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China’s defeated youth: Young Chinese have little hope for the future

economist.com

51–60 of 86 posts

Re: China’s defeated youth: Young Chinese have little hope for the future

#51
post #22

The article mostly focuses on educated youth and white collar jobs (though it does touch on blue collar). But why would they start with an example of someone making less than half the average income of Chinese (about 10000 yuan iirc)? Sure, if you are in the bottom 25% of income, things will look bleak. I am not saying that is not the issue, but the article is not about that topic.

There's a lot more people in the bottom 25% of income than in the top 25%. Do they not matter?

I am happy to read and discuss an article about bottom 25% too. But don’t start a topic describing someone in the bottom 25%, and then use him to preface for an entirely different population

Re: China’s defeated youth: Young Chinese have little hope for the future

#52
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education, however, consistently leads to better outcomes. White collar workers are doing well across the country (US). Forget about tech, accountants, HR professionals, economists, risk analysts, project managers, etc. are all doing well. It's predominantly the un- and under-educated that are being left behind.

UPS workers are doing well because they have a union. Important data point.

I totally agree with this. A union may not be necessary in many cases, but some sort of organization definitely is. Many of my examples have self-organized, self-regulations associations that manage their own credentials and establish rate guidelines for their services. Other professional pools should learn from this.

I've been advocating for guilds for a while. The software industry should learn from the actors. It's artistic work with a labour pool comprising of vastly different capabilities, yet they managed to find a way to band together. Moreover, exceptional talent is still compensated above and beyond, unlike a union: Being part of the guild does not restrict the likes of Tom Cruise or Margot Robbie from being paid buckets of money, getting a gross of the profits, etc.

Re: China’s defeated youth: Young Chinese have little hope for the future

#53
post #2

https://archive.is/1T1eN

Does anyone else have captcha issues with archive.is these days? I just hit an infinite loop of repeated asks to solve a captcha. This is a relatively recent issue. Here's an alternative link from the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20230819151745/https://www.econo...

Cloudflare DNS stopped resolving Archive Today (.is) a few weeks ago. Probably related to this disagreement from 2019.

https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-blocked/

Re: China’s defeated youth: Young Chinese have little hope for the future

#54
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“In 2015, it was reported that there are more than 3 million people are homeless in China.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_China Though it’s hard to get accurate figures. “In 2011, there were approximately 2.41 million homeless adults and 179,000 homeless children living in the country.[1] However, one publication estimated that there were one million homeless children in China in 2012.[2][unreliable s…

2.41 million is 0,17% of China's population. "In 2018, the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated roughly 553,000 homeless people in the United States on a given night,[4] or 0.17 percent of the population." [1] So, given the best estimates, about the same homelessness rate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta...

> In the United States, the number of homeless people varies from different federal government accounts. In 2014, approximately 1.5 million sheltered homeless people were counted.[3] In 2018, the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated roughly 553,000 homeless people in the United States on a given night,[4] or 0.17 percent of the population.

I don't quite understand what exactly the two numbers are measuring, but that sounds more like something between 1.5 million and 553,000 people. (At least assuming the number didn't somehow drop by a million in 4 years, which would be an absolutely spectacular improvement that I think we'd have heard about)

Re: China’s defeated youth: Young Chinese have little hope for the future

#55
post #2

https://archive.is/1T1eN

Does anyone else have captcha issues with archive.is these days? I just hit an infinite loop of repeated asks to solve a captcha. This is a relatively recent issue. Here's an alternative link from the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20230819151745/https://www.econo...

FYI if you get stuck in a captcha loop, try an audio captcha, it'll tell you that there's an error and you can't proceed, but for whatever reason the visual captcha will happily keep you clicking on signs and traffic lights even though you can't ever pass.

Often the cause seems to be the captcha service itself getting too much traffic end not your IP or browser.

Re: China’s defeated youth: Young Chinese have little hope for the future

#56
post #49

[flagged]

Young people in the West who are unhappy are mostly mentally ill. It's not the same in China and the article enumerates various concrete reasons why.

Distinction without a difference. Just because we give our unhappy youth's misery a name and send them home with a bottle of pills doesn't mean they're not unhappy.

Re: China’s defeated youth: Young Chinese have little hope for the future

#57
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UPS workers are doing well because they have a union. Important data point.

I totally agree with this. A union may not be necessary in many cases, but some sort of organization definitely is. Many of my examples have self-organized, self-regulations associations that manage their own credentials and establish rate guidelines for their services. Other professional pools should learn from this. I've been advocating for guilds for a while. The software industry should learn from the actors. It'…

Email in profile, always open to hearing from like minded folks on the topic of labor rights and organizing.

Re: China’s defeated youth: Young Chinese have little hope for the future

#58
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“In 2015, it was reported that there are more than 3 million people are homeless in China.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_China Though it’s hard to get accurate figures. “In 2011, there were approximately 2.41 million homeless adults and 179,000 homeless children living in the country.[1] However, one publication estimated that there were one million homeless children in China in 2012.[2][unreliable s…

2.41 million is 0,17% of China's population. "In 2018, the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated roughly 553,000 homeless people in the United States on a given night,[4] or 0.17 percent of the population." [1] So, given the best estimates, about the same homelessness rate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta...

I am not saying those numbers are correct just that even China acknowledges they have millions of homeless people.

Also that 2.41 in 2011 excluded 0.179 million kids so 0.19%. The 3 million figure in 2015 so 3m / 1393m = 0.22%.

However, elsewhere it was suggested that children alone might be closer to 1 million. I am not suggesting it’s accurate just that their estimates are suspect. Hell I just looked at a paper suggesting homeless was close to 300 million in China. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajes.12324 That seems unlikely, but the idea it’s even possible to mention suggests we don’t have adequate figures.

Re: China’s defeated youth: Young Chinese have little hope for the future

#60
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2.41 million is 0,17% of China's population. "In 2018, the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated roughly 553,000 homeless people in the United States on a given night,[4] or 0.17 percent of the population." [1] So, given the best estimates, about the same homelessness rate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta...

> In the United States, the number of homeless people varies from different federal government accounts. In 2014, approximately 1.5 million sheltered homeless people were counted.[3] In 2018, the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated roughly 553,000 homeless people in the United States on a given night,[4] or 0.17 percent of the population. I don't quite understand what exactly the two numbers are mea…

That 1.5 million includes people living in government provided housing designated for homeless people.

Someone given temporary access to housing has shelter, but you need to keep providing them shelter so you need to classify them as a person in need of housing Aka homeless. You may also see the terms Houseless, Unhoused, or Unsheltered used to make the distinctions more clear.

PS: There’s also a long continuum from owning a home with plumbing etc and living on a park bench. Governments want people in permanent spaces that provide adequate shelter and have a mailing address for a host of different reasons.

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