It has become an article of faith among many economists that China's pro-market reforms of the 1980s and 1990s ushered in a sustained reduction in poverty.
I don’t hear anyone making that claim. If 40 years ago say 30% of your population could barely afford food and today it’s only 5% it still very much sucks for that 5% but it’s still objectively better for there to be less super poor people than before.
Yeah, you’re gonna have to count me pretty fucking skeptical that the poor in China in 1981 were better off than the poor in China today.
I don’t hear anyone making that claim. If 40 years ago say 30% of your population could barely afford food and today it’s only 5% it still very much sucks for that 5% but it’s still objectively better for there to be less super poor people than before.
That… that’s literally the claim the article is making.
Yeah, but you don’t hear it.