News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
Over 90% of Chinese households would be below the US poverty line. Their GDP per capita is only $13k.
Germany has a GDP per capita lower than Alabama. Yet the average German has a quality of life that is significantly higher than that of an average person in Alabama. GDP doesn’t tell the whole picture.
You are mistaken, GDP of Germany is greater than Alabama, even moreso when you account for PPP.
I got the data from this Wikipedia page. Which says that nominal GDP per Capita is greater for Alabama.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP
I've spent a good amount of time in China. Sure, Chinese household earnings would be below the US poverty line, but you also have to consider that things in China cost about 1/5 to 1/6 of what they do in the US. Their purchasing power completely blows us out of the water. They also have great public transportation, fantastic infrastructure, and free healthcare. And they are at this point more cutting edge than we are with regard to pushing the limits of medical science. The US is a failed state. China is prospering and all the US can do to defend against it is run smear campaigns that propagandize against it.
Free healthcare? When I went to a people's hospital, I saw people paying. I think they have a public option or something that covers a portion of the cost, and even the uncovered portion is hilariously low to an American, but it didn't look free.
Sorry, I mispoke on the healthcare. It is nearly free as they have near universal insurance coverage and their out of pocket costs are extreme fractions of what people pay in the US.
Yep, the only thing is free is entering the building. At some point decades ago, a scam like traditional natural shit that was invented in the 50th was free, but even that isn't free now for the most part.
PR is cheap though.
Even per capita with PPP, China is only $29k. By the same measure, the US is $60k. Also, healthcare is not free in China for most people in most circumstances. If there was any country that had a terrible way of financing healthcare as the US, it would be China. Healthcare bankruptcy is common in China. Chinese healthcare would be a bargain for me, paying with a US income. It is absolutely unaffordable for someone living on Chinese wages.
Yes, but you also need to look at Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). PPP compares the relative value of currencies by measuring the price of a basket of goods in different countries. Accounting for that, China’s GDP per capita is more like $30k. To do that in a little over 70 years, when in 1952 83% of China’s workforce was engaged in agriculture, is nothing short of amazing. They are already well on their way to reducing their dependence on non-renewable energy and seem poised to overtake the US as the technological powerhouse of the world within the next 50 years.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. GDP per capita is not really a good measure of quality of life on its own.
Historically the USA has brought a lot of people (most?) out of poverty by the world standard. Recent policy seems to be heading in the opposite direction. Quality of life has been declining for a long time, IMO mostly with our sense of community, the completely broken healthcare system, media consolidation, absurd levels of car dependency, high cost of having children, and a whole bunch of other location-specific factors (like cost of living in metro areas)
I think immigrant desire for relocation speaks volumes of where the greatest opportunity exists. The migration patterns vastly favor the US as being the place for the greater hope for the global poor, as evidenced by their footprints.
When rent in city center of a T2 city is 300 USD, a meal costs 1USD, and bus/subway fare 14 cents, its easier to make ends meet.
Even per capita with PPP, China is only $29k. By the same measure, the US is $60k.
US cost of life has got nothing to do with Chinese cost of life though.
You need to understand that most basic stuff is cheap, in China. I can feed myself heartily for like a dollar a meal. And that's if I don't want to cook!
I appreciate you talk about GDP, but those $13k are more like $130k when you live there. I was earning $20k and that was a comfortable life with no worries, on par with what I have now in Europe around 40k€.
Even per capita with PPP, China is only $29k. By the same measure, the US is $60k.