PeakTrader.com

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PeakTrader:

It seems, the U.S. is a leading example of a natural process where an economy expands (for over 200 years), environmental damage reaches a peak (in the 1970s), and the damage is reversed or replaced (since the 1970s), while the economy continues to expand.

China may be where the U.S. was at the peak of environmental damage; with air, land and water pollution, deforestation, desertification, etc.. However, although China’s per capita real GDP growth has been strong, it began from a very low base and it’s much too low, given the extent of environmental damage.

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PeakTrader:

China is not a good example of how to get people out of poverty. Trading lots of leisure for lots of labor and creating $1 of social costs for $1 of income, for example, while making those at the very top of the pyramid very rich, along with making millions of communist elites much better off, is a very poor case of efficiency.

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Of course, communist elites and foreign capitalists make lots of money in China:

Millions ‘left behind’ in rural China
BBC
12 May 2010

“Resentment is bubbling to the surface and rural Chinese feel left behind.

“Foreign companies come here, employ cheap labour and get all the money…It’s not something we have any control over. It’s our system.”

“Foreign companies can exploit us, but many Chinese don’t realise what’s happening,” says Mr Chen…They are being fooled by officials in China who have strong connections with foreign companies.”

According to World Bank figures, nearly 500 million Chinese people still live on less than $2 (£1.40) a day. The rural poor feel that the profits from China’s economic expansion have passed them by.”

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I used the economic term for labor-leisure.

Tending to your garden, working on your car, or changing a light bulb can be considered labor.

Obviously, hundreds of millions of Chinese were available for factory work.

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Where Have China’s Workers Gone?
Mar 6, 2013

“China’s large pool of surplus labor has fueled its rapid industrial growth. Now this “demographic dividend” may be almost exhausted, and its economy reaching a Lewis turning point: a shift named after the Nobel prize-winning Arthur Lewis, who was the first to describe how poor economies can develop by transferring surplus labor from agriculture to the more productive industrial sector until the point when surplus labor disappears, wages begin to rise and growth slows.

Surplus workers may not be in agriculture as in the original Lewis model but in smaller towns, underemployed at depressed wages. The result is that China has the highest rural- urban income disparity in the world.

Why don’t these workers move to more productive jobs in more dynamic settings? In formal terms, it is because their “reservation wage” has increased — that is, the minimum wage they demand to move is much greater than their current wage, because for a generation that didn’t experience the hardships of the Mao Zedong era, the monetary and emotional costs of relocation have risen. Many workers won’t move to major cities that lack affordable housing. They may also have rights to land that can’t be sold for full market value — thus, staying in familiar surroundings is now a more attractive proposition.”

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Morganovich, no, I didn’t study econ in the ’60s drug years, and responding to statements I didn’t make doesn’t make much sense.

You seem to believe China’s economic model is just fine. I believe, it could’ve been much better, to where hundreds of millions of Chinese weren’t exploited and hundreds of millions more weren’t left in the dust.

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And when China’s economy “peaks,” to where there’s a large retired population, the masses won’t have much to show for 30 or 40 years of hard work.

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Morganovich, so, you believe there’s hardly any exploitation, or exploitation doesn’t exist, particularly in China.

And, you believe the only way to achieve true freedom is to get rid of all laws.

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http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/06/interactive-chart-from-the-economist-extreme-poverty-in-the-world-could-be-largely-eradicated-in-20-years/#comments

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A large part of China has been uninhabitable, for thousands of years. Map:

http://www.chinatouristmaps.com/china-maps/population/full-population-map.html