They just ran this OpEd from SEIU honcho Andy Stern celebrating the miraculous success of central planning for the 21st century in China and how America’s being held hostage by free-market fundamentalists will result in our destruction in the coming years.
Give the Wall Street Journal Credit
Nov 30th, 2011 by wintercow20
I’m sure Stern’s years of experience living in China, command of Mandarin, experience interacting with government officials, and understanding of Chinese culture led him to this obvious conclusion. Or maybe because the Chinese economy is doing well, that means that the only explanation for this success is good government policy.
This guy is just brilliant…
学海无涯
What Andy failed to mention is how peaceful transitions are into the type of government he wants (fascism).
Correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t US government budgets, such as “Obamacare” projected far into the future? Aren’t Treasury bonds sold with maturity dates up 30 years from now? Is there really a dearth of “planning” in the US?
The WSJ gets credit for being open-minded; maybe Paul Gigot feels guilty, hanging out with Mike Bloomberg. Fair and balanced is good, and it is refreshing to hear Andy’s views. Andy at least is no cricket, boldly expressing his feelings on the op ed page of the Enemy Newspaper. Andy gets credit from me for talking.
The comments above suggest that Andy may be off-track, if Andy is a locomotive carrying a thousand cars full of coal miners, as opposed to pulling a thousand cars full of coal, running downhill.
Reading Andy Stern’s article reminded me of the articles that were put together in the 1970’s and 1980’s when it came to Japan. Just like now with China, you had a rapidly developing country, resulting in rapid economic and wage growth. Instead of attributing this rapid catch-up growth to the utilization of current technology and capital accumulation, they attributed it to whatever policy they preferred. Just like now with China, people back then were saying we needed to copy what Japan was doing. However, once Japan reached the technological frontier, their growth slowed down, just like China’s will.
Finally, I would say that I find it had to understand how people with any understanding of history can claim that the 20th century was a period of free-market fundamentalism.
>>>>While we debate, Team China rolls on. Our delegation witnessed China’s people-oriented development in Chongqing, a city of 32 million in Western China, which is led by an aggressive and popular Communist Party leader—Bo Xilai. A skyline of cranes are building roughly 1.5 million square feet of usable floor space daily—including, our delegation was told, 700,000 units of public housing annually.<<<<
Last week I saw a news story on a Chinese city that is mostly uninhabited, as its central planning failed to locate the city near industries with high-paying jobs.
For the most part, China is still in the stone age in its vast rural areas. Looks like communism has done very little to ensure social equity.
The question is this: can a Chinese person count on holding the title to a piece of land or a share of stock, or would that ownership be canceled at the whim of a government official who might decide that person has too much in relation to his lazy, spendthrift neighbor? It's an individual's liberty and his desire to look after his and his family's interests that makes capitalism superior over communism. It remains to be seen whether China's five year plans will accomplish more than Russia's five year plans.
Funny, then, that the editorial board put this out in WSJ Asia, a day after the op-ed.
China’s Hard Landing: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203833104577071901186892744.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopBucket
“Now comes the hangover. The public works projects are winding down, unleashing a wave of unemployment and an uptick in social unrest. The banks’ nonperforming loans are rising, and local governments are insolvent. The country is littered with luxurious county government offices, ghost cities of empty apartment blocks, unsafe high-speed rail lines and crumbling highways to nowhere.”
[…] readers have been e-mailing me asking for a response to your wonderful OpEd in a recent Wall Street Journal. Here is Mr. Stern’s major claim: “China has been […]
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