China and poverty

Thomas Sowell notes some impressive statistics about poverty in China and makes a good point:

People on the political left make a lot of noise about poverty and advocate all sorts of programs and policies to reduce it but they show incredibly little interest in how poverty has actually been reduced, whether in China or anywhere else.

You can bet the rent money that the left will show little or no interest in how Chinese by the millions are rising out of poverty every year. The left showed far more interest in China back when it was run by Mao in far left fashion — and when millions of Chinese were starving.

The answer to how China has done that, of course, is through economic growth. Now, Democrats talk all the time about new government programs that should be implemented to cure this or that social ill -- read: a transfer of wealth. But how often do they talk about specific means to boost growth and create wealth? As far as I can tell their list of initiatives to do so looks something like this:




In fairness, it's not as though Republicans have proven to be a whole lot better. Their list is more like this:

*tax cuts

Pathetic.