yogthos

Yes, the average Chinese adult is richer than the average European by a whooping 0.22%. How about you read your own articles dumbass. It’s literally an example of China reaching the standard of the western world.

Absolutely hilarious how you continue to ignore where China started. Explain to us why we don't see the same thing happening in India for example. Explain why the standard of living in China is improving more rapidly anywhere or any time in history. Meanwhile, also explain why the standard of living in Europe is declining. Pretty clear who the actual dumbass here is.

You’re comparing a country that was a developed country more than 50 years ago to a country that has been a developing country in the last 50 years.

Except, China has already caught up to the west and there is still steady progress happening. Hence Chinese people now being richer than Europeans.

You’re not proving China is somehow doing better than the western world, you’re proving that China is reaching the same standard as the western world.

Once again, that reading comprehension really needs work. It's frankly embarrassing. From my previous reply.

In fact, a typical Chinese adult is now richer than the typical European adult. https://archive.is/uzLgx

Come back when you have an actual argument.

Perhaps take your own advice here.

Unless you really want to hammer in on the housing based on what you’ve shown France is doing as well as China.

That's an imbecilic argument given that France was in a far better starting position than China. What You have to look at is the progression over time, as I've explained this in the last reply. Evidently that went over your head. Household income is a perfect example here incidentally:

The raise in income for Chinese workers has been far more dramatic than for those in France. In fact, a typical Chinese adult is now richer than the typical European adult. https://archive.is/uzLgx

And the context for this, once again, is that China started from the state of utter devastation without any outside help after the revolution.

I’m not sure how concrete usage matters here so I’m just not going to look for that data.

Incredible that you don't understand how investment in infrastructure matters. Where do you think all this housing, roads, and so on, comes from exactly?

I’m just building on what you’ve said. If you feel like it’s a strawman, it’s because that’s the arguments you’ve given me.

It's because you either have low reading comprehension or you're intentionally misrepresenting what I said by cherry picking and omitting context. Feel free to reread what was said to you until you actually understand the points being made.

Nope. If anything you ignored what I asked and gave me, at that point, irrelevant shit that you’re now trying to make relevant.

I didn't ignore anything you asked, but I guess you've already made it abundantly clear that you're not trying to have a good faith discussion here.

Does that mean you’re calling yourself liberal? Because you’re projecting I’m a liberal but I’m a socialist.

No, I'm saying that you're projecting your own behavior onto me here. The fact that you think you're a socialist makes the whole thing even funnier though.

Yeah I understand how time works, that's why I gave you list of sources that show historical progress over time. Not just a single event happening, but clear demonstration of long term trends. I guess that was just too complicated for you to wrap your head around.

But more importantly, you said civil unrest is an indication of a bad democracy and you brought up those two countries as examples of good democracy. Your excuses might explain why there are unrest, but they don’t invalidate the unrest. There’s still unrest in those countries which means a) unrest is not an indicator or b) those countries are not examples of good democracy.

Nah, that's just a simplistic straw man you keep building instead of addressing what I actually said.

What if I’m dyslexic?

What if you started addressing the actual points being made instead of playing word games.

How do you excuse ignoring the wider context of what I was saying and focusing solely on the one thing that’s out of place?

Except I didn't ignore the wider context, I addressed your points and explained my position clearly.

The sad troll here is you, getting caught with your pants down.

Projection will always be the way of the liberal I suppose.

The articles I linked both said declining living conditions are the reason of protests. When it comes to Cuba the government suppressed the unrest with force. China protests have worsened in the last year. Looking at how fast you responded you probably didn’t even open the links. Nevertheless, your criticism applies to those countries as well

I've literally linked you a bunch of sources showing how living conditions in China have been improving consistently over many decades. Your article isn't a counterpoint to that.

Meanwhile, Cuba is under draconian blockade by the US, and despite that having an obvious impact on the standard of living every poll shows mass support from the public for the government in Cuba. France, on the other hand, has no such excuse. It's one of the richest countries in the world that's been plundering the Global South through colonialism.

And I accidentally misspelled tangible leverage.

You're such a sad troll.

I guess you’re just a mouthpiece afterall.

🥱

So public unrest is an indication that the government doesn’t represent the interest of the public?

Nah, it's public unrest coupled with continuously declining living conditions and the government ignoring the demands from the people that shows the government isn't working in the interest of the public.

Where are their tangible benefits that you defined so vaguely you might as well have not defined them at all? Please specifics this time, not this vague BS.

Meanwhile, here are some tangible benefits for you to chew on.

The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf

From 1978 to 2000, the number of people in China living on under $1/day fell by 300 million, reversing a global trend of rising poverty that had lasted half a century (i.e. if China were excluded, the world’s total poverty population would have risen) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/China’s-Economic-Growth-and-Poverty-Reduction-Angang-Linlin/c883fc7496aa1b920b05dc2546b880f54b9c77a4

From 2010 to 2019 (the most recent period for which uninterrupted data is available), the income of the poorest 20% in China increased even as a share of total income. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.FRST.20?end=2019&locations=CN&start=2008

By the end of 2020, extreme poverty, defined as living on under a threshold of around $2 per day, had been eliminated in China. According to the World Bank, the Chinese government had spent $700 billion on poverty alleviation since 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/world/asia/china-poverty-xi-jinping.html

90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-people-in-china-afford-their-outrageously-expensive-homes

China used more concrete in 3 years than US in all of 20th century https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2014/12/05/china-used-more-concrete-in-3-years-than-the-u-s-used-in-the-entire-20th-century-infographic/

China also built 27,000km of high speed rail in a decade https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/high-speed/ten-years-27000km-china-celebrates-a-decade-of-high-speed/

This is what life in a country with a government that represents the interests of the people looks like.

You want to expand on that?

I'm not sure what you want me to expand on specifically. It's obvious that the government in France does not represent the interests of the public. This is why France has constant public unrest incidentally.

Define tangible leverage.

Ability to hold the government to account for their actions. The regular people have no practical way to exercise influence over the government. Simply being able to vote is meaningless as the election clearly showed.

Interesting to see where this non-western fine democracy exists.

Two obvious examples for you.

China

• https://www.newsweek.com/most-china-call-their-nation-democracy-most-us-say-america-isnt-1711176
• https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2021/0218/Vilified-abroad-popular-at-home-China-s-Communist-Party-at-100
• https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-26/which-nations-are-democracies-some-citizens-might-disagree
• https://web.archive.org/web/20230511041927/https://6389062.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6389062/Canva%20images/Democracy%20Perception%20Index%202023.pdf
• https://www.tbsnews.net/world/china-more-democratic-america-say-people-98686
• https://web.archive.org/web/20201229132410/https://en.news-front.info/2020/06/27/studies-have-shown-that-china-is-more-democratic-than-the-united-states-russia-is-nearby-and-ukraine-is-at-the-bottom/

Cuba

• https://www.jstor.org/stable/45367319
• http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/state_and_revolution/democracy_in_cuba.htm

What is shows is that western implementation of the concept of democracy is such that it does not represent the interests of the working majority. Western democracies are class dictatorships where the capital owning class makes the decisions and dictates to the workers. This is precisely what we're seeing happening in France right now.

Meanwhile, authoritarianism is a largely meaningless term. Every government holds authority by virtue of having a monopoly on legalized violence. What actually matters is whom the government is accountable to. When the working majority has no tangible leverage then their voice can be easily ignored. That's why Macron is able to do what he is doing. The issue is with the way the system is implemented.

TLDR: democracy is fine, western implementation of the concept is not

Thank you France for finally putting to bed the myth that western democracy works and the only problem is that people just have to vote harder.

the source is literally the person reporting what happened to her grandmother 🤦

There is no article, other mediums, such as video, exist nowadays.

truly