True. But I look at whether they are likely to tear down barriers or erect more.
I suspect they are more likely to tear down barriers. Compare that to the Chinese, who, while they’ve had a great run, cannot continue down their current path because their barriers are high, getting higher, and their nationalism and lack of law is going to hurt.
So, I think about likely trajectories. I see more reason for hope of improvement in India than most places on the planet. Everyone else seems to be going to heck in a hand-cart as fast as possible.
That’s backed by the full faith and credit of Uncle Milties unvarnished and unprofessional opinion.
China's internal barriers are almost non-existent. Any Chinese citizen can start an instant pop-up business tomorrow with almost no paperwork. The government only gets interested when the company gets big enough to owe a lot of tax. An expat I spoke to in Shenzhen told me the Chinese economy has become unbelievably free over the last decade - that by comparison Hong Kong, routinely ranked as the most business-friendly country in the world, requires massive amounts of red tape to do anything.
China's barriers are erected against foreign companies and nationals who are trying to do business there - and those barriers are indeed unnecessarily steep and protectionist. But despite their problems with law and corruption, they still have a big edge over India right now due to their laissez-faire internal policies - policies India is unlikely to emulate for a generation.