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United_Target8942 t1_j595z2j wrote

Pretty much every society ever lies about economics as well. From my point of view, dictators are complete and utter amateurs when it comes to lying about the economy, though they do tell some pretty ridiculous ones. Interestingly, South Korea went from being poorer than North Korea and a total third world country to a rich country in about two decades. Most of that was under a brutal dictator. I'm not sure if any other medium sized country has ever achieved such rapid growth. (I'm not counting small countries like Nauru).

I'll just give some examples of various lies I've found to be comical or egregious, just from reading what economists and politicians say in their books/talks, ect. You can choose to believe them or not to believe them, hehe. They are off the top of my head. I remember most of the sources if your curious.

The third world had very low economic growth in the 1980's due to policies recommended by economists.

300 ivy league economists wrote in the NYT in 1993 that NAFTA was a great idea because of the theory of comparative advantage. I doubt any one of them even bothered to read what was in the agreement.

William Nordhaus (Nobel prize winner in economics) said that we should raise the global temperatures to around 3.5 degrees Celsius as an economic tradeoff. He said this in his Nobel prize speech. His model claims that forestry and fishing, and outdoors industry are essentially the only industry effected by climate change.

Jagdish Bhagwati (an ivy league economist) said extreme inequality was the best kind because billionaire rich people give money away more than millionaires. Lol. (Isn't that a contradiction? There wouldn't be extreme inequality if billionaires really did that). In any case, it's not true.

My favorite is Thomas Malthus, who said we should introduce the black plague to wipe out the poor, so we can get population growth under control. He argued that the poor should be put in enclosed, crowded area's to help spread disease more early. A bit of a caricature, but he really did say that.

economists in my country said (about 40 years ago) that companies that pay their CEO's too much would fail because other companies could outcompete them by paying their companies less. So companies like Facebook and Google simply wouldn't exist, since by definition there cannot be monopoly.

the British killed over a hundred million people in India and lowered the life expectancy to less than it was in cave man times (it was in the 20's), through endemic deaths from hunger and famine. The policies of exporting food to Britain were praised by free market economists in the 19th century.

Politicians saying automation is a threat to jobs is a deflection away from their policies, which caused unemployment.

If you change the poverty line from $2 a day to $6 a day, the poverty rate goes from about 1 billion to 4-5billion. It's set to $2 a day (last I checked) for no good reason whatsoever!

Trickle down economics. Do I need to explain this one?

In much of the west, since the 1970's, economic growth has slowed to 2% (instead of 3%), financial crisis have become more common, and real wages have stagnated. Milton Friedman said a rising tide would lift all boats. Clearly he was wrong, (and on many other things too!).

The great financial crisis was in large part caused from a clearly false belief in the efficient markets hypothesis. Eugene Fama later won the nobel prize for the efficient market hypothesis.

employment is counted if you work one hour a week in most countries. More and more 'employment' is precarious in nature.

The banks speculated on food prices, driving them sky high, after the 2008 recession. It caused riots and starvation to about a hundred million people in 30 countries. There was a study blaming it on Bush's investments in biofuels. The study was suppressed from publication at the world bank.

Intellectual property rights on medicine have no justification. The lies vary on this one. The original one was that it's profits are needed fund research. However this is clearly not true, as R & D spending declined or stayed the same as patent profits skyrocketed. Millions of people have died because they couldn't afford HIV medicine, it was about fifty times more expensive than it cost to make.

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OneSky8953 t1_j5a9gkx wrote

We elected our first democratically elected president Rhee Syngman in 1948 and since then various government officials in 1952, 1956, 1960, in 1963, 1967 and 1971 and so on. My grandparents participated in all of aforementioned elections, cast a ballot and said they never felt like their opinions were under represented. Yes it had its own flaws (for example, there was a famous mail voting election fraud in 1960 by then vice president Lee Ki boong but people took to the street, did massive protests and in the end overthrew the government. There was a military coup in 1979 but they also eventually resigned after huge civil right movements and protests) but still, it was a massive progress since we were literally either monarchy or under imperial influence where individual people had no voice at all.

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