Economics?

The other day I saw a post on Google Plus talking about the Liberal Government trying to reduce debt, what most people wrote under there were something like "the debt is not significant enough to be worried about, look at the US" etc. I was furious at that sort of opinions. A debt like the US have? They can barely pay for their interest on that debt with their whole budget! So I posted "You would not allow your own finance to run into debt, why should you allow your government to do so?" And what I got was name and shame from leftards telling me that I don't know a single thing about economics. Their reason was a company has to borrow money to grow. Oh really? I might not have a degree on economics but I think I know better than that.

For one thing, companies do not grow by borrowing money, at least that is not a healthy type of growth you'd want, as the debt will catch up with you once your profit falls behind interest rates. A company grows by re-investing part of its profit, which in turn brings in more profit. Isn't that the basic economics we're talking about?

Secondly, a government is not a company, the last thing you want is for it to grow.

River Elegy

River Elegy is a 6 episode Chinese documentary about the Yellow River in China and the culture behind it filmed in around 1987-1988. It is still available on YouTube but English subtitles are probably not easy to find. I started looking for it after I read something online about how open-minded this documentary is 25 years ago comparing to China these days. I was genuinely shocked when I watched it and I realized there was a time in Chinese history before 4th Jun 1989 that China used to have so much hope.

The narration was the stereotypical communist tone but what it delivered was nothing but. It called for much more social and economical liberty than anything you could imagine broadcasting on any Chinese TV channel now. It correctly identified communism as the obstruction to greater succeed of China and admitted openly that cultural revolution and the "great leap forward" were both big mistakes made by the government. It called for science and conscience in terms of deciding China's future. I could not have said it better.

There are certain things you do need to say about the government to enable a show to be publicly broadcast on CCTV (China's largest national television broadcaster, controlled by the Communist government of course), especially in the 80s not long after Mao's death and the end of cultural revolution. There are a few places in the show where propaganda just seeps through, and not anywhere in the show did they mention the Communist Party is part of the problem (no one would expect them to though being on a government-controlled media). At that stage though, China was really willing to adopt capitalism (well at least the economic aspects), and was ready for a change. It was the Tiamanmen massacre that changed its path for good.

One thing is clear, we have not seen anything like that coming out after the Tiananmen massacre and I don't believe we will as long as China is still controlled by the one and only almighty Communist Party.