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The Atlantic: Better Schools Won’t Fix America
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Replies to: The Atlantic: Better Schools Won’t Fix America
They are a perfect example of govt control of economic output and industry leading to real income inequality. Try being middle class there.
Open markets help.
Of course not unbridled or without oversight. Plenty of room there for helping.
Also we do need to look at eliminating poverty. I would support a special tax trust fund for the ultra rich to help the ultra poor.
But the give a person a fish and they eat for a day. Teach them to fish they eat for a lifetime does have some merit.
It’s so complex. But no one should go hungry. Food at school should be free for all kids. Adults too.
Well, I live, teach, research and own and operate a factory in China, and my experience is nothing like yours. I think you are very out of date with your impressions.
Or because they are held under suspicion because of their national origin and contacts with those where they immigrated from?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-06-13/the-u-s-is-purging-chinese-americans-from-top-cancer-research
Your pleasant living arrangements are purely anecdotal in such a large country. It’s vastness is staggering.
But here are but two of countless research articles - and remember we are not taking about a government known for transparency. It’s probably much worse.
The per capital income of the average Chinese citizen compared to party members and government elite (including joint venture billionaires and Uber wealthy) is not comparable to us worker standards.
If we leave the obvious worker and income disparity issues aside.
Here’s the but a glimpse into some of the issues. It’s just not a comparison between countries and environmental stewardship and oversight.
And unless 2013 to 2018 is what would be regarded as ancient history, I stand by my statement 100 percent.
China ‘environment census’ reveals 50% rise in pollution sources
“Ministry says country has 9m sources of pollution, with factories breaking emissions rules the big problem”
The Guardian -UK
Lily Kuo in Hong Kong
Fri 30 Mar 2018 21.50 EDT
Another article....deforestation, early death, rivers unfit for human contact, very bad water and the global carbon coal polluter among other things.
“China’s mounting environmental crisis is endangering the pace of its economic growth and threatening the legitimacy of the ruling party.
Backgrounder by Eleanor Albert and Beina Xu
Last updated January 18, 2016”
“China’s environmental crisis is one of the most pressing challenges to emerge from the country’s rapid industrialization.
China is the world’s largest source of carbon emissions, and the air quality of many of its major cities fails to meet international health standards.
Life expectancy north of the Huai River is 5.5 years lower than in the south due to air pollution (life expectancy in China is 75.3 years, according to 2013 UN figures).
Severe water contamination and scarcity have compounded land deterioration.
Environmental degradation threatens to undermine the country’s growth and exhausts public patience with the pace of reform.
with reports from late 2015 implying that it consumed up to 17 percent more coal than previously reported.
In January 2013, Beijing experienced a prolonged bout of smog so severe that citizens dubbed it an “airpocalypse”; the concentration of hazardous particles was forty times the level deemed safe by the World Health Organization (WHO).
In December 2015, Beijing issued red alerts for severe pollution—the first since the emergency alert system was established. The municipal government closed schools, limited road traffic, halted outdoor construction, and paused factory manufacturing.
At least 80 percent of China’s 367 cities with real-time air quality monitoring failed to meet national small-particle pollution standards during the first three quarters of 2015, according to a Greenpeace East Asia report.
In December 2015, the Asian Development Bank approved a $300 million loan to help China address the capital region’s choking smog.
Industry along China’s major water sources has polluted water supplies: In 2014, groundwater supplies in more than 60 percent of major cities were categorized as “bad to very bad,” and more than a quarter of China’s key rivers are “unfit for human contact.” And lack of waste removal and proper processing has exacerbated problems.
Combined with negligent farming practices, overgrazing, and the effects of climate change, the water crisis has turned much of China’s arable land into desert.
About 1.05 million square miles of China’s landmass are undergoing desertification, affecting more than 400 million people, according to the deputy head of China’s State Forestry Administration.
Water scarcity, pollution, and desertification are reducing China’s ability to sustain its industrial output and produce food and drinkable water for its large population”
Chinese lower level workers are usually literate, sober, hardworking and productive. The technical workers have good education and are not the unimaginative drones of US mythology.
The middle class is thriving and expanding. There are great opportunities for young people to work hard and do well. The GINI coefficient of China and US, per CIA data, are almost identical.
You can find an article about dreadful pollution in almost any country. On the ground, the situation in China is not nearly as bad as that article says. And yes 2013 was a long time ago in Chinese development. As you say, it's a big country, there are clean and dirty depending where you go.
My grandparents came here with few useful skills. My grandfather was a Vodka runner for his grandmother and then a deserter from a number of armies during the Russian civil war. He started as factory worker, and because Unions made sure that he got paid decent wages, by the time my father was a boy, my grandfather owned a grocery store. My father got his PhD at Columbia University, and I am a second generation PhD.
However, you would have banned my grandfather from coming into the USA because you would have claimed that he "wasn't skilled"
Most of the Jews who immigrated to the USA at the turn of the 20th century had no skills. Nor did the Italians and Irish. The rhetoric that was used against them by the White Protestant majority of the USA sounded identical to the rhetoric that you are echoing here. Yet these people, or the children, or their grandchildren, were the architects of the rise of the USA to being a super power.
Immigrants drive economic and cultural growth. Unskilled immigrants are even better, since they can be trained to perform most of the day to day jobs that keep the country running. Trained immigrants are more difficult to retrain to the American requirements. A Professor from Germany of China will usually have a very difficult time teaching in the USA, and their research will be hampered by cultural and linguistic issues. However, teaching a newly arrived immigrant the basics of carpentry or plumbing is far easier, and they will perform as well or better than American born professionals.
This is not because carpentry is easier, but because, the more educated a person is, the more likely they are to be set in their ways.
The USA does not need any more PhDs. Grad schools are churning out more PhDs than there are places for them to work, so why bring in more from other countries? The USA needs people in the professions, like carpenters, electricians, etc. In tech they need coders and other types of programmers. The USA needs people who can be trained to do these things, not people who are already trained to do stuff in a manner which fits their country and culture.
You could have saved yourself a lot of time if you noted a key word in the post you were responding to:
Skilled workers are the opposite, they are an immediate net positive, and as you correctly identify can be in a wide variety of useful fields.
If one could adopt a broader view of the issues before denouncing our system as fatally flawed and embracing failed and terrible systems for the average citizen.
We’ve been around 243 years. China is one of the cradles of civilization and still hasn’t figured it all out. My hope is as we look to our own weaknesses in the USA in the broader context than wholesale condemnation we often see today.
The fact that we can even criticize our government and systems openly and freely is a luxury the Chinese to not share.
If you could post me to any research and articles about the strength and health of Chinese human rights, free speech, fair treatment of government dissidents, wonderful labor practices and environmental stewardship, in a broad sense, and comparable to the USA, I am open minded to this information.
And 2013 is only five years ago. But the information extends into 2015 and 2016 and even 2018, in the info I posted. And it wasn’t the only material.
Also the emerging middle class is fraction of total population and not a middle class anyone in the USA would recognize as such.
“Around 500 million people, or 40 percent of the population within China, survive on $5.50 per day or less.”
Feb 24, 2018
That’s $2000 a year!!
Median Income is 10k vs 40k in us
The “middle class in China is defined by their government sources as $7250 to upper middle class as $60,000.
This was only 4 percent of the population but has grown. It’s still a tiny fraction
50 percent of all working Americans make more per year than the upper end of the small Chinese middle class.
Why do so many wealthy Chinese want to get visa to the USA. How many Americans are lining up to relocate there forever ?
This doesn’t take into account the vast rural regions with incredible poverty versus the enormous wealth of the industrial and capital cities.
If we want to be honest about China.
It’s a repressive, autocratic and self interested regime. It’s stayed in power through the use of brute force, imprisonment, militarization and unequal educational opportunities.
Manipulation of their currency and worker safety standards as well.
The wholesale slaughter of millions of people under mao, the cultural revolution, the ongoing silencing and jailing of dissidents, the defacto focus on male children, the utter lack of concern of the provincial and rural population. How about we thow in a little censorship, social media control and content manipulation. Running over people with tanks and Hong Kong unrest. Why are the children and students there so afraid of standing trial on the mainland? The criminal justice system is an arm of the state. That’s why.
Yes they are an economic marvel, the country has wonderful geography and beautiful, kind people.
As an economic model. I want nothing to do with their system or methods.
If the USA did not lack so many unskilled workers, there would not be so many unregistered non-citizens working in these jobs. There is a lack of people working in the professions like electricians, carpentry, welding. There are people lacking in entry level tech jobs.
There are more jobs at the low-skilled and entry level positions that need filling than skilled positions and positions of manager and higher.
Immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in government benefits.
Immigrants take jobs that boost other parts of the economy. (And often US workers are unable or unwilling to work these jobs.)
Changes in US demographics and the birthrate require immigration for economic growth.
Birthright citizenship increases economic growth.
Source(s): https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/4-myths-about-how-immigrants-affect-the-u-s-economy
There are two parts to the deception. First, the term immigrants here intentionally combines legal and illegal immigrants. Legal immigrants tend to have high incomes and work in jobs where taxes are fully collected. Illegal immigrants tend to have lower incomes and sometimes work in jobs where taxes are not fully collected.
The second part of the deception is that the government benefits are defined as federal government benefits, which ignores the significant costs borne by state and local authorities for K-12 education. The cost of K-12 education varies significantly depending upon location, but ranges from roughly $100K to $200K per child. For a family with 3 children, a rough estimate is $400K, and this number excludes any extra assistance such as free/reduced price meals. I invite anyone to explain to me how a typical illegal immigrant family will pay more in state and local taxes than that $400K over their earning lifetime.
If you look at the U6 figures and the percentage of the population working, there are plenty of Americans available to fulfill unskilled jobs. We could create guest worker program for areas with actual shortages. Wages will need to rise a bit, but that would also result in lower safety net costs. That's a net plus for the worker, and also for the taxpayer.
Another way to view the pbs report is, 'Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.' (Mark Twain, among others)