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Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

bbc.com

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Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#161

Post by ben509 »

cwbrandsma wrote: post #103
Sangermaine wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nice to see that however much America and China might be at odds, they can apparently agree on attacking their young people as lazy and entitled.

it is a right of passage for each generation. In your 20s you are called lazy and entitled, then in your 40s-60s you say the same to people in their 20s.

Not quite, we didn't have social media when I was growing up, so we got it from lazy, smug magazine articles. Now you have memes that are equally unfair, but with highly evolved hilarity. And, of course, I'm just on the edge of Gen X while my brother is a millennial, so fairness be damned, you're all whiny hipster SJWs snacking on Tide pods.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#162

Post by edflsafoiewq »

emodendroket wrote: post #79
ekianjo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a case of basic human rights. There's no such things as "human rights standards" for how much you should work per week. For most of human history people lived in abject misery and precariousness and in comparison 72 hours a week and most folks having all the comfort of modern city life is not as bad as it sounds like.

In ancient cultures it was considered normal to leave a baby to die if you didn't want to raise it. Should we bring that back too?

Abortion serves, in modern society, essentially the same function as abandonment.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#163

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

emodendroket wrote: post #79
ekianjo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a case of basic human rights. There's no such things as "human rights standards" for how much you should work per week. For most of human history people lived in abject misery and precariousness and in comparison 72 hours a week and most folks having all the comfort of modern city life is not as bad as it sounds like.

In ancient cultures it was considered normal to leave a baby to die if you didn't want to raise it. Should we bring that back too?

That’s a bit of a false equivalency, isn’t it?

Besides, modern times have allowed us to avoid raising children if we don’t want to. We just don’t have to wait until the baby is a fully formed human and born from its mother’s womb to make that decision. In practice it may feel better to do it that way, but the basic effects are the same.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#164

Post by RandomTisk »

onlywei wrote: post #143
aurailious wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Millennials are now killing the Chinese manufacturing industry!"

The word "millenials" as a classification is not used in China. Everyone gets classified instead as 80后，90后，00后， etc. (meaning born after 1980, born after 1990, born after 2000, etc.). Because of China's rapid economic growth, the difference in attitudes for someone born in the 80s versus someone born in the 90s is actually very pronounced.

Care to elaborate? Does one look down on the other?

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#165

Post by nerfhammer »

bjourne wrote: post #148
ekianjo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a case of basic human rights. There's no such things as "human rights standards" for how much you should work per week. For most of human history people lived in abject misery and precariousness and in comparison 72 hours a week and most folks having all the comfort of modern city life is not as bad as it sounds like.

That's a myth. For most of human history, "working" 10-12 hours/week used to be the norm. There are still isolated tribes living as hunter gatherers and they are far from miserable!

It's been pointed out that hunter gathers worked a lot less than modern humans do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society

Only after developing agriculture do societies start having 12 hours a day of work

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#166

Post by samlevine »

marsrover wrote: post #8

> Li said that initially he felt he couldn’t be too be picky: he had majored in English, not in one of the sought-after science or technology fields, and he had attended a low-ranked university. Many of his friends are unemployed. To me, this was the most interesting part of the article. It all sounds so familiar.

New Chinese (non-STEM) grads have it worse, amazingly enough.

The central government demanded more graduates at any cost, threw money at the problem and they ended up with corruption, very expensive facilities and many times more graduates with questionable skills in subjects that mostly aren't yet in demand.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#168

Post by freehunter »

onlywei wrote: post #143
aurailious wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Millennials are now killing the Chinese manufacturing industry!"

The word "millenials" as a classification is not used in China. Everyone gets classified instead as 80后，90后，00后， etc. (meaning born after 1980, born after 1990, born after 2000, etc.). Because of China's rapid economic growth, the difference in attitudes for someone born in the 80s versus someone born in the 90s is actually very pronounced.

I know nothing about China or how pronounced these differences are, but you see the same thing even in the "Millennial" generation everyone loves to talk about here in the US. You'll find a drastic difference between younger Millennials and older Millennials, to the point where Buzzfeed is writing articles comparing the two. No matter how much people want to pretend that "Millennial" is actually a real thing, it's not. It's entirely made up and the sub-generations inside of the category share very different cultural values and life experiences.

It's hard to argue that someone born in 1982 shares much (if anything) in common with someone born in 1998.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#169

Post by freehunter »

edflsafoiewq wrote: post #162
emodendroket wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In ancient cultures it was considered normal to leave a baby to die if you didn't want to raise it. Should we bring that back too?

Abortion serves, in modern society, essentially the same function as abandonment.

Or adoption. Or I mean... it's not like people don't still abandon their babies if they really want to.
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