How is a market economy better than a centrally planned economy? Well, because everyone is better off. Someone becomes a billionaire, someone is just a little better off. But at least everyone is a little bit better off. This is the advertising slogan with which economists sell privatisation, liberalisation, deregulation and all sorts of market reforms to the people. And indeed there was a time when it worked that way. In my youth, even a very poor West German could buy more than most of my fellow citizens in Czechoslovakia.
Those at the top still have the opportunity to change the parameters of the system to make it friendly to those at the bottom. But that opportunity will not be open forever.
But it stopped working. The richest are getting richer faster than ever before in history, that’s not the problem. It’s just that the poorer half of society has stopped improving and their standard of living is declining. However, there remained one thing that benefited those at the bottom. Improvements in technology brought better health care and life extension. For everyone.
But even that seems to be coming to an end. Data from the UK shows that the life expectancy of poor people has begun to fall. What good is a market economy to them? From their point of view it is logical, rational and moral to start pushing for nationalisation and the introduction of socialism. But that won’t happen right away, so those at the top still have the opportunity to change the parameters of the system to make it friendly to those at the bottom. But that opportunity will not be open forever.
This is pre-Covid data. In the last two years, the trend has probably worsened as poor people have been more likely to refuse vaccinations and therefore more likely to die.
