141–150 of 310 posts
The author's self deprecation is brilliant. She uses her "meager useless" writing skills to broadcast to the one of the world's largest wealthy educated (kind?) audiences, readers of the NYTimes (not to mention HN), also subtly shaming anyone responsible for her mother's poor care past or future to the broadest most influential audience she can reach. What more can a mother ask for? I'm proud of her. Guanxi is not th…
The harsh reality of 1st or 2nd generation Chinese is that while many of us went to the top universities and grew up with a modern, 1st world mindset, we can't escape the fact that our financial and family background is from the developing world, and we live in both worlds at once - our mindset is modern, but the issues and problems of the developing world are still very much things we have to deal with. I first enco…
That experience is not restricted to "3rd world". I think what you describe could be simply called "class differences". Even what we now call 1st world countries had incredible poverty some 60 years back and it's not so long back, even if the face of poverty has recently changed from lack of opportunity to lack of achievement. Up to 1980's, in the Finnish welfare state where I grew up, you would see men who slept in…
Yeah, seriously. My family has been American for at least four generations. I can tell by looking in the mirror that I'm at least 95% European, but I have no idea from where - before about my great-grandparents, there isn't much genealogy to follow, and for the most part that's because most of my ancestors were trying to keep a low profile and avoid having any records that the police could follow. I'm doing OK for myself now, but I grew up at the end of a dead-end dirt road that was connected by another dirt road to the actual paved roads. There's poor everywhere.
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That experience is not restricted to "3rd world". I think what you describe could be simply called "class differences". Even what we now call 1st world countries had incredible poverty some 60 years back and it's not so long back, even if the face of poverty has recently changed from lack of opportunity to lack of achievement. Up to 1980's, in the Finnish welfare state where I grew up, you would see men who slept in…
I’m Finnish too. My entirely anecdotal experience of both Finland and USA is that America is about 40 years behind in responding to poverty. To see men sleeping in trash boxes in freezing weather, you only need to walk a few blocks around midtown Manhattan in the winter.
Some homeless people can't be helped since they have mental illnesses and break away from hospitals (USA has 70 times more people and homeless people are concentrating themselves in population hubs - that could make the problem more visible), and so on.
Let's not assume things without proper analysis.
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The term you are looking for is called Abundance . A few days back I was discussing this with my friend who immigrated to the US and settled there. I'm an Indian. We were discussing how his wife and kids, who are Americans just do not understand his perspective of things from a living standards stand point. The thing is sometimes its impossible to erase the effect poverty has on you. When you go through tough times,…
Both my wife and I grew up quite poor (for US standards). We didn’t quite fit in at university and had a hard time relating to our peers who grew up with money (my wife’s parents encouraged her to not go to school but just stay and marry local). We’re doing well for ourselves, but still don’t really fit in among our peers. We’ve coined a phrase for it: “your poverty is showing.” It doesn’t matter how much I make: at…
Like if they break their phone you give them an old flip phone so they are still reachable but they have to earn money (mowing grass, do the chores...) to pay for a new one (even if paying them a new phone doesn't make a dent in your budget).
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I’m Finnish too. My entirely anecdotal experience of both Finland and USA is that America is about 40 years behind in responding to poverty. To see men sleeping in trash boxes in freezing weather, you only need to walk a few blocks around midtown Manhattan in the winter.
Or maybe USA has way more people or other factors that make it a harder problem. Some homeless people can't be helped since they have mental illnesses and break away from hospitals (USA has 70 times more people and homeless people are concentrating themselves in population hubs - that could make the problem more visible), and so on. Let's not assume things without proper analysis.
I came to US about 10 years ago. Finished my PhD and spent about 4 years in Software Industry. Saved some money. US has taught me a lot about entrepreneurship and software. Now moving to India for good to work on my own startup, spend more time with my hobbies and to stay close with my parents who are in their 60's. It took me more than an year to convince my parents (hardest to convince was my Mom) and my Wife. Look…
Are your parents in the US or India?
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That experience is not restricted to "3rd world". I think what you describe could be simply called "class differences". Even what we now call 1st world countries had incredible poverty some 60 years back and it's not so long back, even if the face of poverty has recently changed from lack of opportunity to lack of achievement. Up to 1980's, in the Finnish welfare state where I grew up, you would see men who slept in…
> could be simply called "class differences" Yeah, seriously. My family has been American for at least four generations. I can tell by looking in the mirror that I'm at least 95% European, but I have no idea from where - before about my great-grandparents, there isn't much genealogy to follow, and for the most part that's because most of my ancestors were trying to keep a low profile and avoid having any records that…
But you may have a point that apparently the social differences are smaller small countries and communities where genealogy is better known. To take an example, in Iceland, there is extremely good genealogical data about everyone for over a millennium. Social differences are not very big and were not that big even before the adoption of modern welfare state.
I am not familiar with nuances of Chinese culture, but I was so intrigued by the "guanxi" phenomenon that I immediately and gladly spent half an hour reading about it and watching Youtube videos of the "guanxi" culture in China.[1] "Guanxi" is nothing other than socially institutionalised networks of non-monetary favours and counter-favours. It happens in every culture actually but the thing that makes "quanxi" uniqu…
We might have the term 'favours for favours' but I don't even like that.
I do favours because if it's easy for me to help someone, I do that. I don't expect anything in return. Maybe if one day I need something obviously it makes it easier to ask, but it's not what I'm thinking of.
I think most regular people are thinking in these terms, i.e. we're not constantly keeping track of sour social clout within a specific network. Frankly I don't even like the people that do.
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When Asian parents says, don't get a literature degree, become a doctor, they have a good reason to say it. It's not necessarily this bad in terms of standard of living (the above description would be subsistence levels, maybe less than 200$ a year), but the median household income in China is about $12-15k US a year compared to $56k in the US. And it's not that in China everything is cheaper so 12-15k goes a long wa…
Related: Rich Kids Study English "New data shows that students whose parents make less money pursue more “useful” subjects, such as math or physics." https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/college...