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The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else?
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Exactly, even mainstream economists point this out in their own way. Capital and income are meaningless unless they are "legible" to states and recognized by property law. Poor people can accumulate tons of productive assets and use them, but as long as it all remains in the informal economy it's not going to be harnessable by mainstream industrial society, and of course it won't be reported in the official statistics.
This problem is especially acute with states that are weak and riven by local corruption, like they often are in poor countries. The stats can't be trusted, we have no idea how good or bad the poorest people actually have it.
Look up the book The Mysteries of Capital. There are whole chapters talking about land ownership, deeds, land rushes, etc.. Fascinating book -- not Jewish, but great to understand how we take for granted the clear title to land in the US
Currency supply inflation via fungible assets as collateral is what fuels growth. This has been proven by economists. If you want an introduction to this concept, read this book.
Ownership of property benefits everyone. Without it private trade doesn't work, ambitious people can't build capital, and everyone loses. I haven't read it yet but I'm told The Mystery of Capital (link below) gives a very good description of how important property rights are to helping the poor.
https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Capital-Capitalism-Triumphs-Everywhere/dp/0465016154
In large part it is due to the Public Land Records System in the US. In the US we can buy and sell land with confidence and use it to gain wealth through appreciation of land values, taking out equity loans to invest in other things and it also supports our local governments through taxes that provide services. If you want to read more, check out The Mystery of Capital https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Capital-Capitalism-Triumphs-Everywhere/dp/0465016154
It is fairly straightforward. Low levels of economic freedom, lack of strong property rights, legal and social impediments to female employment, etc... You can pump out educated people all you like, but if you don't have the institutions in place to support entrepreneurship, you won't have jobs.
They should read The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto.
How about Malaysia then ? Or maybe Brazil...
I get your point, it's just that it's hard to get fair comparisons when each country has its specificities, history, and (often unwilling) position in the geopolitical checkers board. Who knows what would have happened had China gone Perestroika in the 1980s...
If you mean to discuss the general rules or recipes for successful growth, there are plenty of books doing that, I know a few that would argue not everything the CCP did was optimal or even good, though the tremendous uplift from poverty has nowhere else been close to that of 1990s / 2000s China. Also I'm of the impression there is a lot more domestic discontent in China than we suspect.
Actually, the development of private property rights is strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly associated with improvement of quality of life for the poor. I have yet to see any data suggesting there is any credible alternative to the market if your interest is a healthy and wealthy society.
On inequality I think Piketty and Piketty and Saez are probably about right, but there isn't that much variation across societies where "ownership of assets" varies. I'm prepared to argue that North Korea might stand as the world's most unequal society however (perhaps asymptotically so?), even though we lack for real data on the subject.
If your interest is in reducing inequality, you should probably be thinking more about taxing the stuff that the rich earn rather than eliminating the social construct of the rich owning stuff.
The book to read is called "The Mystery of Capital," by Hernando de Soto.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernando_de_Soto_Polar#Books
The thesis is that Capitalism requires strong property rules and property rights, and uses as its example the settling of the American West, so its conclusion is that the "40 acres and a mule" land rush was accompanied by the formalization of government-recorded-and-protected land rights, and this enshrinement of property rights laid down the resulting economic growth that occurred from the mid-19th Century all the way through to today.
Ever hear the phrase, "Invest in land, they aren't making any more of it?" With the opening up of Mars to colonization, that's no longer true. There is an enormous land rush waiting. The first colonists will lay claim to most of the planet- already there are Earth-based organizations which are trying to formalize property rights in space:
If you don't think this can happen, you have to ask yourself, how will you prevent the first colonists from doing just this if you yourself are not directly represented there? Or worse, what if those first colonists just declare independence, and you don't have either the ships or the will to invade and take the property back by force? Especially given that those colonists will have a lot of friends and investors back home.
If you buy into Hernando de Soto's logic, then the Martian colonists will be laying down the groundwork for the economic successes of the 21st and 22nd centuries by establishing property lines and recording property deeds and maintaining and respecting property rights, and buying and selling them both to new colonists and also established colonists who have come up with new uses for the land.
tl;dr, the successful Mars colonists will make a ton of money.
It appears the basis of your arguments are based on high skilled start-ups e.g., software companies. However, if we change the rules across the board we now affect those landscaping businesses, bakeries, etc...
Why do you want to involve the government which should be decided upon owner and employee. If an owner of a company is not providing the benefits you want then don't work there, then make it known that said employee doesn't offer these benefits via websites such as Glassdoor. This will inform people and that employee will either find no one willing to work for them or less have to accept less qualified person which might affect their long-term growth. Two outcomes will come from this, the business will shut-down due to poor business practices or the owner realize their error and correct it. If you involve the government we now have potentially excluded people from starting a business due to regulations.
Here is a good book outlining why government regulations create additional problems which hurt businesses particularly those trying to get up and running, The Mystery of Capital.
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