Over the last 40 years, China’s version of socialism with state-controlled markets have lifted more people out of poverty than ours. Democracy and capitalism have not benefited me in my lifetime. My taxes go to fund foreign wars and lining the pockets of American oligarchs.

“Radically increased wealth”, for who? Government has never solved my problems, only created more. My point is that I would have been doing better under China’s system than ours.

> My point is that I would have been doing better under China’s system than ours.

I’m not sure how you can say this with a straight face. China hit rock bottom after the cultural revolution and they had a lot of “the only place left to go is up!” going on. This is like someone saying their salary increased 5X from $10k to $50k and calling that better than someone’s salary only going up by a third from $200k to $300k. Yes, the improvements have been great, and while your life would have improved more under Chinese rule (velocity), do you really think your position would be better off? (And imagine only making $50k or $100k/year and houses still start at a million bucks!)

If you don’t like government meddling, China probably isn’t the place for you. Yes, they might not pay attention that you aren’t following some rule for awhile, but the rule exists and they will eventually hit you with non-compliance.

But you still voting, do you?