Capitalism

The comparisons of GDP per capita that my opponent points out is misleading since it doesn't take into account the growth. I consider the growth to be more important than a single amount at a given time. China's GDP per capita more than doubled within the last 10 years [18] whereas the US's GDP per capita has only gone up by 4% in the past 10 years [19]. While China is a poor nation in comparison to the population they have, they are growing at an extremely fast rate. As for Laos, as I pointed out before, their GDP/capita has grown tremendously too. It's not fair to compare the total GDP or GDP/capita when socialism started out in poor countries to begin with. Imagine what the growth would have been for the US if we were socialist. Nearly every socialist nation that I mentioned had a doubling of their GDP/capita in the last 20 years or less. Imagine what the growth for the socialist countries would be if they were capitalist. Actually, you don't have to imagine what it was for Bolivia, since it's there for you to see before they became socialist. They were much poorer and had terrible economic growth under it. So the graph above shows redistribution only creates poverty. This is why job creating businesses flee to capitalist countries. -Cat47There's no graph, so we don't know what you're talking about.Also, heavily impoverished communist countries such as China have become dependent on foreign investment. -Cat47Well, that's not due to socialism, but rather their own decisions for their economy. This is rather irrelevant to the fact that they have a socialist country. Venezuela, for example, has an abundance of natural resource such as oil. And look at the poverty there.-Cat47Actually, ever since electing socialist leaders, their poverty rate went down from 55% to about 30% in a 12 year period[20]. While their poverty rate is increasing right now, that is because of the economic crisis they have that had nothing to do with socialism, as I pointed out earlier. It will likely continue to go down in the long-run when this economic crisis they are having is over. Hong Kong was under an embargo from it's nearest super power. After capitalism, Hong Kong has retained it's spot as the worlds freest economy, and is not the big shanty town it was. -cat47Yet, it still isn't ranked at a perfect 10 on economic freedom for a reason, as I pointed out before. Pure capitalism would fail, as it did in the past. In addition, while you point to Hong Kong as a success, there were many capitalistic countries in Africa, South America, and Asia who did terribly. You haven't named a single socialist nation that had economic decline over the long-run, that's because every socialist nation has had an economic growth in the long-run, as I've been pointing out. Short-term declines in economy are bound to happen, but the long-term is what matters.While I am not saying there isn't poverty in capitalist countries, there is significantly less. -Cat47Actually, there are quite a few capitalist countries with a higher poverty rate than socialist nations. South Africa has a poverty rate of 53.8%, in comparison to Venezuela's 30% rate[20], China's 6.5%[21], Laos' 23.2%[22], Vietnam's 13.5%[23], and Bolilvia's 38.6%[24]. I pretty much named every socialist nation's poverty rate except for North Korea's and Cuba's because that data seems to be unavailable, and all of the ones I did mention are lower than most capitalist nations, which I shall name more of their poverty rates now: Kenya has a 45.9% poverty rate[25], Nigeria 46%[26], Zimbabwe 72.3%[27] Mali 43.6%[28], Togo, 55.1% [29], and Liberia 61.3% [30]. I can name more, but this should get my point across. Capitalism results in some nations prospering while others suffer. Socialism, generally, helps all nations, since every nation I listed has a declining poverty rate since they elected socialist leaders, and they have less poverty than the listed capitalist nations. Sweden is used as a common argument for socialism, but that is not true at all. It prospered after dumping socialism. -Cat47Well, Sweden doesn't even have a socialist party in power, and they never did I think. Nor did they ever identify as socialist. People use countries to represent socialism when they don't, but I didn't need to use Sweden since the countries I did use are all ones that claim to be socialist or have socialist parties in power, and all of them have a declining long-run poverty rate, and an increasing GDP/capita. Sources:[18] http://www.tradingeconomics.com... [19] http://www.tradingeconomics.com... [20] http://data.worldbank.org...;[21] https://en.wikipedia.org...;[22] http://data.worldbank.org...;[23] http://data.worldbank.org...;[24] http://data.worldbank.org...;[25] http://data.worldbank.org...[26] http://data.worldbank.org...;[27] http://data.worldbank.org...;[28] http://data.worldbank.org...[29] http://data.worldbank.org...;[30] http://data.worldbank.org...;