When in my teens, in the 1960s, I wondered what rules were best for governing the world, and the nations in the world. Comparisons like this (featured by Tim Worstall at the ASI blog today, he having come upon it here) helped me to decide:
As Tim Worstall notes:
[T]he countries are matched as to rough starting point before the communist armies marched, matched roughly as to culture and so on, and yet after that series of communist experiments we see the same result everywhere.
Exactly. It was the matching of like (to start with) with like that was most telling. And before 1990, we also had the damning comparison between East and West Germany (very near to my English home) to contemplate.
So, said contemporaries who were drawing more nearly opposite conclusions, you want sweatshops like they have in South East Asia? With growing confidence, I learned to say: yes. If people in South East Asia now have sweatshops, that’s a pity. They must be very poor. But how will shutting down those sweatshops make them any less poor? You’re saying poor with hope of escape is worse than poor with no hope at all. That sounds downright wicked to me.
That time proved me, and all who argued as I did, right was one of the big reasons for communism collapsing where it did collapse, and trying to insert capitalism into itself where it did not.
Some libertarians now live in dread of a time when such comparisons will no longer be possible, because the entire world will be equally stagnant, and nobody except them will be able to see this. Some people are determined to be miserable.
“Some libertarians now live in dread of a time when such comparisons will no longer be possible, because the entire world will be equally stagnant, and nobody except them will be able to see this. Some people are determined to be miserable.”
I’m sorry Brian, but who? I can’t think of a single libertarian who has ever said exactly that. Even Paul Marks doesn’t say that.
If these numbers are accurate for 2010, then some of the comparisons may be a bit iify.
Is Poland really more socialist than Sweden? It’s been 20 years since the Commies were kicked out. Likewise the comparison between the Czech Republic and Germany.
I realize the long term damage that our old friend “Real Existing Socialism” did to these nations, but even before 1914 these areas were not exactly well developed. Poland was split between the Austro Hungarians, the Germans and the Russians and were not popular with any of their Imperial masters, the Czechs were under Vienna and aside from some limited heavy industry were nowhere near as well supplied with mercantilist goodies as were the Germans or the German speaking Austrians.
Still the numbers do tell an important story.
No, Taylor, they’re 1991. Click the link.
I was interested to see how China compares with Taiwan today. Unfortunately Nationmaster doesn’t compare like with like: its latest China figure ($2033.90) is for 2006, while Taiwan ($23,386.28) is 2003 (anyone have any better data?). Even so, despite the speed of China’s growth it surely can’t have caught up with even 2003 Taiwan in four years.
It’s also interesting that China’s per-capita GDP in 2006 – when its “capitalist” economic miracle was already well underway – was still lower than Soviet Russia’s in 1991.
The numbers for Russia in 1991 are meaningless. I’m not sure numbers for today are very reliable. Same about China…
Presenting comparisons of GDP between Communist and non-communist states doesn’t begin to tell the full story. Economy, important as it is, is not the most important thing in the lives of people.
You can’t describe the enormous atrocities committed by communist regimes in economic terms. What about the gulags, what about the 60 million Russians and 100 million Chinese murdered by the regimes? The terror, the torture, the killing fields, the boat people, the oppression, the brain-washing, the constant fear, the constant nagging ?
No, the GDP numbers don’t capture the enormity of the crimes and the hideousness of those regimes.
What I wanted to say is that even if communists had a GDP double that of the “free” countries, you still wouldn’t want to live there.
Economy is one of life’s many manifestations. Where there is no human life, there is no economy, and where there is no economy, there is no human life. That is why there is no way communists could have a GDP even approaching that of the freer countries, not the least because of the gulags, the killing fields, the brainwashing and all the rest.
The gulags and killings and oppression are BAD things, regardless of the economic outcome. Very bad.
To put it in other words – it’s the oppression that would bother and hurt you most, not the poverty. Or: compared to the oppression – the poverty is a relatively minor inconvenience.
Regarding the question of how meaningful these GDP numbers are, it seems quite evident to me that GDP comparisons between capitalist and planned economies make no sense whatsoever. This fact is completely independent of any judgments of value, and it’s true even regardless of the problem of reliability of socialist statistics. There is simply no way to define these numbers so that the comparison is meaningful, with or without the practical limitations (which also make the idea ridiculous by themselves).
The fact that such comparisons are made and taken seriously by economists is just another clear indication that modern macroeconomics is just institutionalized pseudoscience that cannot pass even the basic sanity checks for sound reasoning.
Jacob, Ivan: Undoubtedly. Of course the economy isn’t everything, measuring GDP is a notorious smoke-and-mirrors affair, and using it as a guide to public policy is practically charlatanism.
But the figures are interesting, since per-capita GDP plainly does indicate something (as opposed to accurately measuring it, which is how it’s usually understood – and meant). In 1991 Swedes clearly were richer than Poles, and Poles, in turn, richer than the starving North Koreans.
Were they, on average, each producing $24740, $2260, and $700 in that year? ‘Course not. Were West Germans marginally richer than Austrians, Swedes and Italians that year? Who knows? (And they certainly shouldn’t have worried themselves about it when there were far more important problems to deal with than their ranking in some macroeconomists’ fantasy league.) But we do know, even without per-capita GDP, that they were roughly the same. And so were the Eastern Bloc countries. Was Hungary three times as wealthy as Bulgaria? Doesn’t matter. Neither does the question of whether we’re comparing, as per Brian’s title, like with like: ie, a guesstimate taken from a relatively free-market country with one taken from an utterly different, closed, command economy. They were both appreciably poorer – regardless of other factors that would have made them hellholes even if they’d been rich – than the west.
Which is, in fact, why I was interested in China relative to Taiwan today, since even if it has caught up with it in per-capita GDP, it’s clearly still a less desirable place to live.
Sam – the difference is still considerable: Taiwan’s per capita GDP is around the $30,000 mark, whereas China’s is around the $5,000 mark.
Some more recent numbers, can’t vouch for their accuracy, but hopefully useful for comparison –
http://siakhenn.tripod.com/capita.html
I think it worth pointing out that Marxist Communists thought that a planned economy would be more efficient and outperform chaotic capitalism. These figures certainly disprove that idea.
However, the ideal set by those on the left (I don’t want to call them Marxists) has radically changed. Where once material plenty was a good, they now believe that wealth makes us miserable or alienates us from our fellow man. These figures suggest that for the modern left these countries have succeeded.
Post modernism: if reality sucks, redefine reality.
“Where once material plenty was a good, they now believe that wealth makes us miserable…”
How true !
Communism is a *materialist* ideology – they claimed they wanted to improve the material, economic well being of the masses. That’s what they sold.
Since the goal wasn’t achieved, they now move the goal posts, and oppose “consumerism”, and hate economic development.
The only thing they consistently hate and oppress is personal freedom.
“Even Paul Marks…”
Well I did flatter myself that I saw things comming down the road that few other people did.
Till several million Tea Party people started to turn up at events and say (as common knowledge) various things I thought of as special knowledge.
That brought me down a peg or two – and that was a GOOD thing.
Of course I can still be Mr Gloomy Guts and say that “the majority of people do not understand”,
But (at least in the United States) whilst the majorty may not understand yet (with the orgy of spending to delay the day of reckoning – and make that day worse, and the VAST disinformation campaign by the unions, the MSM. and the education system) at the present rate of spread the overwhelming majority of people will understand by November 2012.
Union members will turn against union leaders (understanding that their pensions have been spent on politics – and the whole union policy is destroying to viabilty of the places they work in), government employees will vote for a vastly smaller government (understanding that the alternative is total collapse). And so on.
That is why Glenn Beck is correct to say that (whatever the result on Tuesady next) things will SPEED UP after the election.
The totalitiarians know that this is their chance – but also that it is slipping from their grasp. Unless the manage to castrate dissent (i.e. prevent the truth getting to the people) they are doomed to defeat.
Their chance (for total power) is slipping from their grap – but “their reach is long” and they have many weapons.
Of course the weird thing is that “if they win they lose” – they will destroy civilization and themselves as well as us.
But that, for all their cleverness (and they are very clever indeed – an almost inhuman cleverness) they just do not see.