The Wall Street Journal has reported that the Chinese government as part of its plan to promote China’s economic growth is, shall we say, encouraging economists and journalists to provide more up-beat reports:
BEIJING—Chinese authorities are training their sights on a new set of targets: economists, analysts and business reporters with gloomy views on the country’s economy.
Securities regulators, media censors and other government officials have issued verbal warnings to commentators whose public remarks on the economy are out of step with the government’s upbeat statements, according to government officials and commentators with knowledge of the matter.
The stepped-up censorship, many inside and outside the ruling Communist Party say, represents an effort by China’s leadership to quell growing concerns about the country’s economic prospects as it experiences a prolonged slowdown in growth. As more citizens try to take money out of the country, officials say, regulators and censors are trying to foster an environment of what party officials have dubbed “zhengnengliang,†or “positive energy.â€
I’m sure that will work. I know that Keynes considered “animal spirits” important in promoting a country’s economic growth but somehow I doubt this is what he had in mind.
If you were an animal spirit, what kind of animal spirit would you be?
At some point positive energy becomes obvious delusion. Has China reached that point yet or did it reach it long ago? Trying to enforce positive energy suggests the latter.
Exactly right, Dave. Keynes thought government should increase confidence by reducing uncertainty via good stewardship, not by mass propaganda which is how we also seem to be doing it. China seems to be taking it several steps further, suggesting they don’t have the knowledge or the will to shift from an overproduction economy to something not dependent on American consumers.
We have “mass propaganda” suggesting our economy is great? In what universe is that? Every time I turn on the radio there’s an ad referencing, “the downturn in the economy.” Obama constantly acknowledges that we aren’t where we should be. The economy is talked down night and day on CNBC and the Fox Biz network and the WSJ and the broader media. It’s been gloom and doom for the last eight years despite the longest continuous recovery on record.
In fact, we’ve done the opposite of the Chinese, we’ve convinced ourselves the sky is falling. Is it? Compared to which other major economy? France? Russia? China? The UK? Canada? Even Germany has our same UE rate and would you want to swap our problems for theirs?
If we aren’t doing badly compared to almost every other major economy, then compared to what are we doing badly? To the past? To the mythical past, or to the real past where we’ve gotten by on arms build-ups, the dotcom bubble and the real estate bubble?
Show me one way in which we are materially less well-off than we were were in, say, the Reagan era of such rosy-hued memory. Did you have a computer with access to all the world’s knowledge and entertainment 24/7/365 for practically nothing in the 80’s? Did your car have airbags, ABS etc…? Did you have a giant plasma screen TV? Could you order absolutely anything, from absolutely anywhere, and have it on your porch 24 hours later? Is coffee worse or better? Food worse or better? Medical and dental care worse or better? Do you know that every major air pollutant is down by huge amounts since then? Ditto the water supply (pace Flint). Do you know that we are no longer on a nuclear hair trigger with the USSR? Does anyone ever take notice of the fact that we have gone 70 years without a major war on this planet, that there has been no WW3?
Just which part of your lives Dave or Ben, are significantly worse now than they were then? Or contrast with any era you like, any country you like. Name a single country whose hand you’d rather be holding in a high stakes game.
People are freaking out because they thought they were rich and it turned out they weren’t. They thought they bought a million dollar house and were going to sell it for two million, and their stock would always go up, and all it took was a college degree. Well, NONE of that was true. None of it. You know what I recall of the good old days of the Reagan era? I was working in a restaurant where every single waiter but me had at least a BA and they were humping trays.
This gloom is exaggerated and absurd. Jesus Christ, you’d think we were Somalia.