ixtis7

Sure, I agree, but it's hard to imagine the multiplier for the 'externalities' is 2x or greater. Singapore is not some horrific hellscape where I couldn't live as I do here. Nor is Hong Kong (present situation there not being due to lack of tax revenue). They're educated (perhaps even better than in the UK), healthcare would be accessible to me, infrastructure is good. Heck, Singapore even has a massive public housing umbrella that goes beyond anything in the UK. So where is all the money here going?

I think this is largely a Western idea. IMO there is no dichotomy of 'evil Chinese government' and 'liberal silent majority of Chinese people'.

Yes there are restrictions on what people there can say about the party, but it's not North Korea--people say what they really think in private conversations, and from what I've seen they are mostly happy with their government.

Will that change if government performance changes? Possibly, but I don't think there's any noble suffering aspect to it.

Having spent a decent amount of time in China, I think there are definitely a lot of falsehoods that are spread about it, but ethnostate-ish seems a pretty fair conclusion.

If you look at the way they're trying to integrate the outer provinces, and even just the way they view day-to-day and business interactions between Chinese and Westerners.

A Chinese billionaire in the US is no big deal, a US billionaire in China is unimaginable--they'd consider it out of order and I'd be surprised if it could even happen without them being cut down mid-journey. A contrived example maybe but success is reserved for the Han, not for outsiders.

I agree that it's silly to say that you don't benefit from government spending at all. On the other hand there is often a real sense of not getting what you put in. I imagine especially so on a forum like this where many are professionals of certain industries with relatively high pay.

For example: public spending per person in the UK is < £10,000 per year, which is much less than I pay in taxes. And I would estimate that I'm well below average in terms of spending received: I don't have children, don't have any large medical expenses, etc.

Of course, my cost to society will rise as I get older, but on average I would estimate that I'm paying at least twice (and probably many times more than) what I'm taking. And yet the current trend is for half of society to say that I'm not paying my 'fair share'. I'm not sure what definition of fairness they're using, but it's not mine.

China, perhaps. Russia is in the doldrums.

The 'problem' with China is that it's an ethnostate, or wants to be. So in a practical sense most Westerners are better off fixing their allegiances to the US, for better or worse.

At least then you can be part of the apparatus and not pre-emptively sidelined. I like some aspects of China vs. the US too, but China is for the Chinese, as they say.