With all of this deflation, how is China supposed to send more balloons?
Guess which political economic form can handle price deflation gracefully (hint, it's not capitalism)
In an economy as tightly controlled as China, how much does deflation even matter?
Also I wonder how everywhere else having inflation will interact with this. Is China just getting affected because the rest of the world can't afford basic necessities anymore? The article kinda touches on reduced demand from countries with inflation abroad causing this, but also doesn't really explain anything other than going "lower number is uh bad"
China has built out enough infrastructure where it really needs consumer demand to take over as a major economic engine.
Nah, that is liberalism. https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2023/08/02/china-consumption-or-investment/
These would be problems if China had a liberal economic model. Fortunately they have whole process workers democracy, and these things aren't really problems at all.
If the deflation is just a market correction after exaggerated inflation (retailers raising their prices more than general inflation to increase their short term subs) then it's no big deal. Prolonged deflation can be bad, as that causes too much saving and not enough spending, which can really hurt the economy and people because of how it takes money out of circulation.
In an economy, the more money can circulate, the more good it can do. I use my salary to pay for for and things, that money then pays the employees of the businesses I went to, and those employees also spent that money, and so on. At each step, both participants normally get a net benefit: I can eat, and the employee can also spend the money they get from me to eat, etc. As long as the money circulates, it keeps doing good. When it stops circulating, due to being put into savings, investments or real estate, it stops doing good (or it does less good). The cycle slows down or stops.
That's why a small amount of inflation (maybe 1-2% ? Not sure what's optimal) is actually healthy, because it puts pressure on people with money to spend it before it loses its value, instead of hoarding it.
This is the opinion of most macro economists today, but it's not universally accepted. Macro-economics is not nearly as scientific as micro-economics, and some people will say that its models are just about who can tell the most convincing story (or the story that's the most convenient for those in power)
There are some people who point out that things like electronics have been undergoing rapid deflation for decades and this has not caused people to stop purchasing them. The economy is a chaotic system and anyone who claims to be able to predict it's outcomes is selling something
Electronics also have become vastly better for decades as the tech developed. The PCs I bought over those decades are magnitudes apart in performance, but washing machines? Sure they've become more efficient but in the grand scheme of things that's peanuts, amortises over a decade maybe, at best. Stove? Sure induction is nice but it's not like others don't boil water basically as quickly. Why should I buy a new one now when I will get an identical product next month at lower price. And then the next... that is, as long as my machine doesn't break down, during deflation, I just won't buy.
I don't think you need an economist to understand why it can quickly lead to a runaway disaster... Imagine you see a car price going down every week by 1k, do you buy it this week or next week? The competitor what do you think they need to do to compete? Lower their price too but wait everybody is waiting for next week, so literally nobody is buying anymore ... So as a company you just start to fire people or close shop as quickly as possible, so a lot of people are now on the market so their labor value also goes down, ie. the salaries are dropping... This tsunami of jobless people would they buy a car this week you think? So companies need to continue dropping the prices...
Democracy is always superior to authoritarianism, long term. Regulated capitalism is always superior to state owned and directed business.
Where is this regulated capitalism? Is that when the politicians are financed and then hired by the industries they're supposed to be regulating?
As ever, "authoritarianism" just means when non- white countries elect people that white people don't want them too.
Democracy is always superior to authoritarianism, long term.
That's why people's democracies are rapidly developing while western dictatorships of the bourgeoisie are in crisis.
On the other hand you have Great Chinese Famine, Tiananmen Square massacre and more recently Uyghurs concentration camps and most likely genocide and that's only China.
You mean the Last Chinese Famine? The famine that took place in a country with a multimillennial history of devastating rice famines? The famine that was less bad than other, contemporaneous famines in capitalist countries? The famine that marked the last instance of food insecurity for about half a billion people?
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What might have caused that?
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Guess we'll never know.
And haven't you got the last update? We're not doing Uyghurs any more, just ask your state-controlled media:
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The deradicalisation program was a success and has now finished, and all these guys:
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Are now plumbers or electricians (or doing lucrative speaking tours through US """"intelligence"""" circles)
Shame about all those horrible crimes that were comitted by the Chinese government though:
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Good thing there have never been famines, political violence, or persecution of minorities in "democratic" countries...
The whole thing is bullshit. The famine was sixty years and like four major government upheavals ago. Tianmenen square is the most overhyped government repression in history, and it's never mentioned that many of the casualties were unarmed PLA soldiers burned alive, and the insurgents that attacked them when armed PLA units were able to respond. And of course while there were human rights violations in Xinjiang, they are absolutely not the human rights violations people think they were, and the whole thing was part of a campaign to suppress insurgent groups and needs to be compared to the West's "bomb weddings and ambulances" strategy, to say nothing of the genocidal campaign in Yemen that recently concluded. It's all ignorance, totally unselfconscious indoctrination, and general bs.
Yes, I too subscribe to popular fiction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre#Death_toll - I would like to point out that as much as they try to obfuscate it even the wiki admits that ~300 is the only credible number, and most of that was street fighting when insurgents attacked PLA troops with molotovs and firearms, with the death toll including unarmed PLA troops burned alive in their trucks
I know literacy is a lot to ask of anyone these days but you can in fact just read the UN report here - https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ohchr-assessment-human-rights-concerns-xinjiang-uyghur-autonomous-region
Muray Rothbard called but it's just incoherent screaming because he's in hell for the sin of ideology.
