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Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

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Re: Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

#41

Post by dragontamer »

vijayr wrote: post #17
timwaagh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most people i know do need to work if they dont want to sleep in the streets. i program others wait tables or clean out the garbage. you think somebody does that for 'pride'? it does not matter if the country is developed or not you still have to work because real estate is expensive even if food is not. if you dont well congrats but then you (and your buddies) are one of these second generation dandies.

even if food is not. Good food is not cheap. In NYC, we pay 8$ for a decent sized watermelon - almost all fruits are expensive, and most vegetables too. Only shitty food like chips, soda, candy, fast food etc are cheap.

Watermelons are out of season dude. They're only cheap in the summer. Its fall, so citrus (ie: oranges, tangerines) and apples are now cheap.

Carrots, Celery, Potatoes, Oats (Oatmeal), Breakfast Cereal, Cereal Cereal, Onions, Kidney Beans, Green Beans, Milk make a good baseline for a cheap and nutritious meals year round.

You grab Broccoli in the Winter, Pineapples and Lettuce in the Spring, Cherries and Watermelons in the Summer, and Apples in the fall. Farms literally can't make Watermelons in the fall or winter, so you're importing those Watermelons from the southern hemisphere. Of course it's expensive.

But in the summer, Watermelons are made locally and are probably $2 or $3 a pop.

------------------------------

If you don't know what's in season, here's a little trick. Look at the coupons at your local grocery store. Everything that is on sale is what is in-season.

A sampling of my store is $5 for 5lbs of tangerines and $0.88/lb for Gala Apples. Clearly, these are the fruits in season and what I'll be eating.

Eventually, as winter sets in... the prices of oranges and apples will increase while Broccoli and Winter Squash will become cheap.

Re: Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

#42

Post by lordnacho »

raverbashing wrote: post #9
lordnacho wrote: post #2

Well it sounds like they have the same problems other rich kids have. Mainly that it's hard to get away from from your parents' influence, and anything you achieve is credited to the family. Also there's a wariness about new people, and a feeling of being disconnected from ordinary society. I know a couple of heirs, and they've handled it differently. One kid works in the family office, investing the family fortune.…

Probably also absurdly spoiled, never had to have an actual 9-5 job Also accustomed to being rude and being pampered all around the place

No, I never saw any rudeness from either of these fellows. And they never showed up with a bunch of servants, even though they could hire a whole army of them.

The one guy is doing an ordinary 9-5 job. Other guy is managing his family fortune, so yes that's not a normal job.

Re: Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

#43

Post by hellbanner »

Chathamization wrote: post #32
rcarrigan87 wrote: post #11

Further down in the article, some interesting points about the motivations behind philanthropy. "philanthropy is about more than just social responsibility—it’s about social stability." So other than a genuine desire to do good or vanity seeking that can motivate philanthropy, you have a third element in China - preventing a revolt by the poor on the rich. If you give just enough, you'll keep the poor subdued. I wond…

The impression I get from American philanthropists is that, for many of them, it's another way to show off their wealth. It might not directly benefit them, but neither does buying diamonds or gold jewelry. With philanthropy you get big galas, get buildings named after you, demonstrate how wealthy you are to your peers, etc.

This is called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory in evolutionary biology.

Re: Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

#44

Post by jerf »

talloaktrees wrote: post #38

I had trouble understanding this title, and I realized it's because I speak Chinese. "Yuan" doesn't sound anything like one. it's more like "you" + "an"

Even in English it's a serious stretch. I just checked my /usr/share/dict/words for everything starting with "y" and nothing else that uses a Y for a W sound is leaping out at me.

Re: Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

#45

Post by jb613 »

An underlying motif of the article seems to be that the fuerdai not only do not want to work hard but also that they only deserve the best jobs. One example:

"It’s no surprise that most fuerdai, after summering in Bali and wintering in the Alps, reading philosophy at Oxford and getting MBAs from Stanford, are reluctant to take over the family toothpaste cap factory."

However, at least some of the parents fortunes came from precisely working hard at menial work (e.g. owning and operating a toothpaste cap factory). For those that didn't build companies, while luck may have played a role, I suspect the parents who found their way into the upper levels of government or political jobs also had some degree of working hard or being smarter than others.

"the son of Wang Jianlin, a real estate mogul and the richest man in China"

Or taken risks - because unless you inherit or are granted land there is no other way to make the vast fortunes from real estate than leveraging and risk. Bankrupt or rich, it could have gone either way.

Re: Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

#46

Post by littletimmy »

rcarrigan87 wrote: post #11

Further down in the article, some interesting points about the motivations behind philanthropy. "philanthropy is about more than just social responsibility—it’s about social stability." So other than a genuine desire to do good or vanity seeking that can motivate philanthropy, you have a third element in China - preventing a revolt by the poor on the rich. If you give just enough, you'll keep the poor subdued. I wond…

I really liked this sentiment of Oscar Wilde on charity:

“[Charity] is not a solution [to poverty]: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible…Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good…”

Re: Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

#47

Post by kaybe »

lordnacho wrote: post #7
chenster wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What school is that?

Not terribly important, but it was a place where immigrant kids could mingle with the kids of diplomats, corporate folks, and the wealthy.

Like mentionend in the article: "Relay is therefore planning to start a program fostering ties between fuerdai and children from the countryside."?

Re: Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

#48

Post by douche »

roymurdock wrote: post #31

Funny to think that China was reforged under communist ideals only 50 years ago, and that the hatred of the poor rural folk for the wealthy, corrupt royals and warlords was strong enough to unite allow the country to expel the Japanese, the British, and the KMT. It's my view that the standard of living for the poor and lower classes has improved enough that there would not be enough hatred to fuel a revolution. Disgu…

It really only takes a single spark and semi-charismatic leadership to start a revolution if there is widespread hostility to the ruling party. The Taiping nearly overthrew the Qing dynasty, and they were led by a deranged religious fanatic who had a breakdown after failing repeatedly to get into civil service and claimed to be the second coming of Jesus. This came at a time when the expansion and prosperity of the Qianlong emperor was well in the rear-view, and population pressures, corruption, monetary shifts (the massive influx of Spanish silver in exchange for tea, silk, china, etc, was replaced by opium, which threw off the rates of exchange between gold, silver and cash) and other factors were resulting in a real decline in standard of living.

Today, any rebellion would probably need to involve a dissatisfied faction of the PLA, because China is so disarmed - the Communists arose at a time when the supply of firearms within China was probably at it its all-time high, between the decades of warlord control, the war with Japan, and military aid arriving from all sides in WW2. And quite frankly, the KMT armies were not particularly professional or formidable adversaries, compared even with the rank-and-file of the PLA today.

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