271–280 of 298 posts
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If the government suppresses the history of the event in China, how are the protesters of tomorrow supposed to know to think twice?
Actually, everyone knows about it and people talk very openly about it off the record, but no one is willing to talk about it in a recorded medium with a Westerner.
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Even better, those who expect ot but have labelled an employee "key" to say they are ot-exempt... I later found out it has a legal definition. Key employee, in the ot law, means you have some profit sharing or stake in the company. Doesn't matter how "key" you are to the operations. FYI. I bet lots of people are getting shafted by this.
Exempt means you don't report hours. My first professional job after college was with one of the big consulting firms. I reported hours, and I got paid overtime after 40. I was expected to log at least 40 hours a week on something -- could be internal/self-training or client billable. In all the other jobs I've had I did not report hours. I am hired to get a job done. If that sometimes takes me 30 hours a week and so…
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If you can actually speak English to a level high enough to communicate effectively with monoglot English speakers this is absolutely true. Unfortunately lots of degree programmes that aim for that level of fluency do not achieve it. I’ve worked in Shanghai for the past six years. This is definitely one of the cities with the highest fluency in English in China. Most educated professionals have some basic competency…
Living in Beijing, I was amazed in Shanghai when the taxi driver actually spoke to me in English. That would just never happen in Beijing. English wasn't uncommon in the professional world, however.
English is common in the professional world, absolutely, but it’s not necessary for a high level professional career like it would be in most of Western Europe.
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Living in Beijing, I was amazed in Shanghai when the taxi driver actually spoke to me in English. That would just never happen in Beijing. English wasn't uncommon in the professional world, however.
A taxi driver who speaks good English is pretty rare here too but plenty speak a little. Definitely a minority but they exist. English is common in the professional world, absolutely, but it’s not necessary for a high level professional career like it would be in most of Western Europe.
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That sounds like a meeting for party members, often people (or the families of people) angling for local government jobs. Of course there'll be some True Believers but the subtext is it's basically a networking event. So yes, definitely like Church ;)
I find something ironic about this, but of course it's unfortunately true. Until last year my "Church" experience was mostly on and off spending time at a Buddhist monastery which was more about taking part in an isolated community and retreating from the world. Wanting to find something similar I started going to the local Anglican Church and being the studious kind of person I am decided to read the Book of Common…
And that's an interesting quote. Perhaps that rule would be better reinstated.
As an engine tech for a diesel truck service center, I can seriously sympathize with where young chinese people are coming from. excessive overtime, even paid , can turn you into a miserable zombie pretty fast. somewhat quickly after my apprenticeship I was gifted quite a bit of nonsense overtime from the old timers. rotor turns, oil changes, timing, valve clearance, etc... were all heaped up on me until I was spendi…
At least you got paid for your overtime. Every salaried job I've had has been exempt from overtime. About 10 years ago, I spent a 6-month stretch pulling 100 hour weeks. Only went home every other day during the week, and that was mostly for a shower, an hour of sleep and a change of clothes. Other days, it was a shower on-site and a change of underwear & socks, no sleep. Got to go home on Friday nights, but back in…
As an engine tech for a diesel truck service center, I can seriously sympathize with where young chinese people are coming from. excessive overtime, even paid , can turn you into a miserable zombie pretty fast. somewhat quickly after my apprenticeship I was gifted quite a bit of nonsense overtime from the old timers. rotor turns, oil changes, timing, valve clearance, etc... were all heaped up on me until I was spendi…
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Does it look like the workers own the means of production in China or is it a mix of government and private capitalists? If so, that's state and private capitalism. If the workers own the means of production it means they literally are the managers of the factories in a democratic fashion. You wouldn't see much useless overtime if that happened.
That is the joke. The communist government, that was supposed to liberate the people, created this situation. It didn't work like it was supposed to did it?
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That is the joke. The communist government, that was supposed to liberate the people, created this situation. It didn't work like it was supposed to did it?
China is not communist, it's state socialism! No one has ever tried communism. (Except that they obviously tried state socialism, which is supposed to be the precursor to socialism, which itself is a precursor to communism, but going through the precursor steps to communism doesn't count as trying communism because... reasons.)
The idea Lenin expressed in "State and Revolution" was the idea of the wilting of the state into nothing as it becomes useless without class antagonisms to subdue.
If you follow Marx, the only universal, the step that both China and the USSR skipped which might be why they ended up the way they did, was that Socialism is supposed to evolve from advanced capitalism which produces the abundance of tools and facilities that make a new more equitable highly developed civilization possible.
The interesting lede here is that the USA is, unlike a poor peasant country, in a state of advanced capitalism and is the most wealthy country in world history. It is also the imperial power that oppresses the rest of the world rather than vice versa. These unique circumstances raise the possibility that Marx's vision might be best fulfilled here, not over there.
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Call me stupid but I cannot see how you are agreeing with your parent comment. It basically states "don't complain and get back to work", and you basically said it's normal for people to want their hard work to pay off and are thus pushing back against insane working schedules. I don't see the connection, help me here.
I was agreeing with this part: "There's no such things as "human rights standards" for how much you should work per week." A 40 hour work week isn't (in my view) a "human right" in the way that life, liberty and property are rights. It's an exchange of time/work for money. People can choose to work a lot or work a little depending on how they value their time vs their leisure.
The 40h a week is pretty artificial default that has been imposed on most of the people by business interests. That's how I view it historically at least.
So we might not agree on slippery terms like "basic human rights" but modern phenomena as burnout and work depression are pretty widespread already and can thus serve as an example as to how the current workload standards might be broken.