Metsfanmax wrote:notyou2 wrote:So apparently you want to keep all the poor in their misery by giving them food instead of actually improving their lives.
How generous of you Scott.
What things has the free market done lately to make it easier for people to "climb up the ladder" themselves?
well gee, let's see. We have so many markets free of government intervention, it's hard to choose!!!!!
The free market doesn't work when the government is interfering as much as it is. Things are way out of whack. The less the government interferes, the more free the market is, the better it can display the benefits of a free market.
I suppose professional sports is a good example of where the market performs the closest to the principles of a free market. And even though drugs are illegal and you can be locked up, the black market for weed especially is a great example of how a free market operates, albeit in the dark. Prices have been stable for generations, and the quality has improved, and if you are poor you can get the cheap shit and if you are rich you can get the plurple-urps. You get what you pay for, and you can always turn it down if it's bunk. Supply and demand are relevant, and prices act accordingly.
The free market has a pretty good track record when it comes to food production as well. Mao and Stalin....not so much
FORWARD!!!
The Great Leap Forward ended in catastrophe, resulting in tens of millions of excess deaths.[3] Estimates of the death toll range from 18 million[4] to 45 million,[5] with estimates by demographic specialists ranging from 18 million to 32.5 million.[4] Historian Frank Dikƶtter asserts that "coercion, terror, and systematic violence were the very foundation of the Great Leap Forward" and it "motivated one of the most deadly mass killings of human history."[6]
The years of the Great Leap Forward in fact saw economic regression, with 1958 through 1961 being the only years between 1953 and 1983 in which China's economy saw negative growth. Political economist Dwight Perkins argues, "enormous amounts of investment produced only modest increases in production or none at all. ā¦ In short, the Great Leap was a very expensive disaster."[7]
In subsequent conferences in 1960 and 1962, the negative effects of the Great Leap Forward were studied by the CPC, and Mao was criticized in the party conferences. Moderate Party members like Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping rose to power, and Mao was marginalized within the party, leading him to initiate the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward