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Originally Posted by Mark_Twain
God, I do love when I open the trap door & the prey falls right in.
Other countries ended their flirtations with communism at roughly the same time at Russia. They also began instituting market economies. Yet, they also instilled a bit of common-sense into the system by regulating their new capitalist economy.
And you talk of economic growth in Russia as if it were somehow uniform. Concentrating a great deal of wealth into the hands of a few does not a fluorishing economy make. Take the good ol' USA, for instance. Your beloved University of Chicago economic theorists currently making policy in the District are quickly making ours an economy more on-par with Russia. Yes, we still have fantastic growth, the stock market continues to surge, interest-rates remain relatively low, etc. Yet, the gap between rich & poor widens exponentially every day. Middle-class Americans are an endangered species. One need look no further than America's own Gilded Age (or study the intricacies of great men like Herbert Hoover) to understand the course that is being charted for the great many of us. Unless you're lucky enough to be a Walton or a Hilton or a Bush or a Cheney (or one of their lackies at the country club), you're screwed.
For a good overview of transition economies, read Transition and Economics Politics, Markets, and Firms by Gérard Roland, a Dutch economist who specializes in communist societies & their transition to market economies and teaches at Cal-Berkeley. Also, see here:
CJO - Abstract |
I am not so sure that you have trapped me here.
First, allow me to make one correction in your characterazation of my economic viewpoints. I am not in line with the Chicago School. In fact, I despise the Chicago School. I think they have caused many problems with the economy (as well as the Keynesians). I consider myself to be an Austrian.
Ludwig von Mises Institute Home is the website opperated by Austrians.
Alright, now that we have that out of the way, let's look at Russia. Are you familiar with the Gini Coefficent? It is some econometric tool that is used to show income inequality. If the number is 0, incomes are perfectly distributed; the higher the number (which ranges from 0 to 1), the higher the inequality. America's number is 45 in 2005. It was 46 in 2000. Russia's is currently 40. So, this tends to refute your conclusion that Russia has unequal income distribution. To be fair, the US has less people living under the poverty line. But, as I have argued, Russia's economy is building up.
As for the other countries you mention, I have a few questions. First, which countries are you talking about? Second, by what standard have they done better.