The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter • Hacker News Board

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#261

Post by marnett » Fri, Aug 24, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

DoubleCribble wrote: post #227

ad_hominem wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA has a lot of room to improve for sure. But solutions that work for Finland, which is a small, ethnically homogeneous, high trust society, simply won't map to the USA which is the opposite of all those things.

It won't map because of our national obsession with crime and punishment . I'd bet dollars to donuts that it's far cheaper to put a drunk in a homeless shelter AND give him treatment (AlAnon, etc) than it is to lock him in a cage with a herd of sociopaths. But the Prison Industrial Complex has got to look out for its own, after all.

The intention isn't so much crime and punishment as is the justification. The need to reallocate idle citizens producing no economic value is the systemic reason to high prisoner count domestically. America's prisons are largely forced labor camps recycling rebellious, able-bodied men into a working, productive labor force. One local example for me is paying californian prisoner's $1/hour to fight forest fires in the American west.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#262

Post by marnett » Fri, Aug 24, 2018, 7:01 PM UTC

ptaipale wrote: post #122

spyckie2 wrote: post #47

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…

When one focuses all their efforts in and before college in the sciences, neglecting a rounded, liberal education in the process, I am not all surprised by the lack of class knowledge.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#263

Post by brixon » Fri, Aug 24, 2018, 7:01 PM UTC

40acres wrote: post #2

I've been struggling with dream fulfillment vs. pragmatism for weeks now. The dillema is this: I only have a finite amount of time on the weekends and after work -- should I work on this side project idea that I want to turn into a start up or dedicate the time to study for interviews and secure my future with a high salary. Its been gnawing at me for weeks now and I think after reading this I've made my decision.. m…

Go for the higher paying job, but do not raise your standard of living. Start building you ability to save. You can grow wealth in a salary job if you are smart about how you spend money.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#264

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 24, 2018, 7:03 PM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #222

ptaipale wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yes. The liberal arts are “the objects of study worthy of a free person” as opposed to a wage slave. The public university system was meant to make these aristocratic pursuits available to the masses. Until costs exploded, it worked.

[deleted]

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#265

Post by InitialLastName » Fri, Aug 24, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

eiurafhlfie wrote: post #140

kaskavalci wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence you don't have a safety net and can't be an entrepreneur. If you can take the chance of getting rich or becoming homeless, good luck with that. Otherwise, 9-5 jobs are the only option.

If you are middle class (~$30k-$70k per annum) you can be wealthy* by focusing your spending on freedom, aka capital investments. I did not understand this was an option before reading the blog of Mr. Money Mustache[0]. Reading that and the Living a FI blog[1] may hopefully be as life-changing to you reading this comment as it was for me. * Wealthy in time to spend with those you love [0] https://www.mrmoneymustache.…

I like MMM as much as the next person, but saying that his project of "live cheaply on dual, 6-figure incomes" is a workable path to FI for people making $30k-$70k is disingenuous.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#266

Post by milesvp » Fri, Aug 24, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

sturgill wrote: post #241

genghisjahn wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents didn't have a lot of extra money for things, so I rarely asked for the moon. I only asked for things I thought they could provide. But when they couldn't (not enough $), they couldn't and that was how it was explained. "I know you want this, I want you to have it, but I can't." As a child that is disappointing but understandable. For my children, when they ask for something I'm rarely not able to buy it fo…

"We can't afford that" was the default phrase growing up. I didn't push back, but I also didn't really learn (so to speak). Every one of my siblings (myself included) followed a similar pattern: as soon as we started making money, we bought what we wanted (because we finally could). We were only really taught that "no" was because one couldn't, not because one shouldn't. My social experiment with my own children is s…

>My social experiment with my own children is still very early,

So I had a profound life lesson at around 7 or 8 years old. I had grown up near a corner store with a lot of nickel candies, so most of my weekly dollar allowance went to candy. I had learned how to optimize that dollar, how many laffy taffy, vs tootsie rolls, vs licorice, vs jolly rancher... so I knew how much satisfaction a dollar could buy. One day, we were going through a jack in the box drivethru and they had an ad for a stuffed Pinocchio for $5, and I begged my dad for it. He in turn said something to the effect of, "if I give you the $5 dollars would you still buy it?", and my mind immediately started thinking about all the things I could buy with $5. I could buy all the candy I could want, and still have some quarters left over for the stand up arcade games. Needless to say, I didn't really want the Pinocchio doll, certainly not for the price when it was my money.

Sadly, I have no idea how to reproduce this lesson with my daughter. She has so many people showering her with stuff, that she has no concept of how to maximize her utility with the money she has. And no one seems to keep the diverse array of cheap candy anywhere any more, which makes me kind of sad.

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#267

Post by Markoff » Fri, Aug 24, 2018, 7:28 PM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #118

spyckie2 wrote: post #47

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…

What you both describe is large cultural division between survival values and self-expression values between two generations. In quickly developing countries some people already live modern life but their parents come from very traditional valued society. What in the west is cultural division between grandparents and grandchildren can be division between parents and children. Political scientist Ronald Inglehart (kno…

this is very good point about generational differences based on how fast it's country developing

when I compare household of my Chinese parents in law with my parents households it really seem like we skipped generation, because their household it's closer to my deceased grandma's household with few exceptions and same can be applied also about opinions and thinking even when i compare my wife with them and even she has to admit the have really old school opinions closer to generation of my grandma than my parents and these are quite educated urbanites which are almost middle class (and didn't object their daughter marrying foreigner it expecting some money from me as happened to many of my colleagues in China), not some poor uneducated farmers where the difference must be even starker

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#268

Post by Markoff » Fri, Aug 24, 2018, 7:36 PM UTC

tvanantwerp wrote: post #158

spyckie2 wrote: post #47

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…

I don't think this story is particularly limited to immigrants. I remember that when my grandfather died, I didn't know about it for two months because I was studying abroad and my mother "didn't want to upset me". Our family has been living in the Americas since the 1600s. Coming from a smaller Southern town that existed to produce textiles--none of which are produced in the US anymore--I grew up relatively poor and…

pff, only two months, my wife (Chinese, if it matters) just learned her grandfather passed away last summer year ago, because they didn't want to upset her when she was like 5 months pregnant and this was almost 90yo guy with health issues, so not much surprise there to upset anyone

as I pointed to her if they lie about such big thing how can you trust them even with smaller things where they would not hesitate to lie at all

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#269

Post by Markoff » Fri, Aug 24, 2018, 7:47 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #238

gammateam wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in a lot of the world there are good reasons to only talk about the current national identity, but that doesn't mean they don't know where their family is from.

Going back four and five generations, unless you're from a prominent family or living in a family register-using country or something like that, the records are probably pretty spotty

don't think so, coming from small country which was part of empire until WW1 there was not much issues to track records back to around 1750 mostly thanks to church (i remember national census around 1850) and it was family of farmers and guys doing odd jobs, nothing prominent, heck i remember one couple in family tree which had even birth date hour, both born between 2-3PM it got stuck in my head or poor fella having 14 children but only 5 of them surviving and their mother dying in 42

Re: The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter

#270

Post by analyst74 » Fri, Aug 24, 2018, 7:52 PM UTC

msie wrote: post #187

spyckie2 wrote: post #47

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…

I remember 2 houses distinctly - a rich Asian immigrant's house, and a rich Caucasian's house. The Caucasian's was filled with relics of community - pictures of their involvement on sports teams, pictures of grandparents leading town hall meetings - it felt like they were rooted into the city and were an integral part of the community there. In contrast, the Asian immigrant's house was filled with relics of achieveme…

I also feel this narrative has a strange tone about praising the caucasians of being "rooted into the city and were an integral part of the community", and softly blaming the immigrants for lagging behind in community development.

I mean, isn't it normal that the immigrants do not have influential grandparents running town-hall meetings in the city they immigrated to?