Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Exterminate Capitalism Lobster Package

Today's graphic is inspired by the wonderful New York Times article on signs in "chinglish"

When countries are very poor, they spend pretty much all their money consuming stuff.  After the basics, there's not much left over.  As they get a little richer, and have a little bit left over, they tend to save and invest it.  They consume a little bit more, but invest a lot more -- building roads and bridges and factories for themselves -- and that's how they get even richer.  Eventually, they get so rich that they run out of good investment opportunities and go back to blowing it all on hookers and cocaine.  I promoted the graphic that shows this process from a vampire squid report I was perusing this morning.

So far so good.  But take a closer look.  Can you tell me which of these countries is not like the others?  Maybe we should call the Chinese system, "chapitalism".  At any rate, something was obviously lost in translation.

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