Monday, November 19, 2018

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING REALLY IMPORTANT

Take the time to read this entire story, and to look at the striking illustrations.  China has raised five hundred million people out of poverty.  The Act Utilitarian in me cannot even compute what this means in total human happiness.  Twenty years from now [after I am gone, alas] the world will be utterly transformed.
at

6 comments:

  1. AnonymousNovember 19, 2018 at 10:57 AM

    Prof. Wolff, I don't see a link.

    ReplyDelete
  2. DeanNovember 19, 2018 at 11:05 AM

    I assume this is the story to which the professor refers: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/18/world/asia/china-social-mobility.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousNovember 19, 2018 at 2:52 PM

    Just by chance this set of China-related references came up on today's Bookforum:

    https://www.bookforum.com/blog/20457

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousNovember 19, 2018 at 5:58 PM

    China grew by consuming -- an economic consumption of the right kind. They didn't do yet another tax cuts for the wealthy nonsense. They weren't bailing out incompetent business men. Instead they invested in China for the Chinese. One statistic that I find fascinating is:

    "Between 2011 and 2013, China consumed 45% more cement than United States consumed in the previous 100 years (1900 to 1999)."

    ReplyDelete
  5. MSNovember 19, 2018 at 10:49 PM

    For those of you who may have missed tonight’s tribute on PBS to Julia Louis-Dreyfus being awarded the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Award for American Humor, she remarked that humor had been important for her in dealing with her bout with cancer, and noted that it is true, as they say, that laughter is the best medicine, which is a good thing, since that is what the current administration is trying to replace Obamacare with. Bada bing, bada boom!

    ReplyDelete
  6. RobinMcDugaldNovember 20, 2018 at 11:23 AM

    Having grown up in poverty, I’m certainly not impervious to the significance of its amelioration in China. The reference to China’s consumption of cement does, however, raise questions—raised in detail in a recent book by David Harvey—concerning the economic and environmental predicaments as well as the massive, not entirely voluntary population redistributions China’s chosen path seems to be leading to. My own favourite symbol of this: the replicas of the Parthenon and the Sphinx standing by the side of the new Great Silk Road in Lanzhou New Area:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/along-the-new-silk-road-a-city-built-on-sand-is-a-monument-to-chinas-problems/2016/05/29/982424c0-1d09-11e6-82c2-a7dcb313287d_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4ca3fafd2f06

    (scroll down to the photo). The accompanying report is also worth a read.

    ReplyDelete