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Why Is There A Homelessness Epidemic In The Richest Country On Earth?
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this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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Late Stage Capitalism
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america would probably have not become the richest country in the world if it wasn't one that was quite permissive of homelessness and institutionally speaking america is a very conservative country so it makes sense they haven't done anything up to now to solve the issue. most things in america seem to be cemented in the norms the greatest generation set right after ww2. maybe there will be some change soon but I'm somewhat doubtful
How is China becoming the richest country in the world then? Why would having rampant homelessness be a requirement to become rich? Specially since the US had the biggest increase in wealth when it had pretty low homelessness rates (post WW2).
post ww2 the united states was largely carried by its automobile industry and the housing boom propelled by the large number of veterans returning with the ability to get cheap mortgages along with american businesses in general being more competitive than the ones from bombed out countries in europe which were quickly losing their unwieldy empires. china on the otherhand made its rise through developing cheaper and consistent manufacturing replacements to western alternatives. all this is kind of besides the more important point that economically speaking its typically better to provide unequal services or even no services at all to a segment of a population in favor of another one. its why china under deng privitized large segments of its healthcare system providing very unequal outcomes. this relates in general to the marxist understanding of capital accumulation (long term its better for people's surplus value to go to one capitalist who will then take the capital to then invest into making more capital resulting in more capital overall)
Post-WW2 the US became the Empire and that’s where the wealth came from. It was the only industrial superpower in the west, and basically colonised Europe, the Americas, a good portion of Asia etc.
China isn’t becoming the superpower it is by having manufacturing. It’s part of it, but the amount of public investment there is insane and incomparable. They build hundreds of kilometres of metro every year, hundreds of kilometres of rail etc. they invest in nascent industries. And it’s pretty silly to say they “privatised” anything. The CPC completely controls all capital markets in China. Even if one part of an industry or another is “private”, it still answers to the CPC first and foremost. Like China has better access and cheaper healthcare than the US nowadays.
And Deng’s reforms were necessary, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t make any mistakes… Cuba has one of the best healthcare systems in the world and it never privatised their system.