"Richard argues that, all other issues aside, the Soviet Union and China both achieved levels of economic growth not seen anywhere else in the world over the last century."
To consider this argument, one must somehow get past the "other issues aside." How, precisely, is that done when those issues include mass murder, secret police, a lack of individual liberty, etc.? If those are the trade-offs for making the spurious argument that central planning outperformed a free market economy, then Wolff's only rational conclusion can be that no one should ever consider imitating China or Russia.
That's the problem with test tube theories; they often fail in real-world applications. We have the luxury of treating first-world problems as existential threats, but sadly lack the self-awareness to realize what we're doing. The Chinese worker's wage increase has come at a cost. Are Americans willing to pay such a cost? The comparison also weighs what amounts to an authoritarian ethno-state vs. a country that is struggling to define what "American" means of late.
Wolff's agreement with Obama's "you didn't build that" nonsense is a brand of silliness that defies understanding. Maybe "you didn't built that all by yourself" makes some sense, but that's not what Obama said. He intimated that credit and ownership rests largely those with bore no risk in starting the enterprise and who stand, at worst, to lose a job if it goes under. Perhaps instead of vilifying the guy who launched the business, society should support and venerate him or her, for without the enterprise, there are different levels of shared pain to individuals who now have to find work, communities that have a tax revenue hole to confront, others players in the supply chain who must alternative arrangements, and consumers who have lost a choice in the marketplace.
"Richard argues that, all other issues aside, the Soviet Union and China both achieved levels of economic growth not seen anywhere else in the world over the last century."
To consider this argument, one must somehow get past the "other issues aside." How, precisely, is that done when those issues include mass murder, secret police, a lack of individual liberty, etc.? If those are the trade-offs for making the spurious argument that central planning outperformed a free market economy, then Wolff's only rational conclusion can be that no one should ever consider imitating China or Russia.
That's the problem with test tube theories; they often fail in real-world applications. We have the luxury of treating first-world problems as existential threats, but sadly lack the self-awareness to realize what we're doing. The Chinese worker's wage increase has come at a cost. Are Americans willing to pay such a cost? The comparison also weighs what amounts to an authoritarian ethno-state vs. a country that is struggling to define what "American" means of late.
Wolff's agreement with Obama's "you didn't build that" nonsense is a brand of silliness that defies understanding. Maybe "you didn't built that all by yourself" makes some sense, but that's not what Obama said. He intimated that credit and ownership rests largely those with bore no risk in starting the enterprise and who stand, at worst, to lose a job if it goes under. Perhaps instead of vilifying the guy who launched the business, society should support and venerate him or her, for without the enterprise, there are different levels of shared pain to individuals who now have to find work, communities that have a tax revenue hole to confront, others players in the supply chain who must alternative arrangements, and consumers who have lost a choice in the marketplace.