Comments by "Persona" (@ArawnOfAnnwn) on "Something Has Changed in the U.S. Economy" video.

The West likes to boast about capitalism and free markets as the key to prosperity. Yet as Ha-Joon Chang (economist at Oxford and author of Kicking Away The Ladder) points out - none of them followed that themselves when they were developing. Rather they all had highly protectionist tariffs and extensively used what's now known as Industrial Policy. Which as usual they're returning to after seeing China use it so successfully to outcompete them (and China is only the latest to do so - they practically lifted the idea from South Korea after all). As Chang himself puts it, 'Govts. CAN pick winners'. Open markets are more of a luxury once you've already made it. For poor nations they're more of a gateway to exploitation and ruin, as Africans found out the hard way when they were forced to do it by the IMF Structural Adjustment Programs. For those interested, in economics circles this idea is known as the Infant Industry Model i.e. you build your capabilities first, only THEN do you try to compete globally.
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@JimBob544 Yeah it's a funny thing about HK especially, where people think it was a democracy before China took it over. Not even close. It was run by a colonial administrator, and over time developed into kinda a corporatocracy (as in formally, not just as an insult - a handful of major corporations were involved in the administration). There were signs it was heading to being an actual democracy, albeit with heavy corporate involvement, but what people miss is that those steps were taken by the LAST colonial administrator - when it was known it was going to be handed back soon. They were effectively a parting gift from the British to Beijing for not agreeing to let them extend their rule there. Asianometry did a very good vid on its history.
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The wealth redistribution figure is indeed because of education and healthcare, but not cos it does much good but rather cos of how inefficient it all is. The US outspends every OECD country on healthcare, yet does worse on most health metrics than them all. Their 'socialised healthcare' is both more effective AND less expensive than the US'.
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@unconventionalideas5683 It's kinda reaching to call a slow down to 5% gdp growth a 'crash'. China's problems have to do with overinvestment into the property sector, and a long overdue need for reform in their tax system and local govt. financing. But while those are dragging them down, the rest of their economy is producing at pre-pandemic levels. The other woe is a slow down in demand, which is very much the sort of thing you see all the time. But no one is expecting any sort of big 'crash' to happen, just a slower pace of growth than the 10% or so they've kept up for decades.
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@Otto-cz6by See above. As I said, the US didn't have low tariffs back in the old days. And this wasn't unique to the US either.
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 @zixyi They're a Spanish channel actually. The presenter is just reading an English translation of content originally developed for a Spanish audience.
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