[eru]

> Except in practice it always fail to materialize, neoliberalism has repeatedly been tried everywhere in the western world, resulting in decline instead of prosperity.

Are we living in the same world?

All over the place, we see that more neoliberal places are richer than less neoliberal places. For example, Ireland is richer than Germany which is richer than Greece.

> As if the only difference was regulations, and not the fact that Canada was at that point part of the British Empire

You are right that there were more differences between them. Other people have done more extensive work on this, and I'm not doing it justice. The US had and has really asinine and heavy-handed financial regulation.

Their bans on branch banking are really something, too.

[mothballed]

Singapore and Lichtenstein are probably the richest by PPP and they are what I would describe as benevolent monarchies (at least under LKY it was) that have managed to implement classic liberal market policies precisely because they have suppressed some or many components of neoliberalist representative democracy.

LKY basically in a nutshell said 'you get the free market * because I fucking said so and I am smarter than all of you'. Weirdly Singaporeans were smart enough to realize LKY was a one in a million years kind of leader that actually both actually was smarter than everyone else AND was not corrupted to the point he poisoned the whole attempt. If he'd have sought out the populace to vote on his policies they would have done the same thing as most other places in asia and slowly vote more things to themselves in the name of welfare until their position as one of the freest financial markets in Asia was no longer the case.

* Well not for houses, but like half of Singapore is immigrants that can be taxed to pay for the other half's houses so it works out for them.

[eru]

Singapore has free and fair elections that international election observers never have found fault with. LKY regularly won elections, and his party still wins elections.

> * Well not for houses, but like half of Singapore is immigrants that can be taxed to pay for the other half's houses so it works out for them.

The proportion of immigrants is lower than what you say, and we are not taxed more than residents. (I'm an immigrant to Singapore.) In fact, they once even gave me a 50% income tax one-off rebate just because in that year they took in more money than they needed. If I were a politician, I would have only given that one-off rebate to citizens, you know the people who can actually vote for you.

[littlestymaar]

> Are we living in the same world?

I live in the western world. In a continent that gave ordoliberal (the German branch of the Mont Pellerin society) principles a quasi-constitutional values. And that continent has fallen behind both the government-debt pumped US and the state-driven China, down from a dominant position when the said principles were raised as supreme laws.

In fact, the very country that invented railways has now been unable to operate first-world level of rail service for three decades, with the collapse happening because of Thatcher's policies.

> All over the place, we see that more neoliberal places are richer than less neoliberal places. For example, Ireland is richer than Germany which is richer than Greece.

Ireland is a tax haven. And half of its GDP is entirely virtual. And again China and the US (which has roughly three time as much public debts as the EU and has had much more relax monetary policies than what the EU can legally due to the Treaty of Rome and its updates) fare better than the EU. But then again I'm sure you'll say that “it's not actual liberalism”…

> The US had and has really asinine and heavy-handed financial regulation.

The regulations put in place in the 30s after the great depression were relaxed by Reagan, and unsurprisingly it lead to the reemergence if financial crisis after half a century of financial stability.

[eru]

Ireland is richer if you look at labour income, too. I agree that its GDP numbers are a bit weird.

China is poorer than the EU.

> The regulations put in place in the 30s after the great depression were relaxed by Reagan, and unsurprisingly it lead to the reemergence if financial crisis after half a century of financial stability.

The US had inane financial regulations right from the start. And I'm not sure what you are smoking: have you heard of the Great Moderation? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moderation

[littlestymaar]

> China is poorer than the EU.

Per capita, so far. But it used to be a third-world country and it's now the industrial superpower.

> The US had inane financial regulations right from the start.

“FDR didn't exist”.

> And I'm not sure what you are smoking: have you heard of the Great Moderation? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moderation

Dude, the “great moderation” is about inflation, business cycles and macro trends more generally, not about financial markets stability.

[eru]

> Per capita, so far. But it used to be a third-world country and it's now the industrial superpower.

They moved from dirt poor to middle income largely by strangling their economy quite as hard as the did under Mao. If they liberalised further, they could become richer.

> “FDR didn't exist”.

Huh?

[littlestymaar]

> They moved from dirt poor to middle income largely by strangling their economy quite as hard as the did under Mao.

They did move from durt poor to “higher life expectancies than the US” because the state made it an actual goal, with policies designed for that.

> If they liberalised further, they could become richer.

That's just your religious belief. But it has strictly the same factuality as “if you went to church, God would help you be happier”.

> > “FDR didn't exist”.

> Huh?

Maybe document yourself on the massive financial regulations tightening that happened under FDR before saying it has always been the same.