Since the Reagan Revolution started in 1980, China has grown by 8% per annum, the US by 2%. That means that the Chinese standard of living is doubling every 10 years while that takes 35 years in the US. And the icing on the cake is that American crony capitalists have managed to shove all the gains to the top of the pyramid, while working and middle class incomes in China have had tremendous growth.
The comparison is moot because China was in the economic toilette when Mao died in 1976, four years before Reagan got elected. In December 1978 China adopted a “socialist market economy” under Deng Xiaoping. “To get rich is glorious.”
Yep. When the clean air standards for automobiles were enacted in 1970, Honda hired 2,000 engineers to redesign their engines. Detroit hired 2,000 lawyers and lobbyists to fight the regulations.
It’s not just the USA. The UK economy is circling the drain as well. I often remember a visit to The Anderton Boat Lift. A wonderful piece of Victorian engineering:
I visited many, many years ago and was talking to one of the volunteers who was an engineer who seemed to have held quite a high up position before retiring. He told me that the previous day, late afternoon, they had a visit from a coach full of Chinese university students who were touring Britain. They inundated him with technical questions about the boat lift. He said that if this had been UK university students most of them would have been worse for wear due to them drinking all day!
He seemed a bit concerned about the future of engineering in the UK.
