Off topic,
Past the point where it helps solve discrete problems- say, malnourishment or child mortality- wealth is essentially about social status...
This is right and Denkt's completely valid point.
We're not remotely at the point where most human beings have their discrete problems fixed.
Western Europe mostly has (ignoring the banlieues &c.) and its left reviles its rich alternatively for being do-nothing inbred aristos or being blackhearted neoliberal technocrats. It's human, but it's a shitty way to
stay prosperous if everyone is well-off but you want to claw down the rich for making you feel bad about yourself. Once the only concern is social status, there's
no justification for the state mucking around with it at all.
Everywhere else on earth (including the US lower classes) it's perfectly valid to work to improve basic conditions and perfectly valid to advocate taking from the rich to meet those needs. The fact that the US's upper class has mostly earned their wealth (unlike the most obnoxious rich in Europe) is what keeps most Americans from rallying to fix the structural problems; people don't feel as bitterly towards their higher status since they feel that hard workers and the lucky can still get ahead in the world. People feel (sometimes incorrectly) that there's enough of a safety net for the poor and unlucky not to die and that the worst they face is bankruptcy from failure to work hard enough or to plan ahead. Meanwhile, the groups who strongly disagree with that idea—esp. African-Americans and spoiled upperclass kids who took on too much debt for useless degrees—are mostly behind completely distributionist policies. Most blacks have a
completely valid argument, deserving better schools, better health care, &c.; none of the kids do, even though as a society we should make basic tertiary education like community college completely free to people with the time to use it to improve their lives and society.
In any case,
@Denkt, you should probably stop arguing with the leftists here. You completely correctly realize that there's no moral justification to steal others' wealth
just to make yourself (or even your class) feel better. You correctly realize that there's no happiness to be found by conspicuous consumption or envidious comparisons with your neighbors. They really don't, and they probably won't change their minds in an internet argument.
Getting back to the subject at hand,
These 3 five year plans together likely make up the most successful economic program in human history.
Nah.
I mean, yes, they were important and necessary and a great thing for broad-scale humanity but the actual speed of China's ascent during that period had much more to do with US mentoring & shepherding the country into the WTO, which functioned as China's own build-it-yrself Marshall Plan. As
I wrote in greater detail at StackExchange, what was much more important were the changes brought in by Deng & co. in the late '70s and '80s. They don't show up as clearly on GDP charts precisely because the CCP started its economic reforms and opening up
slowly, beginning with small-scale experiments and pilot projects. That hesitancy was entirely necessary, with the USSR and Russia showing the problem with pushing too hard too fast with market liberalization, especially in the lack of protections against financial exploitation by domestic or international elites. SE was asking about superpower status; you're asking about the economic miracle; but the important period for both were the '80s.
