China's internal troubles (not the Far West)

[Dayuhan]

I have never yet clicked on a You Tube link purporting to provide economic or political analysis, and I'm not going to start now. The format doesn't suit the purpose.

The 'crass' aspect of this is the thinness of the disguise, as many capitalist cultural ventures do not make attempts to hide their true purpose. In capitalist societies, such articles are very common, and so what is crass commercialism depends largely on perception.

"Crassness" is entirely a matter of perception. As I said before, crass consumerism is what the other guy wants. Of course to the other guy, what you want is equally crass.

One does not restrict income to achieve limiting the symbols of vanity that creates a social discontent (and that is important for nations emerging with baby steps from the shadow of command economies i.e. State controlled economies). One merely increases the prices through taxation (which will go to the State coffers and help generate faster movement towards a market driven economy and narrowing the gap between social order). It would be something on the lines of heavy taxation on cigarettes in the UK to discourage smoking. Of course, there are possibly many other ways too!

The assumption that money going to the State will "help generate faster movement towards a market driven economy and narrowing the gap between social order" seems excessively optimistic to me.

Don't you think that State decisions on what should and should not be punitively taxed to discourage consumption has the potential to produce discontent as well... both among those who would like to consume those products and among those who earn their living producing them? Those who oppose crass consumerism often forget that without consumption there will be no production, and without production there will be no employment, and on down the line.

In so far as China is concerned, there is discontent, as I discern, mainly because of the widening gap between the haves and have nots, the disparity between rural vs urban development and the disharmony in development between the interiors of China vs the coastal belt.

There must be many other reasons for the social unrest in China.

There are many reasons for discontent in China, but they are as much connected to the Stete's efforts to maintain control as they are to excessively rapid decontrol.