Other countries, however, have fallen into the so-called middle-income trap.
Are there any exceptions?
Yes, Singapore.
Singapore is the only city-state that has remained an autocracy yet has achieved prosperity.
"Have you ever considered that this is because after they moved to a democratic system, we provided these countries with more technical and economic support?"
Singapore is no exception; its population only needs the financial and service industries to overcome the middle-income trap.
As for Korea, we did not transfer more advanced technology to them to enable them to maintain a high-speed economic development.
Korea's previously dominant industries have all been swallowed up by China.
Korea has fallen back into the middle-income trap.
Does doing a good job mean being a model of democracy, while doing a bad job means being an immature democrat?
"Alright, hold on. Our topic today is how to strike a new balance between human welfare and human evolution."
This is the ultimate strategic goal today.
We all know Merlin very well.
From academia to the media, I estimate there are enough analytical articles about Merlin to circle the entire planet.
"Zheng Li, Merlin, and the elusive mages of London—these are all Merlin, or their public representatives of magical civilization."
We believe that Merlin and Zheng Li are connected in a deep way. Although we cannot be certain that they are the same person, it does not matter.
They are clearly in one camp, the lawful side.
As for the monks representing London, things were in disarray.
Merlin dares to travel freely around the world, while the mages in London only dare to operate within London's borders, which clearly shows that the other side is wary of Merlin.
Judging from Merlin's style of doing things, his understanding of the social system goes a step further than our original universal welfare system.
The people at the bottom of society don't need to do anything; the country will take good care of you.
Singapore can do this, but we can't.
In terms of both national administration and population size, America is simply not in the same league as Singapore.
Do you think our welfare system needs to be improved?
After Singapore was taken over by Zheng Li, it became one of the countries with the best welfare benefits in the world.
Information about Singapore's welfare benefits is actively shared on Douyin videos and WeChat official accounts.
A key step in Tencent's decline in the internet sector was the reduction of WeChat into an application with only SMS sending and receiving functions.
Nobody posts on WeChat Moments, and nobody uses the WeChat ecosystem services.
The same goes for QQ; in fact, hardly anyone uses QQ anymore.
The number of users has fallen below 10 million for the first time.
Let's return to the issues of human welfare and human progress.
Do people really believe that improved welfare benefits will lead to a halt in the overall progress of humanity?
I believe that Merlin made this choice precisely because, within the mage civilization, they made a choice to a certain extent.
This does not contradict the fact that they developed a brilliant civilization and advanced technology.
The Americans first established a slave-owning state modeled after the ancient Roman Republic.
Although the Roman Republic was called a republic, it was only a republic in terms of its citizens; in reality, it was a slave state.
The United States, which originated from slave plantations, began its industrialization in the Northeast. After the Civil War and the emancipation of slaves, it experienced a great development of industrialization and urbanization, which was not different from the mercantilist style of Europe at that time.
Industrialization at that time was fraught with tariff barriers and internal and external conflicts, and the working class in America, like that in Europe, was in a difficult situation at the bottom of society.
They also faced competition from cheap Chinese laborers from China, which led to the Chinese Exclusion Act, making Black and Asian people untouchables while white people were the citizens.
This is also very similar to ancient Greece and ancient Rome.
Both the democracy of ancient Greece and the republic of ancient Rome were powers held by only a minority of citizens.
Therefore, America at that time had a completely social Darwinian economic system.
A political power system that predates slavery and the caste system, and a system of checks and balances between local autonomy and the rights of citizens other than the untouchables.
Even white citizens, as working-class individuals, have long lived in harsh living conditions, just like laborers in England and other countries in Europe.
However, despite the harsh living conditions of the lower classes, traditional industrialization and urbanization were rapidly completed, and the modern century of prosperity lasted for hundreds of years.
Until more than a hundred years ago, European intellectuals, observing the intensification of social contradictions, gave birth to the left-wing movement in their philosophical thinking, which led to the re-establishment of the economic and political models of modern society.
War I and War II actually represent the high-tech development, upward wealth accumulation, widening gap between the rich and poor, and the competition and displacement of traditional labor by emerging technologies and management methods at that time.
Laborers who sell their physical labor cannot compete with capital, skilled workers, and machines. The emergence of assembly lines has further reduced laborers to a low-cost stage with limited skills.
The intensification of these social contradictions ultimately led to their resolution through war.
After the loss of countless lives, the leftward shift in postwar England and other European countries, including America and Australia, led to the implementation of heavy taxes such as inheritance tax, the redistribution of wealth, and the establishment of universal welfare systems. This constituted the overall leftward shift in Europe.
The American Civil Rights Movement emerged in the 1960s, with Black-led political power and equality of human dignity rising, thus changing the political and cultural landscape of the United States and enabling African Americans and Asian Americans to move from a status of untouchables to citizenship and gain political power.
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