The hell hole that is Cuba

[Christians4LessGvt]

No capilatist country has EVER managed a growth rate of over 7 for 20 years without a bust.

There has never been a capitalist country with so many consumers and coming from such
a large mass scale disastrous economic starting point of no-where to go but up.

After WWII the Japanese embraced all the new technologies from the West, mainly from the United States.
Be it automobiles, television, or electronics.
The Japanese not only adopted those technologies, but in some cases improved upon them.
It is easy to fill your factories if you don't have to invent or develop new products, you can simply copy them.
We see exactly the same thing happening in China....

China will have a bust, and since China does everything in a big way....lookout when their "bust" happens!

Many say we are already witnessing the end of the Chinese economic miracle.
Dirt cheap labor has built China's economic miracle.
Chinese manufacturing workers sweat all day for a small fraction of the cost of their American or German competitors.
The workers in the "workers paradise" will soon tire of slave labor wages & start demanding more than they already have.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I have a wife whose parents have lived all their lives in mainland China.  The husband worked in a factory, the wife in some neighborhood organization. They have one other daughter, so the 'one child policy' did not seem to apply to them.  Since my friend and his wife were married five years ago, they have come to the US to take care of the kids three times. Each time they paid for the ticket. Recently they paid $18,000 to buy their daughter a van. They own their own apartment in Tsing Tao (the city where the beer is brewed) and they retired when they were FIFTY.  They saved their money and invested it, I assume very wisely. Who gets to retire at fifty in the US?

So, please, you do not know what the poo you are talking about.
After WWII, the Philippines was a poor country where most of the people were peasants, just like China  in 1950. There was no Chairman Mao with disastrous programs like 'the Great Leap Forward' or the 'Cultural Revolution' in the Philippines, just a string of US approved dictators. And what is the Philippines today?  A poor country where most of the people are still peasants.

The difference is that the leaders of the PRC understood more about how to use capitalism as a tool for development than the capitalists themselves. If you study the history of the US since Independence, about every seven to ten years there is a bust, a crisis, a recession or a depression. And the US has LOTS more resources than China.

[Christians4LessGvt]

So, please, you do not know what the poo you are talking about.

Because I read and study a situation and come to a different conclusion than you
doesn't mean it is of lesser value than your opinion because you happen to "know someone from there".
I also know a guy that toured China in 2011 extensively before he started his post-graduate studies
and he said that much of it is a "F-ing Shit Hole" and millions appeared to be living "at least" a century
behind most Western countries....China sits around #90 on the UN Human Development Index!
BTW....Hong Kong who didnt have to live under CommiNuttiness sits at #15 in the world!
Hello Earth To Reality....Hong Kong #15......China around #90.....ANY QUESTIONS?
Freaking #90!.....but XO pretends China and Cuba are oh so great...
when in reality they are freaking shit-holes when taken in full context.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index

[kimba1]

Not really sure  developement index is a true measure if a place is a hellhole. Does hawaii have a high rating?

Pretty sure the carribean will have a low index and people leave the regular u.s. To live there.

[Plane]

China had famines on a regular basis since before Jeezus. If the famine you are talking about was worse, it was only worse in the sense that more people starved,.......

Hahahaha, yes that is exactly how it was worse than any other famine the world has ever known.

Matter of fact , the most amazing part of it is how well the facts were covered over, a greater body count than the war in Europe for WWII and it was a secret for decades.

If there was a worse famine as far as a greater percent of a smaller population, I would still give the prize for worst manager of food to Mao.

Stalin is a strong contender , but the numbers still put Mao in the lead.

What was the rate of economic growth in China from the late Fifties to the middle Seventies?

I really think that China could have been growing this strong two decades earlier , if it had not been busy being very purely communist.

[Christians4LessGvt]

Not really sure  developement index is a true measure if a place is a hellhole.

It is a credible in-depth measure of a country's development.
China has improved from hellhole status but is still a poor country...
Over 300 million Chinese live on less than $2 a day.

Pretty sure the carribean will have a low index and people leave the regular u.s. To live there.

Of course...some can live like a King with a lot less money in some beautiful places
in some part because some of the places you refer to have a large native populations living in poverty.

[kimba1]

But no country has homogenous development with the possible exception of s. Korea and japan. America has people poor enough that a down tree is considered of value.

China has greater manufacturing greater internet than the United States and even if it had star trek level tech but due to the sheer population size it's index will likely not move very much.

Yes the carribean has great poverty but nobody is starving . I've been there and it has alot of free food growing wild there  . The climate makes the need for shelter minimul. I joke the. Only reason people work is to pay for the cellphones

[Xavier_Onassis]

There are some seriously hungry people in the Caribbean. The tourist areas are much more prosperous than the outback. There are lots of bananas, but the rice is imported, and that is the major part of the diet.

China in 1950 had a much greater population than it did at the time of previous famines, that is why more people starved. The point is that people are not starving now, and live is improving for almost everyone.

[Plane]

   Yes , there will never be the largest famine ever in Belieze, because the numbers are not there.

   But the point is that Communism was the actual reason for this famine , there was not a food shortage .
     The runner up famine in the Soviet Union was happening with no food shortage as well.

     Just if you want to bend your opponent , preventing him from eating is effective.

     And the point really is that China made no "progress" while Mao was alive , when the government removed just some of its restrictions the progress surge was like the scene when Forrest Gump lost his braces.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Mao knew how to win a Revolution, he did not know how to manage a country. A country as huge as China probably cannot be micromanaged to the degree that Mao wanted. 

The trouble with ideologues is that they always think that ideology is so morally pure that it must be followed rather than actually trying to find a solution that actually WORKS.

The same attitude that caused Mao to fail would cause Republican "Let the Market Rule" advocates to fail. They do not give a shit whether 95% of everything belongs to 1% of the population: they will only claim that that particular 1% is such an assortment of geniuses that they SHOULD own everything, and that to deny them their God-given right to own everything will cause a breakdown and collapse of the economy, because "The Market" knows best.

Ted Cruz is the best example of this ideological point of view, but I doubt that he believes his own bullshit.
He prefers to proclaim "I don't believe  that God is through with America yet", as though somehow God is working through him to put the "right people" in that "Shining City on the Hill".

[Plane]

The trouble with ideologues is that they always think that ideology is so morally pure that it must be followed rather than actually trying to find a solution that actually WORKS.

I like your point there.

The same attitude that caused Mao to fail would cause Republican "Let the Market Rule" advocates to fail. They do not give a shit whether 95% of everything belongs to 1% of the population: they will only claim that that particular 1% is such an assortment of geniuses that they SHOULD own everything, and that to deny them their God-given right to own everything will cause a breakdown and collapse of the economy, because "The Market" knows best.

 
The government is depending on these people , they can't have many fewer without changing our tax system.

Would you vote for someone who used sheer political pull to lift themselves from the Hoi Poloi to the top of the first percent ?

[Xavier_Onassis]

The government is NOT depending on these people. Many of them have their money keeping Matt Romney's money company in the Cayman Islands. Romney paid at most 14% of his income in taxes.

[Plane]

The government is NOT depending on these people. Many of them have their money keeping Matt Romney's money company in the Cayman Islands. Romney paid at most 14% of his income in taxes.

Even though this is true of great fortunes like John Kerry's , most of the income tax is drawn from the upper crust.
If there was no cheating , the government would just take more, but never enough.

I doubt that there is really any government program to kill off its golden goose flock, they probably morn each ones passing. Especially those who have younger wives.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Taxing people above 14% is not "killing them off". Don;t be absurd.

[Plane]

Of course not, it is more like milking the heard.

They morn each one that they loose.

Our government would like it fine if it could be much more socialist, and a stronger uppercrust would be the foundation of greater taxation. Great for those on the receiving end but...

   It can be overdone!, and the nature of government is greed , so when a famous Frenchman would rather be a Russian perhaps there was too much?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9rard_Depardieu



    American citizens are not doing this in any significant number, but this is possible, after all it was escaping bad government that brought half of our ancestors here in the first place.