serious economic ways for many countries. It isn't only COVID related -- several real world paradigm issues happening at once -- such as AI and what this means more and more for a country's home employment (including China!). There is a lot going on at once and I am not in disagreement with everythjng you are saying.

I am in sharp disagreement how you would look at China consumers over the past 20 years in macro ways and how you seem to compare certain aspects of consumer effect in China to India and other countries who have been in the "general swawths of poverty, in need of development for the past several decades" category as well. We should care about all of this if we care about world poverty and world stability.

100% you are correct that China chose a path of trying to global manufacture their way out of the poverty -- with all kinds of topics worthy of discussion of what they have done well or fairly vs. poorly and unfairly on that front. But that is not mutually exclusive for actual development of a meaningful consuming class with subsequent generations of the same family rising to a higher econimic level ----- and doing this in my opinion in ways that have seemed more effective compared to some other countries.

Again, how it looks literally the past 24 months post COVID - messy issues for a variety of global reasons. China consumerism is no powerhouse right now -- as is an issue in many countries. This has led to or is at least combined with overcapacity issues in some markets and combined with some serious inflation pressures as well driven by other factors. Its actually a fascinating dynamic because such overcapacity should be a primary factor tamping down inflation in a generally globally trading world. And I know all politicians generally care about the most is how to band-aid things happening today - especially if they think it helps keep their day job.


[Post edited by fishhoo at 04/17/2024 2:18PM]