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by qwrusz 3534 days ago
Just curious if anyone has recent examples where a region's standard of living has shifted to trend downward for any reason?
1 comments

Yes.

1. Corruption in Zimbabwe. Commercial farmers have been abandoning productive land and the country is getting poorer.

2. Communism in Cuba, Venezuela, SE Asia, and other regions over the past fifty years has ruined developing economies and made them worse. Most of those governments have fallen and things are improving again, but communism certainly has the power to ruin a country.

I'm sure there are others. Technological progress has give us a strong underlying upward trend around the world lately but sufficiently bad government can occasionally reverse the benefits of progress temporarily.

Thanks, these are good examples. It's amazing how long some of these corrupt governments have stayed in power. Will be interesting to see what happens if/when there's a change in governance.
It's easy to stay in power when you have complete control over the news and propaganda machines. Using Venezuela as an example, the country is one of the richest in the world in natural resources, but 1% of the population controls 99% of the wealth.
And in most cases, communism just changes who the 1% are and leaves the distribution unchanged.