Again, no country where freedoms are restricted grows at its pontential whether the economy is capitalistic or socialistic.
Again that's exactly my point. Although that I'd add that to the extent the economy is socialist it is restricting freedom.
Once this burden was taken off of East Germany it was allowed to grow at its potential. To the extent it succeeded in doing this, it helped the growth rate of Germany as a whole.
The only exception I've seen is China. And I have to believe that freedoms are expanding in that country.
In particular economic freedom Political freedoms have also grown but not as quickly. The economic freedom allows for faster growth, and the extra wealth has helped defuse opposition to the ruling regime, but its also raised expectations. If for any reason that growth slows down, China could be in for major turmoil.
That's because W. Germany did something stupid......it brought the E. German Deutsch mark up to par with the W. German Deutsch mark all at once. Instead of making the E. Germans feel equal, all it managed to do was prevent new investment from going into E. Germany like what was happening in the other E. European satellites.
That much is true, but I still think that the east grew faster than the west.
And btw, several of the former satellites continue to struggle......Poland being the prime example. Many of its young people are emigrating to other countries because they can't find work in Poland.
Poland started off behind the Czech lands and the Baltics. Their are jobs in Poland but they pay less than jobs in a number of other places in the East, and of course much less than in places like West Germany. So its not as much that jobs can't be found in Poland, its that people would rather move elsewhere and get much bigger paychecks.
Still Poland is growing faster than most of Europe, and while its unemployment rate is higher than the US's its about the same as France's rate.
Poland's GDP growth rate
* Total 2003 3.7%
* Total 2004 5.4%
* Total 2005 3.3%
* Total 2006 6.1%
* Total 2007 (est) 7.1%
en.wikipedia.org
As for earlier years
"ECONOMIC GROWTH - GDP
Text by: Bruno Lill
Center for Markets in Transition, HSE, October 2001
Updated by Ville Rämänen in October 2002 and Iana Pietarinen in May 2003
In 1990, Poland became the first country in Central and Eastern Europe to embrace radical economic transition policies. The process started painfully resulting in 7.5% and 7% decrease in GDP in 1990 and 1991 respectively, but the process laid the foundations for a recovery in 1992 and propelled the economy into high growth, averaging 5,2% a year during the 1993-2000 period. As a result, in 1994 Poland became the first country in the region to see real GDP exceeding the GDP level of 1989...
balticdata.info |
