IN the mid-1990s, Indonesia passed us in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and despite being affected more by the 1997 Asian financial crisis, continued to put more distance between us and them.
Vietnam has probably reached parity and I surmise, if based on purchasing power parity, is at least 10 percent ahead of us, given their much lower food and power prices. Thailand and Malaysia went ahead of us way back in the 1970s and are upper middle-income countries while we are struggling to get into middle income or perhaps lower middle income.
And we expected manufacturing to survive and local input production to increase without our relentless world- beating population growth?We also frankly had a poor understanding of development economics given our slavish idolatry of the Washington Consensus and our cult-like following of what the West mind led us to believing. They said open your economy and privatize and we did so without safeguards.