Communism [split]

[Set]

I don't know. I think, if a damaged and traumatised ex-colony like South Korea could do it, so could everyone else. A government knowing economics and how to plan would help tremendously - that's precisely what lacking in less developed countries, and idealistically we can start from there. Idealistically, of course.

But South Korea's economy was started up by the dictatorship, not by economists. It was people who 'knew economics' who had their way in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay etc. And that didn't exactly work out well.

[hlysnan]

But South Korea's economy was started up by the dictatorship, not by economists. It was people who 'knew economics' who had their way in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay etc. And that didn't exactly work out well.

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

[Set]

But South Korea's economy was started up by the dictatorship, not by economists. It was people who 'knew economics' who had their way in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay etc. And that didn't exactly work out well.

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

Care to add your own interpretation?
If you're trying to suggest that Chile is doing well now because of the Chicago Boys, then I wouldn't link to a page that also points out that during that time poverty remained at 40% and it wasn't until a democratic government increased social welfare that it went down to 20%, something which completely goes against what Friedman ever preached.

[hlysnan]

I was linking a page that had a supposedly neutral point of view, and it does talk about how when Allende in government, the economy was on the brink of collapse, which then proceeded to have record levels of economic growth for the region after Pinochet took power.

Milton Friedman does support welfare, although probably not in the way that the Chilean government handled it, but then I'm not Chilean so I wouldn't even know how they handled welfare anyway.

My opinion is that if there was none of the economic growth in Chile that was exhibited during the Pinochet years, Chile would still be some third world backwater like Bolivia that can barely afford welfare in the first place.

[johnH]

One more thing - the so called "access to knowledge". Many a poor and illitarate Polish peasent's son (with the suport of the Party) could study and graduate from a university and now he may be a minister or professor. These days if your father is jobless and you come from a remote poor village you stand no chance of a good education. Sad but true.

Yeah, but many a rich and/or educated intellectual's son was denied entrance to university, because higher education was reserved for "the proletariat". As a child of parents who weren't allowed to go to university because of their families' association to the church (in the GDR), reading about the "equality" in communist/socialist systems makes me get kind of cynical.

As for the quality of (elementary and secondary) education itself, according to my parents the level in maths and science was quite high, but language teaching was pretty bad (apparently, Russian was all about writing letters about how great being a pioneer was to USSR peers, English about explaining how bad capitalism was to the occasional Western visitor), as was, of course, history and politics.

I think things where bad but still are bad from the sounds of it.
I prefer the way things are where I live.

[Strigo]

But South Korea's economy was started up by the dictatorship, not by economists. It was people who 'knew economics' who had their way in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay etc. And that didn't exactly work out well.

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

The miracle of excessive privatization and one of the most expensive uni fees in Latin America yay!

[TeneReef]

Chinean Gini index is extremely high. In communism, everyone was/is supposed get the same wage...

[johnklepac]

Chinean Gini index is extremely high. In communism, everyone was/is supposed get the same wage...

Maybe this malady can be explained by some level of ethnic or cultural fragmentation in the country or a lack of government reach, any of which would make such standardization difficult to enforce.