Nick described a capitalistic oligarchy. "There are huge and obscene profits for the "upper class" and a life of grinding poverty and industrial accidents for the underclass, with only limited health care and essentally no welfare."

And Nick ascribed the problems in China as the result of unfettered, particularly corrupt capitalism.

And that's being played out in the US today, with minimum wage jobs being the highest aspiration of much of the population. Much of the "welfare" will be a victim of the Republican strategy of fighting wars and running up debts so that social programs will not be funded. Liberal think tanks described and predicted this strategy years ago, and I cited them on the HZ. It's the unfettered capitalism adopted by China that has led to that oligarchy.

TB responded, "That this is the inevitable end result of collective economics, not an aberration."
Strictly an ideological knee-jerk reaction. Wishful thinking poorly disguised as a knowledgeable opinion.

There is a difference between wishful thinking, hearsay and evidence. In the case of Conservatives, wishful thinking has become the ideology, applied more and more desperately even as each and every one of it's tenets collapses.

Conservatism. All it's good for, and it very good at this, is creating a huge government which runs enormous deficits funneling money to wealthy corporations and individuals at the expense of the vast majority of the population. It tramples on the Constitution and civil and human rights of it's citizens if they get in the way. Conservatism is genius in the way it inspires blind, slavish loyalty in some of the same people it screws over so badly. No matter how illogical, how obviously and clearly proven wrong, they will insist that black is white and white is red, whatever they are told to believe. Reread the Aldous Huxley quote of 1962.

Arf