I would also point out that the author conflate two tightly-coupled but distinct spheres - the political and the economic. China, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore have all been massively successful because they acted aggressively in the political realm to foster growth and development (with little to no regard for Democratic norms). Conversely, their economic systems were and are fairly liberal (China being both the least developed of these as well as the biggest laggard on this front). Chinese citizens may not be politically empowered, but it is far easier to set up a company, hire and fire, etc. in Shanghai than in New York.
Japan and South Korea fostered growth and development with little to no regard for democratic norms?
I mean yeah, their democracies look a bit strange to Westerners, what with Japan being governed by mostly one party and South Korea being a fairly new democracy... But what specifically do you mean?
One interesting thing to note is that this allows for the exact quantification ("pricing") of various forms of dissent. If a large enough segment of the population is willing to pay a measurable financial cost in order to engage in a certain behavior, the government will be able to monitor (and respond) to that in near real time.
If you want to see the impact of profoundly cheap labor in a modern country, go to India. When I was there last winter, it was fascinating to see how many things were done by simply throwing seemingly-inordinate man-hours of labor at tasks (e.g. painting roads and signage by hand).
Banker here. We actually have automated and outsourced quite a bit of the drudgery, although doing it within the framework of Excel and PowerPoint often requires some pretty strange contortions from a UI perspective.
No. The middle class in the US and other highly developed nations is hurting, but by any global measure, this group of people is actually relatively wealthy. The global middle class has experienced an unprecedented level of growth and prosperity over the past 25+ years. Of course, this has in many cases come at the expense of the first group.
I agree. The standard of living in the first world countries will meet the third world countries in the middle. This explains why wages haven't increased significantly in the past 25 years in the US.
Where it gets interesting is when equilibrium has been reached.
I actually like and use sheets (it's much better than Excel for simple and/or non-analytical use cases), so when I use Excel for something, it's because I want to use Excel for that thing.
