Day: July 9, 2015

Socialism, Competition and Politicians

This piece is a brief response to a twitter exchange I had last month.

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In his tweet, Mr @falleneconomist questions my assertion that socialism impoverishes countries. He implies that my claim cannot be correct and lists two facts (no doubt limited to only two because of the 140-character twitter limit) to support his contrary position: first, that China is doing well despite it being a socialist country; and second, “most politicians in capitalist USA are fabulously rich.”

It’s true that China is a socialist country. It has been socialist/communist ever since Mao Zedong established the People’s Republic of China in Oct 1949. His Communist Party of China (CPC) undertook “The Great Leap Forward” between 1958 and 1961 to transform China’s agrarian economy into an industrialized one through collectivization. The result was the horror of mass starvation that is known as “The Great Famine.” Chinese government statistics put excess death during that period at 15 million but independent observers estimate the death toll to be between 20 and 43 million.
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