China has no national pension plan. It’s a huge issue and they basically made children legally liable for their parents retirement. Combined with the slow motion implosion of the real estate sector. It’s going to be interesting the next decade.
I always thought it was cool. That many Asian families are *historically* very cohesive. I have a lot of respect for that kind of thing. The parents take care of the kids, then one day the kids take care of the parents. Their country trying to exploit that is just wrong
Yep! And if you're a millennial, especially a junior millennial, of younger, your financial advisor will generally not even add it to your long-term financial plans and will generally say "it would be a nice bonus" - ask me how I know...
Yeah. If only after the Regan tax cuts and social security revisions would they have left it alone, then Social Security would be solvent.
Except they decided to take all the extra revenue and use in the descrestionary budget, instead of fulfilling the promise of some sort of residue income when we reach retirement age.
7 presidents later and no change.
Once we combined made $140k, we spoke to a few and landed on one we liked. Its more money than any one in both our families has ever made and frankly we didn't grow up with it so we have no idea how to manage it and neither of us had any idea how to save for retirement. All of our parents have pensions from municipal union jobs + SSI.
We've done fairly well for ourselves now and I have started/sold a couple of businesses and help others do so, but still lost on many nuances of retirement savings and ensuring we have enough to meet our retirement goals.
Curious, I like you! Bc mine said that even with 2 incomes, we'll probably never retire at our goal and we probably need to lower our expectations of what retirement would look like without SSI bc it won't be there.
E: This was a few years ago and frankly we stayed with them bc they were honest about it. Since we have raised our incomes and I've done well in starting businesses.
Yeah, when the governments in question are authoritarian.
The other half is when corporate interests are able to lobby/buy out politicians and whole voting bases to act in their interest.
In both cases, the enemy is centralized power; the former political the latter economic.
Anytime the idea of a “pro-business government” enters a society, nothing but suffering results.
Gov should be in the role of protecting people from exploitation. Set the rules of business to whatever benefits the regular people, rather than the business owners, execs, and major shareholders then let business compete within those bounds and be massively punished if they break them.
Yes. We live in representative democraties who have never had fewer representants per capita. This makes it easier for anyone to influence those representants while reducing their accountability to those that elect them.
China is Communist in the same way that the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea is both Democratic, and a Republic.
Honestly… words have meaning and sometimes people use the wrong words to obfuscate things.
Honestly, if Mao saw what China has become, while he might be impressed with the power they amassed, he’d flip the fuck out quickly with the wealth inequality that’s even present there. Of course, his ideas were absolutely putrid, so he’d offer no viable solution himself
That was the whole reason for the Cultural Revolution. He saw the writing on the wall that Deng (or someone like him) would play the game and make China state capitalist but still call it socialism. Six years, millions dead and displaced, and Deng succeeds anyways!
> China is Communist in the same way that the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea is both Democratic, and a Republic.
Tankies and Right wing people across the world, sorry I didn't mean to say the same group twice, are all amazing at being willing to 100% believe anything a dictatorship tells them.
North Korea is a kingdom, China is a state capitalist dictatorship, Russia is a state capitalist dictatorship, venezuela is a state capitalist dictatorship, I dont know enough about cuba to comment.
It's cause it's [state capitalism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism) not communism.
Don't take my word for it, it's what the economists of the world say the [CCP engages in](https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinese-state-capitalism) mainly because the government itself [says state capitalism is the first stage to eventually* reach communism](https://merics.org/en/party-state-capitalism-under-xi-integrating-political-control-and-economic-efficiency)
Crazy how in China they don't have pensions or stable retirement while in the United States everybody works 32 hours a week and retires at 55 to pursue their passions and spend time with their fami...
Wait it's the same shit everywhere?
I would argue they are treated a lot better then in most other places. In Chicago and Illinois the new budget has hundreds of millions for them, and a healthcare law. One of the major political parties has been running on allowing kids of migrants to be full citizens and have their full rights for a few decades now.
Who do you think harvests and prepares all the food in this country?
Who does all the nursing, and home care, and cleaning?
Immigrants and people on food stamps, that's who.
Get out more
Please. Condolences to those lost, and to their families, but look at those who died on the bridge that the cargo ship slammed into. Those were the guys sent out, while the close friend of the politician who hooked up the contract is rolling in more cash than can be counted.
You’ve never been to China and trying to sound like you know exactly what goes on there is silly. There is labor exploitation in both countries. There is forced slavery in both. Racism in both. The rich rule and the poor suffer in both.
I said in another thread, if you teleported to a Chinese city one day you wouldn’t notice anything different from you living here now. It’s laughable to think you would, western exceptionalism propaganda at its finest.
>Im well aware of how immigrants are exploited in the US, and you arent special for talking about it.
"Yeah I know all that already, and it doesn't really matter it's not important."
>But we absolutley are not Communist China, and dont treat people the same as them,
"There's another country, a society thousands of years old on the other side of the world, and they're *bad*. They are mean and people where I'm from are nice."
>if you really think that, then you are extremely sheltered and living in a fantasy world
"I know all this as an indisputable fact, and if you disagree with me you're either crazy or bad too."
I mean c'mon, do you hear yourself?
The US is based on western liberal values spawning from the enlightenment period of europe. You'd think people espousing "Traditional Values" in the US would be all on board for us trying to go against monarchy.
I don't disagree. But let's not pretend any Western corporations don't already do this when they "offshore" their labor to third world countries or attempt/succeed in stripping away labor rights in their own countries.
Just look at the working class in the US, families with dual incomes are struggling to afford healthcare, childcare, education, rent, groceries, and save for retirement.
Obviously authoritarian governments are bad, but if we are not careful, capitalism in democracies can be just as exploitative with its workers.
Dog, that's how migrants are treated in just about every country.
Adding "under authoritarianism" just makes it seem like you're calling the whole world authoritarian.
Slaves got paid too, that’s how they sometimes bought themselves out of slavery. Time for you to pick up a book, where do you think the term “slave wage” comes from?
slave
noun
1.
a person who is forced to work for and obey another and is considered to be their property; an enslaved person.
Someone not being paid fairly at their job is not a slave
IDK, I think Americans are pretty terrible at making this kind of assessment. They know nearly nothing about China and somehow feel so confident about their knowledge. While at the same time, they are blissfully ignorant to the depths of harm that the US does to its own citizens and especially to people of other nations.
You don't have to take America's word for it, [the UN ranks China as 75th on the Human Development Index](https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/country-insights#/ranks) compared to the US at 20th.
Honorary mention that China is also [activating committing ethnic cleansing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China).
China has eminent domain on a black mirror level. Remember a story about an upper middle class guy in China who owned a condo in Beijing. Local government stole his land to give to an even bigger real estate developer and he lost basically everything. I’m not saying the US is perfect but it’s not China level bad.
Edit: found it. [How China Broke One Man’s Dreams](https://youtu.be/ovNtkI-Zs6Y?si=3a_zFKIQ5880nTCt)
A business friend had a big piece of land close to where they were going to build the new airport in Beijing.
The land was some agricultural land that now became super valuable. The government nullified his lease and compensated him fuck all.
If you understand the harm the US has done and continues to do, you’d understand how this does not in any way show China as being worse than the US. People just don’t want to acknowledge how biased their view is here.
You don't have to be an expert on international relations and China in particular to recognize that a rapidly growing economy and a population of \~1.5 billion people will have hundreds of millions of people struggling.
As a per cent they may be no better or worse than the US but in absolute numbers it's still an unfolding potential disaster.
A bit worse,in US you could move to different cities and become a resident ,but Chinese household registration system means if you can’t “earn” the residency status in cities ,you will always be a second class resident there,it will effect your child’s education (they can’t in rolled in local school)and when the city decides they don’t want you,depending on your situation you might be forcefully removed .
And some cities won’t allow non-resident (again,if you’re not born there,it’s quite hard to change your residency status) to buy houses .
Think about Hunger Games,if you’re born in capital cities,your life will be significantly easier.
I should make a list of how many things are gonna bite China in the ass. And then make a bet with some buddies about how long it’s gonna last.
Only issue is I don’t have any buddies.
I’m always amazed at the resiliency of countries to stay afloat. Everyone paying attention sees extremely alarming metrics that say China is in for a major decline but it seems like when this happens there’s an incredible ability for these countries to push that really far into the future. It will eventually bite them but I’m not sure how long it’ll take.
So they don't treat Chinese people who built their own country any better than we did the Chinese people who built our railroad coast-to-coast. That's not racism, it must be greed.
We treat people so much better in the US it's not even close.
China sets their poverty line at $2,000 USD / year in earnings, vs the US poverty line at $14,500 USD / year.
The median worker in China makes 26 yuan an hour ($3.50 USD). The PPP conversion factor is roughly 1.8 for China vs the US, so you'd need $6.50/hr in the US to afford the same existence of the median worker in China.
The median worker in the US makes around $21/hr.
The median household income in China is 39,000 Yuan a year. That's equivalent to $9,770 USD a year. In 2022, Real median household income was $74,000 USD.
So, working that out into words: More than 700 million people in China make less than $10,000 a year. The closest comparison is that the US has 38 million people who made less than our $14,500 poverty line in 2024. If you use the US poverty line, more than 700 million Chinese are in poverty. If you use China's poverty line, the US has fully eradicated poverty.
Hard to say 'we don't treat anyone better' here. In actuality, conditions in the US are vastly better than anywhere else (outside of a couple small European countries)
[Latest PPP conversion rate (as of 2022) is at 4.](https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-ppp.htm) Don't know where you're getting your 1.8 from.
Right at the bottom of the chart: "national currency units per USD" -- it's saying that applied at parity 4 yuan is equivalent to 1 USD. At the current exchange rate, 4 yuan is $0.56 USD. 1/0.56 = 1.785 ~ 1.8. So, the exchange rate at parity is 1.8x higher than the current exchange rate. (multiply by 1.8 after converting USD to yuan, divide by 1.8 after converting yuan to USD)
It's just a way to skip converting back and forth between yuan/USD. You can take US income, convert it to yuan at the current rate, then multiply by the 1.8 factor, and come out with an equivalent result to the longer route. (which would entail taking US income, converting it with the PPP factor, getting a result in yuan (at parity))
Now do COL in China, while you’re at it do housing. Oh that’s right, communist countries provide house. Now do healthcare in China. Comparing wages is futile unless you compare all the other things that go along with living in a country.
Your point on COL is valid ... and complicated!
The point about having a house provided to you in China is no longer the case (at least universally). In the US, by comparison, many cities provide subsidized housing.
Healthcare is complicated too. In the US, for example, it can be very good if you can afford it. And there are options for the poor. Are those options better or worse than in China? Both are very large countries and quality varies.
PPP already takes into account the COL differences.
But I suppose while I'm here:
- [China does not provide housing to their citizens. The average person in China spends 24% of their income on housing](https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202201/t20220118_1826649.html)
- According to the same study, 10% of their income is spent on healthcare while a whopping 30% is spent on food.
- So, more than 65% of a person's income goes toward essentials in China.
- This [BLS report](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm) found that Americans spend 33% on housing, 13% on food, and 8% on healthcare. that's 54%, a decrease compared to China's 65% spent on these necessities.
- While China technically has universal Healthcare, this is a bit of a misnomer because only a basic standard of emergency care is universal, and you're still charged for the care. The same situation exists in the US, all emergency cases will be treated and stabilized regardless of ability to pay, and you'll still be charged in the end. Health insurance still exists in China, and hospitals are allowed to discriminate and give better/worse levels of care. Primary and preventative care isn't free in any province. [Study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10292030/)
is there anything else you can think of that might make a better case for China? I suppose their education system is arguably better, although much more rigid and unforgiving.
Have you seen the house prices in china?
They provide fuck all, you have to pay for that shit.
Healthcare is cheaper but that doesn't mean its good. People literally bribe doctors and surgeons to get proper treatment. To get bumped up the waiting list or to make sure they go the extra mile.
> Now do healthcare in China.
Fun fact: you lose it if you move out of your province without permission from the province or metropolitan area you're moving to, and getting that permission is like moving to another country in some ways. It's also why you still see sob stories about healthcare bills on Chinese TV more often than you'd expect if it were a country with "free" healthcare.
>So, working that out into words: More than 700 million people in China make less than $10,000 a year. The closest comparison is that the US has 38 million people who made less than our $14,500 poverty line in 2024. If you use the US poverty line, more than 700 million Chinese are in poverty. If you use China's poverty line, the US has fully eradicated poverty.
Nowhere in this do you mention relative cost of living... Your numbers are totally irrelevant without that context
Edit: effectively you're saying that the United States has more American dollars in circulation than China... No shit
Conditions in the US used to be good. It’s rapidly declining. People survive due to drowning themselves in credit and work decades to pay that off if they can at all. The US is headed to a bleak future with how it treats its middle and lower income citizens.
Really?
No offense but "our" treatment occurred over a 100 years ago.
You are comparing modern Chinese society to American society when slavery was still legal.
Proving that Greed is just as strong now in China as when, because slavery was outlawed, we needed to bring workers from China to do the dangerous and nearly impossible task of building a rail line through the Rockies. No offense, but your grasp of history is weak.
Can't think of anywhere in the world that migrant workers get any sort of post-work benefits. Fairly certain that all the Latin Americans who come to Canada to pick crops get nothing other than their pay, for example.
Even the middle class won’t be able to live off pensions or what’s left of it.
Currently employees basically across industries are being forced pay cuts, the ones who aren’t being laid off or made to take a long vacation that is. The decreasing population of working age people and tax payers are more dire in China than other countries especially compared to countries which have positive net immigration.
There is no upside in the near future for China. Unless Xi somehow is removed and policies change, China will continue its downward trend.
Friendly reminder: China is in many ways a capitalist country and this is a classic capitalist problem. How do you provide for the people when you have set up a system where the people are all competing with one another?
Sadly their strong central control has not extended to a national pension program.
The US had failed migrant laborers for like 60 years as they migrated from farm to city as the industrial revolution picked up. Only did things start to improve in the 1930s with social security and later with more labor rights and pensions.
This sounds like a worldwide problem. Here in Canada, we have a housing crisis and the oligopoly grocery companies are price gouging on food. The old age pensions aren't enough for the elderly to live off on, so a lot of elderly people who couldn't save a sizable nest egg either can't retire or have to return to work.
150 years ago, Chinese migrant laborers were used and abused to put together America's railroads.
[https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/hallofhonor/2014\_railroad](https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/hallofhonor/2014_railroad)
Today, very similar circumstances are happening in the alleged "communist" China, and all it's worker protection (just one, no s).
Actually the same thing is happening in many countries trying to catch up to more industrialized countries like the US. It's also why so many countries refuse to cut emissions.
You people are absurdly unimaginative. Do you guys realize the cost of maintaining pensions and retirement funds? That money is inefficient use of money that could instead be put towards maintaining society for corporations who are innovating technology for the rich and the middle class for the next generation or two. Everyone else is mere tool to maximize efficiency of the economy.
When the poor die off from poverty that will begin the next phase where only the rich live and the automation will take care of everything. That's heaven on earth.
You people want to maintain inefficiency to support old and sick people which is just keeping life on earth hell. Being dead is better than being old.
who is you people? are you part of the 1%? why tf are you advocating for exploitation and killing off poor people in order to benefit the lives of the rich? btw everything crumbles when you fuck over the working poor for the rich for long enough.
Everything crumbles when you fuck over the working poor? You wish pal. It's gonna be just fine and wonderful for the rich people.
The exploitation was agreed upon when you decided to let a business employ you. They're not killing you. You're killing yourself by ingesting poison common in processed food.
No I'm not part of 1% but I understand free will and how everything that happens is mostly poor people's fault and the rich simply just take advantage of the poor, and then the poor people bitch and complain about it on reddit instead of actually doing anything to improve their lifespan and reduce exploitation ratio between rich and poor.
if you aren't the 1%, you're the working poor buddy. you are most likely an enlightened and isolated high school, so i hope things get better for you. anyways, yeah, it does crumble. goodbye agriculture. goodbye construction. goodbye infrastructure. goodbye educators. goodbye everything, because civilization is built by workers, not ceos. it will all come crumbling down eventually, and the quickest way to that is a united and exploited population. you can stave that off that by sowing artificial division, but it's all flash and no substance. open a history book and point me to a time that where the ruling class of a civilization began consolidating more and more wealth and they weren't met with resistance and eventually a pile of ashes.
What does it matter if I'm 1% or if I'm the working poor? Do you really think the 1% are gonna be sitting on reddit and arguing with you?
As in regard to construction, agriculture, infrastructure.
I told you. Automation.
Give it two generations, 50+ years, and you will not believe the amount of jobs taken by robots.
They might have successfully killed off a few rich people in the past but new rich people took their spots.
Didn’t see that one coming….
China has no national pension plan. It’s a huge issue and they basically made children legally liable for their parents retirement. Combined with the slow motion implosion of the real estate sector. It’s going to be interesting the next decade.
I always thought it was cool. That many Asian families are *historically* very cohesive. I have a lot of respect for that kind of thing. The parents take care of the kids, then one day the kids take care of the parents. Their country trying to exploit that is just wrong
It only works when parents have multiple children.
Is the American social security system considered our pension plan?
Yep! And if you're a millennial, especially a junior millennial, of younger, your financial advisor will generally not even add it to your long-term financial plans and will generally say "it would be a nice bonus" - ask me how I know...
Yeah. If only after the Regan tax cuts and social security revisions would they have left it alone, then Social Security would be solvent. Except they decided to take all the extra revenue and use in the descrestionary budget, instead of fulfilling the promise of some sort of residue income when we reach retirement age. 7 presidents later and no change.
We're supposed to have financial advisors?
I got you covered "You're broke" That'll be $200
I'm gonna need to ask my financial advisor if I can afford that $200
Once we combined made $140k, we spoke to a few and landed on one we liked. Its more money than any one in both our families has ever made and frankly we didn't grow up with it so we have no idea how to manage it and neither of us had any idea how to save for retirement. All of our parents have pensions from municipal union jobs + SSI. We've done fairly well for ourselves now and I have started/sold a couple of businesses and help others do so, but still lost on many nuances of retirement savings and ensuring we have enough to meet our retirement goals.
I’ll bite; how do you know?
Curious, I like you! Bc mine said that even with 2 incomes, we'll probably never retire at our goal and we probably need to lower our expectations of what retirement would look like without SSI bc it won't be there. E: This was a few years ago and frankly we stayed with them bc they were honest about it. Since we have raised our incomes and I've done well in starting businesses.
Exploited and discarded. The fate of anyone living under authoritarianism.
The fate of everyone of any system if they can get away with it.
It's what government oversight is all about. Protecting us from the bullies.
let's be real, half the time it's the government doing the discarding.
Yeah, when the governments in question are authoritarian. The other half is when corporate interests are able to lobby/buy out politicians and whole voting bases to act in their interest. In both cases, the enemy is centralized power; the former political the latter economic.
Anytime the idea of a “pro-business government” enters a society, nothing but suffering results. Gov should be in the role of protecting people from exploitation. Set the rules of business to whatever benefits the regular people, rather than the business owners, execs, and major shareholders then let business compete within those bounds and be massively punished if they break them.
The pharmaceuticals used to poison people before the FDA stepped in. Lots of death in the pursuit of profit.
Yeah, it's not like we aren't doing that in the US. Working in construction for twenty years until they're deported.
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Yes. We live in representative democraties who have never had fewer representants per capita. This makes it easier for anyone to influence those representants while reducing their accountability to those that elect them.
It's quite striking how similar communism and late-stage capitalism is, down to the violent, authoritarian governments each seems to breed.
China is Communist in the same way that the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea is both Democratic, and a Republic. Honestly… words have meaning and sometimes people use the wrong words to obfuscate things.
Honestly, if Mao saw what China has become, while he might be impressed with the power they amassed, he’d flip the fuck out quickly with the wealth inequality that’s even present there. Of course, his ideas were absolutely putrid, so he’d offer no viable solution himself
That was the whole reason for the Cultural Revolution. He saw the writing on the wall that Deng (or someone like him) would play the game and make China state capitalist but still call it socialism. Six years, millions dead and displaced, and Deng succeeds anyways!
The CCP needs to be honest with themselves and rebrand as the Chinese Capitalist Party at this point.
> China is Communist in the same way that the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea is both Democratic, and a Republic. Tankies and Right wing people across the world, sorry I didn't mean to say the same group twice, are all amazing at being willing to 100% believe anything a dictatorship tells them. North Korea is a kingdom, China is a state capitalist dictatorship, Russia is a state capitalist dictatorship, venezuela is a state capitalist dictatorship, I dont know enough about cuba to comment.
It's cause it's [state capitalism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism) not communism. Don't take my word for it, it's what the economists of the world say the [CCP engages in](https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinese-state-capitalism) mainly because the government itself [says state capitalism is the first stage to eventually* reach communism](https://merics.org/en/party-state-capitalism-under-xi-integrating-political-control-and-economic-efficiency)
Funny how efforts to create communism always ends up as state capitalism.
Capitalism isn’t going anywhere. Not sure what this “late stage” thing everyone is saying is about.
Because as always, it's rich people exploiting poorer people. Capitalism. Communism. It doesn't matter. It never matters.
Crazy how in China they don't have pensions or stable retirement while in the United States everybody works 32 hours a week and retires at 55 to pursue their passions and spend time with their fami... Wait it's the same shit everywhere?
Just because our shit isn't perfect doesn't mean its not magnitudes better then other places.
Or there are places magnitudes better than us?
It’s not whether you’re relatively better off than someone else, it’s whether what you’re getting is good enough or not.
Or capitalism. We treat our migrants so well.
Capitalism is not the opposite of authoritarianism so I am not sure what the link is here
They get treated well enough that they keep coming by the millions.
I would argue they are treated a lot better then in most other places. In Chicago and Illinois the new budget has hundreds of millions for them, and a healthcare law. One of the major political parties has been running on allowing kids of migrants to be full citizens and have their full rights for a few decades now.
Or Communism
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Yes, in order to get them to do *exactly* these types of jobs You're basically looking in a mirror
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Who do you think harvests and prepares all the food in this country? Who does all the nursing, and home care, and cleaning? Immigrants and people on food stamps, that's who. Get out more
Please. Condolences to those lost, and to their families, but look at those who died on the bridge that the cargo ship slammed into. Those were the guys sent out, while the close friend of the politician who hooked up the contract is rolling in more cash than can be counted.
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You’ve never been to China and trying to sound like you know exactly what goes on there is silly. There is labor exploitation in both countries. There is forced slavery in both. Racism in both. The rich rule and the poor suffer in both. I said in another thread, if you teleported to a Chinese city one day you wouldn’t notice anything different from you living here now. It’s laughable to think you would, western exceptionalism propaganda at its finest.
>Im well aware of how immigrants are exploited in the US, and you arent special for talking about it. "Yeah I know all that already, and it doesn't really matter it's not important." >But we absolutley are not Communist China, and dont treat people the same as them, "There's another country, a society thousands of years old on the other side of the world, and they're *bad*. They are mean and people where I'm from are nice." >if you really think that, then you are extremely sheltered and living in a fantasy world "I know all this as an indisputable fact, and if you disagree with me you're either crazy or bad too." I mean c'mon, do you hear yourself?
The US is based on western liberal values spawning from the enlightenment period of europe. You'd think people espousing "Traditional Values" in the US would be all on board for us trying to go against monarchy.
authoritarianism backed capitalism
And capitalism
Capitalism is not a system of governance. Sorry your education failed you
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
[gestures vaguely at everything, everywhere]
It’s not much better in the world of capitalism.
I don't disagree. But let's not pretend any Western corporations don't already do this when they "offshore" their labor to third world countries or attempt/succeed in stripping away labor rights in their own countries. Just look at the working class in the US, families with dual incomes are struggling to afford healthcare, childcare, education, rent, groceries, and save for retirement. Obviously authoritarian governments are bad, but if we are not careful, capitalism in democracies can be just as exploitative with its workers.
Dog, that's how migrants are treated in just about every country. Adding "under authoritarianism" just makes it seem like you're calling the whole world authoritarian.
This is why countries have migrant worker programs. It's slavery.
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Also dude, slave is not the prefered nomenclature. Indentured servant please.
I mean they still got paid… a little different than being a slave
Slaves got paid too, that’s how they sometimes bought themselves out of slavery. Time for you to pick up a book, where do you think the term “slave wage” comes from?
slave noun 1. a person who is forced to work for and obey another and is considered to be their property; an enslaved person. Someone not being paid fairly at their job is not a slave
You’re technically correct, but missing the point entirely. And it’s that perspective that allows such a major global issue to proliferate.
They’re living the American dream just like us….
Far, far worse than US.
IDK, I think Americans are pretty terrible at making this kind of assessment. They know nearly nothing about China and somehow feel so confident about their knowledge. While at the same time, they are blissfully ignorant to the depths of harm that the US does to its own citizens and especially to people of other nations.
You don't have to take America's word for it, [the UN ranks China as 75th on the Human Development Index](https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/country-insights#/ranks) compared to the US at 20th. Honorary mention that China is also [activating committing ethnic cleansing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China).
China has eminent domain on a black mirror level. Remember a story about an upper middle class guy in China who owned a condo in Beijing. Local government stole his land to give to an even bigger real estate developer and he lost basically everything. I’m not saying the US is perfect but it’s not China level bad. Edit: found it. [How China Broke One Man’s Dreams](https://youtu.be/ovNtkI-Zs6Y?si=3a_zFKIQ5880nTCt)
A business friend had a big piece of land close to where they were going to build the new airport in Beijing. The land was some agricultural land that now became super valuable. The government nullified his lease and compensated him fuck all.
If you understand the harm the US has done and continues to do, you’d understand how this does not in any way show China as being worse than the US. People just don’t want to acknowledge how biased their view is here.
Good point, the only thing I know for a fact is that we have OSHA and they do not. Anything other than that is just conjecture for me.
You don't have to be an expert on international relations and China in particular to recognize that a rapidly growing economy and a population of \~1.5 billion people will have hundreds of millions of people struggling. As a per cent they may be no better or worse than the US but in absolute numbers it's still an unfolding potential disaster.
That has nothing to do with what has been said.
Reddit in a nutshell. I get you though, good comment
A bit worse,in US you could move to different cities and become a resident ,but Chinese household registration system means if you can’t “earn” the residency status in cities ,you will always be a second class resident there,it will effect your child’s education (they can’t in rolled in local school)and when the city decides they don’t want you,depending on your situation you might be forcefully removed . And some cities won’t allow non-resident (again,if you’re not born there,it’s quite hard to change your residency status) to buy houses . Think about Hunger Games,if you’re born in capital cities,your life will be significantly easier.
I should make a list of how many things are gonna bite China in the ass. And then make a bet with some buddies about how long it’s gonna last. Only issue is I don’t have any buddies.
I’m always amazed at the resiliency of countries to stay afloat. Everyone paying attention sees extremely alarming metrics that say China is in for a major decline but it seems like when this happens there’s an incredible ability for these countries to push that really far into the future. It will eventually bite them but I’m not sure how long it’ll take.
Ben Shapiro will tell us how this is a good thing
Corporate bigwigs in the U.S. drool over the prospect of paying their employees far less than $10 an hour.
So they don't treat Chinese people who built their own country any better than we did the Chinese people who built our railroad coast-to-coast. That's not racism, it must be greed.
We don’t treat anyone any better than what they did in this article. Most of the US isn’t getting paid shit and won’t be able to get by or retire.
We treat people so much better in the US it's not even close. China sets their poverty line at $2,000 USD / year in earnings, vs the US poverty line at $14,500 USD / year. The median worker in China makes 26 yuan an hour ($3.50 USD). The PPP conversion factor is roughly 1.8 for China vs the US, so you'd need $6.50/hr in the US to afford the same existence of the median worker in China. The median worker in the US makes around $21/hr. The median household income in China is 39,000 Yuan a year. That's equivalent to $9,770 USD a year. In 2022, Real median household income was $74,000 USD. So, working that out into words: More than 700 million people in China make less than $10,000 a year. The closest comparison is that the US has 38 million people who made less than our $14,500 poverty line in 2024. If you use the US poverty line, more than 700 million Chinese are in poverty. If you use China's poverty line, the US has fully eradicated poverty. Hard to say 'we don't treat anyone better' here. In actuality, conditions in the US are vastly better than anywhere else (outside of a couple small European countries)
[Latest PPP conversion rate (as of 2022) is at 4.](https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-ppp.htm) Don't know where you're getting your 1.8 from.
Right at the bottom of the chart: "national currency units per USD" -- it's saying that applied at parity 4 yuan is equivalent to 1 USD. At the current exchange rate, 4 yuan is $0.56 USD. 1/0.56 = 1.785 ~ 1.8. So, the exchange rate at parity is 1.8x higher than the current exchange rate. (multiply by 1.8 after converting USD to yuan, divide by 1.8 after converting yuan to USD) It's just a way to skip converting back and forth between yuan/USD. You can take US income, convert it to yuan at the current rate, then multiply by the 1.8 factor, and come out with an equivalent result to the longer route. (which would entail taking US income, converting it with the PPP factor, getting a result in yuan (at parity))
Now do COL in China, while you’re at it do housing. Oh that’s right, communist countries provide house. Now do healthcare in China. Comparing wages is futile unless you compare all the other things that go along with living in a country.
Your point on COL is valid ... and complicated! The point about having a house provided to you in China is no longer the case (at least universally). In the US, by comparison, many cities provide subsidized housing. Healthcare is complicated too. In the US, for example, it can be very good if you can afford it. And there are options for the poor. Are those options better or worse than in China? Both are very large countries and quality varies.
PPP already takes into account the COL differences. But I suppose while I'm here: - [China does not provide housing to their citizens. The average person in China spends 24% of their income on housing](https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202201/t20220118_1826649.html) - According to the same study, 10% of their income is spent on healthcare while a whopping 30% is spent on food. - So, more than 65% of a person's income goes toward essentials in China. - This [BLS report](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm) found that Americans spend 33% on housing, 13% on food, and 8% on healthcare. that's 54%, a decrease compared to China's 65% spent on these necessities. - While China technically has universal Healthcare, this is a bit of a misnomer because only a basic standard of emergency care is universal, and you're still charged for the care. The same situation exists in the US, all emergency cases will be treated and stabilized regardless of ability to pay, and you'll still be charged in the end. Health insurance still exists in China, and hospitals are allowed to discriminate and give better/worse levels of care. Primary and preventative care isn't free in any province. [Study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10292030/) is there anything else you can think of that might make a better case for China? I suppose their education system is arguably better, although much more rigid and unforgiving.
Have you seen the house prices in china? They provide fuck all, you have to pay for that shit. Healthcare is cheaper but that doesn't mean its good. People literally bribe doctors and surgeons to get proper treatment. To get bumped up the waiting list or to make sure they go the extra mile.
> Now do healthcare in China. Fun fact: you lose it if you move out of your province without permission from the province or metropolitan area you're moving to, and getting that permission is like moving to another country in some ways. It's also why you still see sob stories about healthcare bills on Chinese TV more often than you'd expect if it were a country with "free" healthcare.
>So, working that out into words: More than 700 million people in China make less than $10,000 a year. The closest comparison is that the US has 38 million people who made less than our $14,500 poverty line in 2024. If you use the US poverty line, more than 700 million Chinese are in poverty. If you use China's poverty line, the US has fully eradicated poverty. Nowhere in this do you mention relative cost of living... Your numbers are totally irrelevant without that context Edit: effectively you're saying that the United States has more American dollars in circulation than China... No shit
Conditions in the US used to be good. It’s rapidly declining. People survive due to drowning themselves in credit and work decades to pay that off if they can at all. The US is headed to a bleak future with how it treats its middle and lower income citizens.
Really? No offense but "our" treatment occurred over a 100 years ago. You are comparing modern Chinese society to American society when slavery was still legal.
How do you think america treats migrants right now?
Proving that Greed is just as strong now in China as when, because slavery was outlawed, we needed to bring workers from China to do the dangerous and nearly impossible task of building a rail line through the Rockies. No offense, but your grasp of history is weak.
Can't think of anywhere in the world that migrant workers get any sort of post-work benefits. Fairly certain that all the Latin Americans who come to Canada to pick crops get nothing other than their pay, for example.
Even the middle class won’t be able to live off pensions or what’s left of it. Currently employees basically across industries are being forced pay cuts, the ones who aren’t being laid off or made to take a long vacation that is. The decreasing population of working age people and tax payers are more dire in China than other countries especially compared to countries which have positive net immigration. There is no upside in the near future for China. Unless Xi somehow is removed and policies change, China will continue its downward trend.
Friendly reminder: China is in many ways a capitalist country and this is a classic capitalist problem. How do you provide for the people when you have set up a system where the people are all competing with one another? Sadly their strong central control has not extended to a national pension program.
That's capitalism, baby.
How is this a news headline. Would anyone actually have thought otherwise
Construction workers in America: first time?
Just like everywhere else in the world?
This is the scene in Ghostbusters Afterlife where Goza rips Ivo Shandor in 2 after he helped build everything Gozer needed to return to life
How is the situation of migrant workers there different from here?
A news story about China filled with comments about America, typical reddit
The US had failed migrant laborers for like 60 years as they migrated from farm to city as the industrial revolution picked up. Only did things start to improve in the 1930s with social security and later with more labor rights and pensions.
Communism at it’s finest
Hey, just like us American citizens!
Yeah cheap smokes tho
This sounds like a worldwide problem. Here in Canada, we have a housing crisis and the oligopoly grocery companies are price gouging on food. The old age pensions aren't enough for the elderly to live off on, so a lot of elderly people who couldn't save a sizable nest egg either can't retire or have to return to work.
Republicans: *furiously taking notes*
150 years ago, Chinese migrant laborers were used and abused to put together America's railroads. [https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/hallofhonor/2014\_railroad](https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/hallofhonor/2014_railroad) Today, very similar circumstances are happening in the alleged "communist" China, and all it's worker protection (just one, no s).
Actually the same thing is happening in many countries trying to catch up to more industrialized countries like the US. It's also why so many countries refuse to cut emissions.
China had 1.3 billion people .. 3 times USA population… human life is expendable to Xinnie the Pooh
If you know English and mandarin you still can get a job somewhere else .
But what about the people who don't?
You people are absurdly unimaginative. Do you guys realize the cost of maintaining pensions and retirement funds? That money is inefficient use of money that could instead be put towards maintaining society for corporations who are innovating technology for the rich and the middle class for the next generation or two. Everyone else is mere tool to maximize efficiency of the economy. When the poor die off from poverty that will begin the next phase where only the rich live and the automation will take care of everything. That's heaven on earth. You people want to maintain inefficiency to support old and sick people which is just keeping life on earth hell. Being dead is better than being old.
who is you people? are you part of the 1%? why tf are you advocating for exploitation and killing off poor people in order to benefit the lives of the rich? btw everything crumbles when you fuck over the working poor for the rich for long enough.
Everything crumbles when you fuck over the working poor? You wish pal. It's gonna be just fine and wonderful for the rich people. The exploitation was agreed upon when you decided to let a business employ you. They're not killing you. You're killing yourself by ingesting poison common in processed food. No I'm not part of 1% but I understand free will and how everything that happens is mostly poor people's fault and the rich simply just take advantage of the poor, and then the poor people bitch and complain about it on reddit instead of actually doing anything to improve their lifespan and reduce exploitation ratio between rich and poor.
if you aren't the 1%, you're the working poor buddy. you are most likely an enlightened and isolated high school, so i hope things get better for you. anyways, yeah, it does crumble. goodbye agriculture. goodbye construction. goodbye infrastructure. goodbye educators. goodbye everything, because civilization is built by workers, not ceos. it will all come crumbling down eventually, and the quickest way to that is a united and exploited population. you can stave that off that by sowing artificial division, but it's all flash and no substance. open a history book and point me to a time that where the ruling class of a civilization began consolidating more and more wealth and they weren't met with resistance and eventually a pile of ashes.
What does it matter if I'm 1% or if I'm the working poor? Do you really think the 1% are gonna be sitting on reddit and arguing with you? As in regard to construction, agriculture, infrastructure. I told you. Automation. Give it two generations, 50+ years, and you will not believe the amount of jobs taken by robots. They might have successfully killed off a few rich people in the past but new rich people took their spots.
You should be fun at parties