First, most of the speculation about the superiority of the communist system - including the popular view that Western economies could painlessly acc… - Paul Krugman

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First, most of the speculation about the superiority of the communist system - including the popular view that Western economies could painlessly accelerate their own growth by borrowing some aspects of that system - was off base. Rapid growth was based entirely on one attribute: the willingness to save, to sacrifice current consumption for the sake of future production. The communist example offered no hint of a free lunch.
Second, the economic analysis of communist countries' growth implied some future limits to their industrial expansion - in other words, implied that a naive projection of their past growth rates into the future was likely to greatly overstate their real prospects. Economic growth that is based on expansion of inputs, rather than on growth in output per unit of input, is inevitably subject to diminishing returns. It was simply not possible for the Soviet economies to sustain the rates of growth of labor force participation, average education levels, and above all the physical capital stock that had prevailed in previous years. Communist growth would predictably slow down, perhaps drastically.

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About Paul Krugman

Paul Robin Krugman (born February 28, 1953) is an American New Keynesian economist, Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and a former op-ed columnist for The New York Times.

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Alternative Names: Paul Robin Krugman Paul R Krugman
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If economists ruled the world, there would be no need for a World Trade Organization. The economist's case for free trade is essentially a unilateral case—that is, it says that a country serves its own interests by pursuing free trade regardless of what other countries may do.

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In the world of politics, however, the actual content of an academic movement may be less important than the way it affects the tone of the discussion. During the 1970s there was a growing public sense of disillusionment with government, which first fed grass-roots tax revolts in California and , then helped elect Ronald Reagan. And there was also a determined effort by a few extremely conservative journalists and politicians to promote radical tax-cutting plans. No matter how careful the research of conservative public finance theorists like Martin Feldstein might be, in that political climate it was inevitable that it would be widely seen as basically confirming popular prejudices. There was a huge intellectual gulf between Feldstein or Boskin and the sweeping claims of Arthur Laffer; but in the public mind, they were in effect allies.

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