Look at the leadership in Chinese companies and politics. They're all scientists and engineers. Look at American leaders, they're all lawyers. That ought to tell you something. What does a lawyer do? He uses rhetoric. To whatever degree is necessary, the truth will be obfuscated in the pursuit of his ends. He hides the truth. A scientist is trying to find the truth.
China has capitalism for companies and socialism for the masses. The US has socialism for companies and capitalism for the masses.
China does capitalism better than America ever has. They take the surpluses of capitalism and reinvest it into new industry and new infrastructure both domestically and abroad, and so the cycle continues toward greater prosperity that is shared among all of its people.
You don't see Chinese billionaires, you don't see inflated Chinese real estate, stock or bond markets. They correctly recognize that these financial systems confer no real benefit to a nation's economy, and China's astonishing development is living proof that you can do without them. Rather, these systems over time degenerate into tools for the wealthy to suck money out of the real economy into their private fortunes. Over time, you end up with a fake economy that serves the 1%.
America has no surpluses, they are dwindling as the country deindustrializes and financializes the economy. There has been a shift from producing surpluses to what is in economic terms transfer payments, from ordinary Americans to the 1%. These are masked behind inflated costs and debt service for all of the basic necessities of life, which deceptively is counted as GDP growth but in reality, nothing new is being produced.
There are two main determining factors that shape American domestic and foreign policy.
First: the vested interest of a rich elite oligarchy billionaire donor class that spends money in American politics to uphold an economic order that suits them, one that excels at extracting money out of the real economy and out of the tax coffers into their private fortunes. They show an utter disdain for ordinary working people everywhere globally, and view them as objects of exploitation.
Second: policy, domestic and foreign, is for sale. The US government is bought and paid for. In all sectors - housing, education, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, utilities, banking, military - money buys policies, it always has, and with Citizens United it was upheld to be the actual law of the land, which can only be described as simply grotesque, legalized bribery.
These two things are absolute truths, they are happening in plain sight. Those who run the country get their way in the form of neoliberal economic exploitation, deindustrialization, and neoconservative warmongering hawks. It's simply easier for billionaires to manipulate markets and regulators than it is to build new business, so that's what they do.
China in cooperation with Russia and the BRICS is spending TRILLIONS abroad to develop global trade and systems of trade settlement, banking, finance and security, all in equal and mutually beneficial partnerships. The new $3.5B megaport in Chile is a 60/40 partnership paid for by China and Chile. China has never intervened in the domestic affairs of other countries.
The West NEVER did anything like this. Here is the key difference. The IMF/World Bank system was essentially an arm of the Pentagon. When they opened a line of credit to a country, it came with massive strings attached in the terms of the loan: countries were forced to impose severe austerity on their people, cut all social and educational spending, and open their markets for American corporations. In effect, halt the countries ability to develop and provide America with either cheap labor or cheap resources and markets to dump their overpriced goods and services. And any country that didn't sign up for this ran the risk of being invaded or having their government overthrown or being sanctioned. The West leveraged their military might for global economic exploitation.
The military industrial complex has been left completely uncurtailed to expand its power and influence, ever since it was first warned about by Eisenhower. The MIC thrives on NATO expansion, on conflict and wars, on a bloated wasteful grifting military with bases all over the world. So, they push policy in this direction, and to this end they will paint a self-serving narrative about foreign boogeymen that are out to get America and Europe, employing a complicit mainstream media to do just that. All those, planes, tanks, munitions, rockets, missiles, grenades, artillery shells, that are bought and are spent in conflicts, they need to be replenished. This is how the industry makes its money! When the US finally left Afghanistan, $83B worth of equipment was simply abandoned. It's not like they got ran out of the country by superior forces. It was done willingly and intentionally, because, well, all that stuff now needs to be replaced and restocked! A giant grift.
Well, the world is voting with their feet and their wallets and engaging in deals with China.
Meanwhile, inside the US since 20 years back, almost all of the combined earnings of the companies in the S&P500 have been spent on stock buybacks. That is many TRILLIONS of dollars to date, and 2025 it's projected that there will be an additional whole TRILLION of stock buybacks. Do you even understand what that is? I'll tell you, it's a giant fukk-you to all working and middle class Americans.
(The graph has an error, it's not "billions" but trillions of dollars. The article I got it from correctly refers to the data as trillions. One billion dollars would amount to nothing in the S&P500, that would be a rounding error)
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/record-stock-buybacks-bolster-case-for-raising-corporate-tax-rate
All of those trillions is money that could've been spent on R&D, on new industry, on workforce training, for growth of the real economy of production and consumption. But hey, why spend money and years of hard work to grow new business when you can just take that money immediately outright?? So instead, it's yet another handout to billionaires that they pay out to themselves. GM has received subsidies on the order of billions of dollars, money that was to expand their business and operations but was then given away as stock buybacks to grow shareholder wealth. Same shyt happens in the telecom industry. Again, a giant grift.
For many decades, the wealth of the top 1 % has seen growth that is a literal EXPONENTIAL curve! The billionaire donor class that runs the country does not care about ordinary Americans, and more and more people are struggling to make ends meet. People are unaware of the magnitude of the corruption that exists in the West. It is inherently a corrupt system that is deliberately set up to extract money out of the economy into private wealth.
But that is all coming to a head now that there is an alternative system being brought to bear by powers that are too big to be bullied, the first time ever in history. All other previous attempts got swiftly and expeditiously took out.
So now, there is only one way out of this, and that is to forgive all debts and nationalize all banks, so money and finance becomes a public utility like in China, where low-interest loans are made available to build whatever is needed, and where it has compounded over decades to make China the world's factory. American workers would become competitive globally overnight.