In my CPPCC talk on New Year's Day in 1980, I talked about four guarantees, one of which was the enterprising spirit in hard struggle and plain living. Hard struggle and plain living are our traditions. From now on we should firmly grasp education in plain living, and we should grasp it for the next sixty to seventy years. The more developed our country becomes, the more important it is to grasp the enterprising spirit in plain living. Promoting the enterprising spirit in plain living will also be helpful toward overcoming corruption.
After the founding of the People's Republic, we promoted the enterprising spirit in plain living. Later on, when life became a little better, we promoted spending more, leading to waste everywhere. This, together with lapses in theoretical work and an incomplete legal system, resulted in breaches of the law and corruption.
Deng Xiaoping. JUNE 9 SPEECH TO MARTIAL LAW UNITS
http://tsquare.tv/chronology/Deng.html
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"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
So are you saying that all those "rags to riches" stories are lies?
Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
I was looking for something else, and came across this Deng Xiaoping's speech. I'll leave it without comment, since it's good by itself, and I don't know a thing about China anyway![]()
Name a poor country that actually practices capitalism.Originally posted by Joe King:
Ask a person in a poorer country if capitalism works, and you'll probably get a different answer.
Associate Instructor - Hofstra University
Amazon Top 750 reviewer - Blog - Unresolved References - Book Review Blog
Associate Instructor - Hofstra University
Amazon Top 750 reviewer - Blog - Unresolved References - Book Review Blog
Originally posted by Joe King:
No, I just don't think they are that common either. [referring to rags to riches stories]
The great theory behind capitalism is that if you work hard, life will be good. In a free market, that may well be true, but like all other perfect things, a free market does not exist. There are some people who manage, through hard work, to earn enough to have a really comfortable life, but for every one of those there will be many more people who work hard and don't get anywhere near the same reward and there are many people who do very little of use and get loads of money.
The other thing is that we are looking at capitalism from the view point of people for whom its worked. The average person in the west (particularly professionals as I imagine most people on this site are) are probably in the top 5% wealth wise of all the people in the world. Its not surprising that capitalism works for us, because we live in countries that either have a lot of resources, or a lot of historical trade links built up.
Ask a person in a poorer country if capitalism works, and you'll probably get a different answer.
Again, one of the great ideas behind capitalism is that a global free market will, through market forces, allow these poorer countries to improve, but again there is no such thing as a global free market.
Capitalism may be great on paper, but I'm worried that its a good tool being used in the wrong place, and that at some point in the future we may need something else. The key reason behind this is that we measure the success of our economies by how much they grow, but there is only so far that they can grow. Eventually they will reach a point where they cant grow any more, and then we'll be stuck..... I suppose that's why improving space technology is important, but that's an entirely different thread.
This leads to an interesting question - what is the aim behind an economic system? I'm not sure. I guess to make everyone's lives better, but it hard to quantify that.
Originally posted by herb slocomb:
In a sense, every capitalist truly becomes a provider to the common good or at least to what society wants.
Associate Instructor - Hofstra University
Amazon Top 750 reviewer - Blog - Unresolved References - Book Review Blog
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"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Uncontrolled vocabularies
"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
So the day come and you ask yourself: what is this that you *really* need?
Apparently Lionel Richie's wife needs $300,000 a month: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=498379
Originally posted by Richard Hawkes:
Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
[qb]So the day come and you ask yourself: what is this that you *really* need?
Apparently Lionel Richie's wife needs $300,000 a month: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=498379[/QB]
Damn, ho!! that's a lot of money. Richies net worth is probably only arround 80mil (this is very generous, IMHO). Don't see how he could be worth more -- he's just a singer.
-Eleison
Originally posted by Eugene Kononov:
However, He was crucified in His 30s, so methinks He would have been wise to invest in some steel capped boots and a pair of guantlets.
Yeah, but then he would not be able to walk over the water. The only benefit that we would get out of this would be an earlier invention of a drill by the Romans.
42
Originally posted by Ellen Zhao:
Some spoons of food, and such alike are just small matters. Currently the China society needs honesty and the courage to be honest. People don't trust the government and the government doesn't trust people. But both sides keep lieing or keep silent. Sad.![]()
42
Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
Name a poor country that actually practices capitalism.
Originally posted by herb slocomb:
Simply put, the essential and important bottom line is that people's standard of living is higher in capitalistic countries compared to communist or even formerly communist countries
In a sense, every capitalist truly becomes a provider to the common good or at least to what society wants.
Hard work should never entitle anyone to anything : For example breaking big rocks into little rocks with a sledge hammer is extremley hard work, yet why should that entitle anyone to wealth when little of value is produced?
Capitalism does require certain ethics, social virtues, and social capital amongst its participants however for it to work. For example , there must be some degree of trust amongst the participants in a merket economy. If there is some degree of trust, then everything else can be worked out and there is strong motive to make the whole thing work.
However, where the government has too much control of the market, corruption is an ever present danger and this also has prevented capitalism from taking off in some countries.
Also, there seems to be large number of legal and illegal immigrants looking to come to predominately capitlistic USA
Tell that to the thousands of unemployed programmers in the US. By the way, India seems to be picking up a bit of the capitalistic habit and doing better because of it
I don't understand the limits on growth or why standards of living cannot keep increasing if technology is allowed to progress (which it does quite well under capitalism) and the population size does not become excessive (population growth slows as income increases and is not much of an issue in prosperous countries)
Do you understand the concept of liberty?
Capitalism is simply an extension of liberty into the economic realm.
Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
Very humorous list. Most of those countries have had political instability and have not been practicing any form of capitalism for more than 10 years. But just to pick one at random, Burkina Faso has actually seen a vast improvement in their economy since they became a republic. Unfortunately the civil war in another one of the countries on your list (I can't believe that you included it), C�te d'Ivoire, has hurt their trade and commerce. Mongolia is another interesting choice. it is being run by the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (basically the same communists who ran the country into the ground) but they have permitted some capitalism in the country. And they have seen 5% GDP growth!
But that is fairly typcial of the list. Most of the countries are politically unstable, have suffered from civil wars, or aren't really capitalists. Why not pick a single country that you think demonstrates a true capitalist country with a stable government that shows that capitalism doesn't work there.
Originally posted by Joe King:
things like state education, state run army etc are not capitalist, but socialist.
Originally posted by Joe King:
What I was trying to do was counter the idea that capitalism automatically means that a country does well. It was hinted above that there are no capitalist poor countres - this is not true.
Originally posted by Joe Pluta:
I don't think there's a person on this list who could survive a week with just a cup and a spoon.
Joe
Ever Existing, Ever Conscious, Ever-new Bliss
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"I try my best to make *all* my posts nice, even when I feel upset" -- Philippe Maquet
Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
Tom: Ok, so name one that is a cpaitalist a country and is not doing well. Just pick one, explain why you think they are capitalist, and why you think they remain poor in spite of capitalism.
My nomination is Mexico. Now need to do more research on why I think they are capitalist and why they remain poor in spite of capitalism. I suspect to get a tautology at the end, but maybe not, there is always hope.![]()
Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
Tom: Ok, so name one that is a cpaitalist a country and is not doing well. Just pick one, explain why you think they are capitalist, and why you think they remain poor in spite of capitalism.
My nomination is Mexico. Now need to do more research on why I think they are capitalist and why they remain poor in spite of capitalism. I suspect to get a tautology at the end, but maybe not, there is always hope.![]()
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