We love pie. It’s perhaps our favorite dessert. We make semi-regular trips to the best pie place in Seattle, A la Mode. The original one on Phinney Ridge, not the Johnny Come Lately in West Seattle. Along with stuffing, it’s our favorite part of Thanksgiving. Agent Cooper’s love of cherry pie was our favorite quirk of the TV show, Twin Peaks. Pie is a good thing, it is important and we defend it against all dessert assailants.
But pie is the worst economic metaphor imaginable. People continually refer to pies in describing the world economy—as China’s economy grew, there was less for the rest of us, they claim. But China’s economic ascent does not mean there are fewer pieces for the rest of us. Just as the economic development of Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and other markets did not harm the world or standards of living around the world, they enhanced it, China’s economic rise also benefits the world.
The economy is a bakery, not a pie. The more goods and services China produces, the more entrepreneurs created, scientists trained, and artists mused, the more treats for the whole world. China’s economic success is the greatest poverty alleviator the world has ever seen.
Hundreds of millions of people are no longer in daily misery, no longer dying, no longer stuck in short, brutish lives, thanks to the economic reforms China implemented in the 1980s and the subsequent vast increase in GDP it created, leading to a higher standard of living
www.foxnews.com
