I mean the whole school I went through kept nailing in our heads how much a foreign language would benefit you. I guess this went under the noses of whoever like teaching kids to balance a checkbook.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    9 hours ago

    Now, homeless people collecting rubbish to sell for scrap does also happen in the US, but the US at least doesn’t claim to be a socialist country.

    The US doesn’t have guaranteed housing. China does. The major catch is that Chinese guaranteed housing is tied to your municipal “home city” and getting that changed is a pain in the ass. So the homeless people you’ll find in major urban areas are residents who left their rural neighborhoods in pursuit of a better life in the city and fell through the cracks.

    That said, the low cost of living in China definitely improves the prospects of even the most desperately poor. What’s more, Chinese policy with respect to “internal migrants” is radically different from the US policy of mass criminalization and imprisonment.

    Today, China has one of the highest homeownership rates in the world, surpassing 90 percent, and this includes the millions of migrant workers who rent homes in other cities. This means that when encountering economic troubles, such as unemployment, urban migrant workers can return to their hometowns, where they own a home, can engage in agricultural production, and search for work locally. This structural buffer plays a critical role in absorbing the impacts of major economic and social crises. For example, during the 2008 global financial crisis, China’s export-oriented economy, especially of manufactured goods, was severely hit, causing about 30 million migrant workers to lose their jobs. Similarly, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when service and manufacturing jobs were seriously impacted, many migrant workers returned to their homes and land in the countryside.

    The domestic policy around perpetual family ownership of property is critical to limiting poverty in China in a way very few other countries enjoy.

    So when you say

    China has no functional social safety net

    I’m genuinely not clear if you know what you’re talking about.

    I walked past a location in Shenzhen which was advertising that they were hiring. Their offer of pay: ¥200 a day, for a 10-hour shift, six days a week. In one of the most expensive cities in the country.

    Shocking to hear they hadn’t filled the position.

    • NateNate60@lemmy.world
      1·
      6 hours ago

      Okay, so let me put it this way:

      Housing might, in theory, be guaranteed in your home town. This is a strength of China’s system, I grant, and it’s one of the few examples of one of their socialist policies which actually somewhat works. Their national pension scheme is the other thing I can think of that functions decently well.

      But it’s certainly no Soviet Union where if you go up to local officials and say “I have no job and I want to work”, they’ll find something for you to do pretty quickly.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        6 hours ago

        Housing might, in theory, be guaranteed in your home town.

        Idk why you’re trying to couch this as a hypothetical. Imagine trying to talk about Social Security this way - “oh well maybe in theory…” No, brother, the checks are in the mail.

        People really do have family housing that really does exist for real in China.

        But it’s certainly no Soviet Union

        The Chinese Communist system was not organized under the Soviet model. Absolutely true. Maoism-cum-Dengism is not Lenin With Chinese Characteristics.

        Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cuba, and Venezuela also had their own district unique models.

        if you go up to local officials and say “I have no job and I want to work”, they’ll find something for you to do pretty quickly.

        If you go to your local Chinese jobs office, you’ll get a bureaucratic exam that determines your fitness for entry level positions.

        23% of the population works in the public sector. That’s roughly 300M people - China Is Hiring.

        But the private sector is also hiring, often with salary and benefits that outcompete public jobs. The idea that you need to be a trash picker to earn an income is flat out wrong.