Statistics

Steve Dekorte quotes Milton Friedman on the tremendous prosperity of Hong Kong over Britain in the last several decades...

...the average per capita income in Hong Kong... had risen to 137 percent of that in Britain...

I believe that the only plausible explanation for the different rates of growth is socialism in Britain, free enterprise and free markets in Hong Kong.

I don't believe socialism has been a smashing success in Britain. Certainly Britain has a very old bureaucracy as well. Hong Kong has been a wheeling and a dealing.

But perhaps a more disturbing fact is that Friedman seems all-consumed with "average per capita income". What about income disparity?

Hong Kong seems to be well down at the bottom in terms of income gap between rich and poor.

Socialism isn't needed to make improvements there. (And isn't Hong Kong governed by the Chinese now? Hey, China's way down there too. So much for socialism.)

So much for Friedman.