demand purity. Anything less than free markets is loathsome socialism, a welfare state.... any taint of central planning is abhorrent.... even though there is ample evidence that mixed economies are the best solution
I see some problems with central planning here. First this is one very large rather unwieldy economy. Its got a lot of moving parts throughout a wide geographical area, a lot of investment vehicles, lot of foreign capital , and complex interactions between Wall street and main street as well as a very diverse industrial and agricultural base. Then we have all those political figures with their hands on different gears including 50 governors, 50 state legislatures, a complex governing body in the Fed with its 12 reserve banks, a President and Congress. Pushing through a single central plan would take an unimaginable amount of political capital, and a hell of a lot of time. What really screws all this up is that the hands on the gears will keep changing as well as the economic philosophies of each pair. The ink on the central plan would not dry, before a new planner would alter the entire direction!
The real issue is that a central planed economy eliminates individual freedoms. It mandates a totalitarian system in which the state owns the people under it. That is always going to breed contempt and revolt against the system.
Your wikipedia source even notes that Singapore is a Free-Market economy. I don't know where you've learned to do research... It's not very good... You're not making good arguments, at all. None of the economies you've mentioned are Centrally Planned. Central-planning implies that the government makes decisions regarding the manufacturing of products. None of the economies you've mentioned does this. Socialism implies that the means of production publicly own. None of the economies you've mentioned does this.
Total ignorance of course!!. Over the last 40 years China gave up central planing and that caused a total turn around in its economy. Notice the way a liberal will make a conservative feel like a kindergarten teacher? Here are 3 books with which to begin your education: "Capitalism With Chinese Characteristics" "How China Became Capitalist" In his new book titled Markets over Mao: The rise of private businesses in China, Lardy argues that even though SOEs still enjoy monopoly positions in some key sectors in China, such as energy and telecommunications, their role in the overall economy has diminished significantly over the years. Here are some of the facts he presents to back his thesis: in 2011, China’s state-controlled firms only accounted for about a quarter of the country’s industrial output; and their share in exports has dropped to about 11% today; in 2012, state firms were only responsible for about one-tenth of fixed investment in manufacturing. And in terms of employment, SOEs employed about 13% of China’s labor force in 2011, a dramatic decline compared with the 60% figure recorded in 1999.
You overlook all the failures, which are not publicized or highlighted precisely because they are failures. The underlying problems have not changed. The two primary problems is a lack of analyzed up-to-date information and the inability to meet 100% of the goals 100% of the time. Why do you think governments cannot predict recessions? Because even with up-to-the-minute information, that information must be analyzed to evaluate its meaning, and it takes about 3 months to do that, at which time the up-to-the minute information has changed. That's why. That's also why both governments and economists are unable to predict anything. Why do think you governments are largely powerless to end recessions? In an 8 month recession, it's over before the government even has a chance to analyze the economic data, and then after analyzing the economic data, you have to decide what policies should be put in place, and that's not instantaneous. That was in part the Soviet Union's problem --- obtaining real accurate data that hadn't been falsified and analyzing it -- and the other part was market conditions. Look at the 1970s. Soviet planning assumed a certain amount of cash revenues based on the sale of oil on the global market. When oil prices crashed, those revenues never materialized, and it threw their entire economy into a tizzy. To make up for lost revenues, the Soviets diverted oil to the global market for sale. Soviet oil was allotted in barrels to the military, aviation, rail, transportation, agriculture, petro-chemicals and consumer use (yes, gasoline). The Soviets chose to divert oil from transportation, agriculture, petro-chemicals and consumer use. That means no gasoline for Russians, and it means no diesel for farmers, so they can't harvest their crops and it wouldn't matter if they could harvest their crops, because trucks didn't have diesel to haul their crops. The Soviets let their grains rot in the fields rather than harvest it, and then used the extra cash from diverting oil to the global market to buy grain from the US, which at the time required Congressional approval to sell grain to the Soviet Union. Problems like that will continually plague planned economies. Perhaps one day in the far distant Future, maybe 100 years from now, when data is collected in real time and analyzed by machine learning computers a planned economy may be possible, but it will still suffer failures.
Do unplanned economies have downsides? Do they ever suffer failures. Should you be interested, i could find a link to 100+ years of crashes and economic cycles in the USA economy.
China is a mess, and only successful because it's been sucking money out of the American economy. It has a huge amount of debt & corruption and vast numbers of empty real estate.. ghost cities... nothing successful about that. A successful economy keeps more money circulating inside than what flows out... iow... earning more from exports and spending less on imports would be considered successful.
Who cares? This thread is about centrally planned economies. Planned economies also experience recessions. There were plenty of recessions in the Soviet Union and East Bloc, but they were hidden from public for propaganda reasons. 1984 was a banner year in East Germany. For the first time ever, people were allowed to choose the color of their car. They could choose from a not too bad brown color, an ugly green, an okay blue and a dull red. Black was reserved only for party officials, and white wasn't allowed because the pigment for white paint requires titanium which the East Germans couldn't afford to buy. How successful can a planned economy be if it cannot even afford to buy titanium for white paint pigment? Not very. It worked like this: You go to an office -- no need for an auto dealership with a show-room because you have no choice and the economy is so poorly planned there aren't extra cars for display -- and fill out the paperwork and start making payments on your car. After you made all the payments, you got a postcard in the mail telling you where you can pick up your car and before 1984 you would pray it was the color you wanted. How successful can a planned economy be if you have no choice in vehicles, no choice in vehicle color and you have to pay for it before you can drive? Not very.
If a point is made about the defects of centrally planned economies.... it is reasonable to wonder if such criticisms are common to all economic systems... since surely no one claims no perfection of centrally planned economies... but we also have to consider whether non centrally planned alternatives are a superior option. I note that discussions trumps shortcomings are met with digressions into clinton being an even worse option. So as we are evaluating any option, we must necessarily consider whether there is a better proposed option. And in that sense, it is Worthwhile to simultaneously consider whether alternatives are better... or simply suffer from a different set of down sides Yes, Although i would note that the planned economy i am now considering is china and singapore So lets focus on those exemplars Not relevant to china Well.. congratulations on eviscerating the USSR NOW LETS Discuss china and singapore
There are some historically more telling facts. The first and foremost of which is that China had no Foreign Trade to speak of before the early 1980s. What happened? Nothing special politically in China, except that an innovator took control in China and decided to bring Chinese exports to the world. Why did that work? Because by the 1990s the production of goods particularly in both the US and Europe were of both high-quality but of high-cost. And that is across the board. Meaning what? At first, China could not compete on hi-end, well-engineered products. It did not have the knowhow. It could compete on pots-'n-pans however. It is in the lower section of exports that it took a foothold in both the US and Europe (in the 1980s/90s). Both of which looked upon this notion favorably because they felt it made China less belligerent - after all, the war in Vietnam was largely financed by China's assistance to North Vietnam. Within ten-to-fifteen years however China went upmarket in various other manufactured products. Howzat? They had obtained the knowhow from the West and simply applied it in their own products. Which were produced still with much lower production costs. So they continued to flood World Markets. (Moreover, China had the good sense to move production of some vegetable/plant products into Africa - which it needed due to a very large population and not all that much arable land in the country.) But that was in the first decennial of the new century (2000/2010) - and today we are almost tow decades later. What have the Chinese done during this period? They've gone even further upmarket into the hi-tech branch of computers and smartphones. (For which there is also a strong internal Demand.) None of the above is surprising. Except for its execution, with both vigor and a low-cost money that also made good-products at attractive prices. Will it last forever? It could for as long as both European and American companies ship off production to China, whilst keeping product-design and marketing at home. Which is the case in both the US and Europe. What can stop China? Both European and US higher import duties - which Donald Dork is applying. So, really, given the above I see no "magic" in what China has done. Just a lot of good-sense and persistence. And immense success since they are now second after the US in World GDP-ranking and larger than Japan and Germany and most of the rest of Europe. And I say that - for a behemoth of an economy still under the control of a Communist government but patently capitalist market-economy - is very dangerous to the rest of the world due to its still very low labor-costs. Let the rest of us, I say, therefore take note ...
Yes, what a "mess" with the second largest GDP in the world! (See here.) Jealous, are we? No? Then open your eyes. There is no debt/corruption in the US ... ?
From here:Trends in Gini coefficient of family income in China and the United States Quote: From here: Gini Coefficient* by Country US Gini Coefficient = 41.5% China = 38.6% Canada = 34% France = 32.3% Germany = 31.4% Denmark: 28.5% 'Nuff said ... ? *Gini Coefficient = A commonly-used measure of income-inequality (wage disparity) that condenses the entire income distribution for a country into a single number between 0 and 1; the higher the number, the greater the degree of income inequality
IN a wholistic sense.... money is not everything But, evaluated on a purely capitalistic basis.... money is everything. So if one is to evaluate the success of china from a capitalist perspective....l think it it pretty hard call it a failure
Reading this tells me you subscribe to the Ultra Neocon. right wing think tank writing, or FOX news. One in the same. Yes, China spent money building GHOST cities. They were not built, just to build, but to create housing when and if it takes off. I only wish we had did that with OUR Trillions in debt. In place of it, we enriched a few thousand people, built up military, bailed out banksters, did I mention making very few really rich ? What you wrote is mindless reading from the 50+ right wing think tanks, then spread as NEWS reports. Goog. right wing think tanks, there are masses of them, and they pay people to write for the republicans, they pay people to post on site like this to keep the status Quo. That is low wages, money flowing up, and keep the Gullible Christians buying the propaganda. If you were worth 25B and were told you need to NOW pay half in Tax or 12.5B. Would it not be cheaper to take 2B and spread it between 20 thinktanks ? Have them write over and over again how it is unfair to tax the rich. That the RICH already pay "MOST OF" the tax. That taxing one man more than another MAKES NO SENSE... all of the same stuff they have been writing since their inception in the 1980s. China will pass us and they will have guys like you writing "it isnt america's fault we fell behind, it is china's fault, they stole from us" That is the joke, we are suppose to be the free country and they the communist. Yet, we are MORE controlled than they are. Nope, they cant speak out against tyranny. So what, they dont need too, they are no where near corrupt as we are. Not even close. Japan is the same, they care about their people. We say we care about Americans and America, right up until it is time to show it, then they pocket the money. Please study and make sure what you write is real.
