Why Hong Kong's Economy Has Grown 7x Faster Than Cuba's Since Since the 1950s - Foundation for Economic Education

Why Hong Kong's Economy Has Grown 7x Faster Than Cuba's Since Since the 1950s - Foundation for Economic Education

• Neil Monnery’s book "A Tale of Two Economies" explains how the fortunes of Hong Kong and Cuba were shaped by two individuals.

"Back in 2014, I compared Hong Kong’s amazing growth with Cuba’s pitiful stagnation and made the obvious point that free markets and limited government are the right recipe for prosperity.
Especially if you care about improving the lives of the less fortunate.
Communists claim that their ideology represents the downtrodden against the elite, yet the evidence from Cuba shows wretched material deprivation for most people.
In Hong Kong, by contrast, incomes have soared for all segments of the population.

How important are key individuals in shaping the success or failure of economies? …Neil Monnery’s A Tale of Two Economies is in some sense a polemic against historical determinism, at least insofar as promoting economic reforms is concerned.It stresses the importance of two single individuals, one a great man for many, one an obscure official and political unknown to the most, in shaping the destiny of their respective countries. …Ernesto “Che” Guevara and John Cowperthwaite. …Monnery insists that both of them were “deep and original thinkers.” …The key difference between the two was perhaps that Cowperthwaite had a solid education in economics… Neither the way in which Hong Kong progressed, nor Cuba’s, were thus inevitable..."

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