• Lussy [any, hy/hym]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      10 days ago

      Highest paid people in the US economic system are the ones who contribute the least to the functioning of our society. Finance bros and paper shuffling ‘managers’ are making 3-8x as much as a Civil Engineer, Sanitation worker, Teacher, builder.

      How is the guy making sure farmland doesn’t collapse due to natural events or an engineer designing treatment planfs making a mere fraction of what the financial ‘analyst’ (read: professional restaurant patron) is?

  • trabpukcip [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    40
    ·
    10 days ago

    The US is playing the long con. By collapsing it’s economy through gross negligence, we will drive wages down so far that eventually China will choose to offshore it’s manufacturing to here

  • Utter_Karate [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    32
    ·
    10 days ago

    The Western world spent four decades moving all of their production of absolutely everything into China because it was cheap. Two generations later we consider it an unexpected and worrying problem that China is so good at producing things all of a sudden and wonder why we can’t just produce them ourselves anymore when we haven’t trained anyone in the modern production methods of those things since before personal computers were a thing.

  • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    28
    ·
    10 days ago

    A sign they’re collapsing any minute. Everyone knows a countries strength is be measured by how many loans they issue not how much they actually produce!

  • Absolute
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    25
    ·
    10 days ago

    It’s really hard to fathom how quickly things have changed in China in the past ~20 years. I haven’t been there since early 2017 which doesn’t feel that long ago, but I’m planning another trip there hopefully for next year and I already know to expect massive changes since then.

    Meanwhile in my city here in Canada the fact that we have built a half dozen decent residential towers and put in some bike and bus lanes downtown since then is sadly good progress compared to a lot of cities on the continent. Truly just different levels of progress in China.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      25
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      10 days ago

      Living in Canada is depressing af, infrastructure develops on geological scale here. It’s like watching plate tectonics.

      • Absolute
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        18
        ·
        10 days ago

        its so true, and yet when I talk to american friends who live in smaller cities they are envious of the urban development that occurs here even. Sad state of affairs in North America

        • Che's Motorcycle
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          12
          ·
          10 days ago

          As USian, can confirm. So much infrastructure and even buildings is from the 1970’s, at best. We’re still actively poisoning ourselves with lead pipes ffs.

          • cfgaussian
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            10 days ago

            I was also under a wrong impression. From how well versed you are on what’s going on in Europe i thought you were European 😆

            • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              13
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              10 days ago

              Haha, I find everything’s connected in the end. I tend to pay a lot of attention to Europe cause that’s where contradictions are sharpest at the moment.

      • l0tusc0bra
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        10 days ago

        Moved back to my small Ontario town after like a decade away a couple years back and it’s all virtually the same (except with way more empty storefronts downtown, thank god we give landlords a tax break for letting them stand vacant!).

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          10 days ago

          I used to live in Fredericton, NB. It was basically like a time capsule. Nothing changed there.

    • o_d [he/him]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      10 days ago

      And then the provincial government comes in, removes rent control from those new towers, and says they’re going to rip out those newly completed bike lanes. What’s the opposite of democratic centralism?

  • GlueBear [they/them]
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    10 days ago

    Hard to believe that 2030 is almost 5 years away. That growth is incredible, Deng’s call really saved the CPC

  • KrupskayaPraxis
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    10 days ago

    Remember, western countries. If you don’t want to fall behind, become communist

    • cfgaussian
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      edit-2
      10 days ago

      I mean yeah on the face of it having similar (by then even a bit bigger) population size to China, plenty of natural resources and the largest amount of habitable land in the world, it seems bad that India is only producing a fraction of what China is. But maybe they can compensate for that by going hard on IT and finance to be like the rich, developed western nations. Working in factories or on construction sites is for losers anyway, smart people work in offices writing code or trading stocks - those are the high paying jobs, ergo it stands to reason that a country is better off the more people it has doing those kinds of jobs… ideally 100% of the population for maximum profit!

      • Lussy [any, hy/hym]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        edit-2
        10 days ago

        Working in factories or on construction sites is for losers anyway, smart people work in offices writing code or trading stocks - those are the high paying jobs, ergo it stands to reason that a country is better off the more people it has doing those kinds of jobs, ideally 100% of the population for maximum profit.

        This is too on the nose, and it would be funny, if India were not the most populous country on the planet with dire HDI metrics and poverty worse than many beleaguered nations. At least some of these sepoys still go into medicine and civil engineering, but yeah…that country is fucked

        • cfgaussian
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          10 days ago

          You’d think that’s too far fetched even for a joke that someone would have a take like that but it’s not as far from reality as you’d think. I’ve known people who genuinely seem to believe that we’ve evolved past the need for industry and we can all just write apps for a living.

    • Burningmeatstick
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      10 days ago

      Well two things, if one the Himalayas didn’t exist then neither China nor India in their current shape would exist but two, if they disappeared tomorrow, ignoring geographical changes, expect a lot of people crossing into the border from the Indian side to the Chinese