Chinese Workers Who Assemble Designer Bags in Italy
newyorker.com
Chinese Workers Who Assemble Designer Bags in Italy
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Re: Chinese Workers Who Assemble Designer Bags in Italy
#2As I read this, the New Yorker seemed to highlight the problems from a more leftist, social safety net perspective. The Chinese immigrants circumvented the tax code in every way they could - working under the table, starting unregistered businesses in garages and vans, living in the garages and vans, even dying secretly so their passports could be repurposed for new immigrants. This meant hospitals and other public services went underfunded.
What I found interesting, though, were the competing right-wing narratives in the lives of the immigrants. They were so ready to live industrious, entrepreneurial lives (largely) outside of the protection of government, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, while their work ethic, frugality, and ultimate success led to anti-immigrant, nativist sentiments and the politics that reflect them.
I tend to be relatively laissez-faire in my tastes for both economic and immigration policy, but watching the right-wing in Europe and the United States reject the latter makes me think the sentiment comes from a deeper, visceral level. Almost like an immune system rejecting something it doesn't recognize. For all the posturing and intellectual maturity of free-market economics and small government policies, it seems that right-wing politics will always find easier alliances among those with xenophobic or even racist sentiments because those motivations are hardwired into our DNA, and embracing your hard wiring is a lot easier than comprehending Friedman or Hayek.
Re: Chinese Workers Who Assemble Designer Bags in Italy
#3An all too familiar predicament[1], except I grew up accustomed to also seeing Filipinos (services) and Bangladeshi (construction) in similar melting pots.
> Locals suspected that Chinese mobsters were disposing of corpses in exchange for passports, which they then sold to new arrivals, a scheme that took advantage of the native population’s apparent inability to tell any one Chinese person from another. There was a note of jealousy to the Pratans’ complaints, as well as a reluctant respect for people who had beaten them at their own game.
Morbid humor aside, this game and it's variants are apparently quite common[2].
[1] https://mobile.nytimes.com/1993/07/18/world/made-usa-hard-la...
[2] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/business/saipan-casino...
Re: Chinese Workers Who Assemble Designer Bags in Italy
#4As I read this, the New Yorker seemed to highlight the problems from a more leftist, social safety net perspective. The Chinese immigrants circumvented the tax code in every way they could - working under the table, starting unregistered businesses in garages and vans, living in the garages and vans, even dying secretly so their passports could be repurposed for new immigrants. This meant hospitals and other public s…
You can't compare the right-wing in Europe and United States.
For example in Sweden our right win party SD is much less about the free market and small government policies. Instead I would say the main goal of SD is to preserve Swedens generous welfare society.
Re: Chinese Workers Who Assemble Designer Bags in Italy
#5As I read this, the New Yorker seemed to highlight the problems from a more leftist, social safety net perspective. The Chinese immigrants circumvented the tax code in every way they could - working under the table, starting unregistered businesses in garages and vans, living in the garages and vans, even dying secretly so their passports could be repurposed for new immigrants. This meant hospitals and other public s…
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Re: Chinese Workers Who Assemble Designer Bags in Italy
#6As I read this, the New Yorker seemed to highlight the problems from a more leftist, social safety net perspective. The Chinese immigrants circumvented the tax code in every way they could - working under the table, starting unregistered businesses in garages and vans, living in the garages and vans, even dying secretly so their passports could be repurposed for new immigrants. This meant hospitals and other public s…
You can't compare the right-wing in Europe and United States. For example in Sweden our right win party SD is much less about the free market and small government policies. Instead I would say the main goal of SD is to preserve Swedens generous welfare society.
The new right in the US is also more ambivalent on the free market, though; note Trump's attempts at trade wars.
Re: Chinese Workers Who Assemble Designer Bags in Italy
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't compare the right-wing in Europe and United States. For example in Sweden our right win party SD is much less about the free market and small government policies. Instead I would say the main goal of SD is to preserve Swedens generous welfare society.
The new right in the US is also more ambivalent on the free market, though; note Trump's attempts at trade wars.
Free trade has always been the position of the elites on the US right (and left) more than the masses.
Re: Chinese Workers Who Assemble Designer Bags in Italy
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
The new right in the US is also more ambivalent on the free market, though; note Trump's attempts at trade wars.
Free trade has always been the position of the elites on the US right (and left) more than the masses.
This is more true than false, but tariffs were popular with US business leaders really until a little while after the post-war period.
Re: Chinese Workers Who Assemble Designer Bags in Italy
#9As I read this, the New Yorker seemed to highlight the problems from a more leftist, social safety net perspective. The Chinese immigrants circumvented the tax code in every way they could - working under the table, starting unregistered businesses in garages and vans, living in the garages and vans, even dying secretly so their passports could be repurposed for new immigrants. This meant hospitals and other public s…
What I found interesting, though, were the competing
right-wing narratives in the lives of the immigrants.
Of course factory owners are keen their workers have "industrious, frugal lives outside the protection of government" - that's the definition of working 12 hours a day in illegally dangerous conditions for a fraction of minimum wage.
Re: Chinese Workers Who Assemble Designer Bags in Italy
#10As I read this, the New Yorker seemed to highlight the problems from a more leftist, social safety net perspective. The Chinese immigrants circumvented the tax code in every way they could - working under the table, starting unregistered businesses in garages and vans, living in the garages and vans, even dying secretly so their passports could be repurposed for new immigrants. This meant hospitals and other public s…
You can't compare the right-wing in Europe and United States. For example in Sweden our right win party SD is much less about the free market and small government policies. Instead I would say the main goal of SD is to preserve Swedens generous welfare society.
Thats an odd way of looking at SD. There is a clear macroeconomic consensus that immigration is good for the economy as a whole, the GDP growth Sweden has enjoyed strongly support this. An SD government would be a threat to the Swedish welfare society.
This is a party started not by right leaning nationalists but by actual nazis. Gustav Ekström, one of the founders of the party was a volunteer in the Waffen-SS in 1941. Yes the party has changed but these are the kinds of people running the party when the current leadership joined.
Its overwhelmingly clear the main reason for the party is to turn Sweden into some sort of white nationalist fantasy where anyone with a brown face is not welcome.