Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (360681)	11/29/2007 12:14:24 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575087

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. Socialism doesn't restrict freedoms.....dictatorships do. 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. There also is the damage the unbridled growth is doing to the environment. Eventually, the people will start to object. 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. I am not sure the East has grown much at all. The East has been a real drag on the economy for the past ten years. That's not to say the West hasn't had problems.....it does. But the East was a mess when they took it over. 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. Poland's unemployment rate was over 11% last month.....the highest in the EU. 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; Its hard to buy into the above growth rates with the unemployment rate north of 11% and that's the lowest its been since Poland became independent. Either someone is fudging the numbers or Poland has a significant birth rate....which I doubt.