It’s not like latin america where starvation is much of an issue almost everywhere if you don’t have a job
1 in 8 USians is on SNAP. 1/3 of people on SNAP are employed.
Nowhere near the same.
Labor protection laws are basically shit and have largely been eroding since FDR almost a hundred years ago, but we don’t have the 996 mentality here by a long shot.
Food pantries are everywhere. It’s not like latin america where starvation is much of an issue almost everywhere if you don’t have a job. No idea how the food situation is in China, but I can’t imagine them handing out free food to anybody.
ERs accept everyone, but all they can do is basic treatment of acute conditions. In civilized states like Massachusetts they have state sponsored health insurance like MassHealth which covers costs which is partially paid for by medicaid for the poorest people of any age.
Medical debt is incredibly hard to collect on too. Pretty much is the last kind of debt you should ever consider paying if your choice is between paying your mortgage, paying the tax man, or paying medical. Education debt is far worse and impossible to escape short of death though.
The healthcare situation is fucked in the US, but it’s mostly due to insurance companies, lack of regulation for pharma and medical devices, and wages overall.
In terms of jobs, it’s very rare in the US to see companies who want to see workers there over 40 hours a week in the shittiest of jobs which are typically paid hourly and eligible for overtime. In the blue collar world you make bank and they incentivize extra overtime with extra pay on top of overtime rate in the busy seasons depending on trade. In the white collar world it is rare to see anyone working much over 45 hours outside of a handful of toxic roles and upper leadership positions / highly compensated roles like management consulting.
Americans just don’t understand how good they have it, despite all the awful flaws thanks to billionaires owning politics. Yeah, it can definitely be better and we should ask for better… but when you start looking at the rest of the world, the overwhelming majority can’t comprehend our quality of life. Air conditioning? practically unheard of for more than half the world mostly living much closer to the equator where heat is literally killing people.
ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
Nindelofocho@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Im not sure where you’re seeing companies only want you for 40hours. Kitchens and serving you are often expected to work more than 40hours. Sure you may get overtime if your boss isint a theif but whats overtime on minimum wage or even a bit above? Barely anything. Salaried positions its also very strongly implied that you will put in more than 40 hours in many places. Sure you dont have to but expect to stagnate or be put on PIPs
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 7 hours ago
I don’t see people pushing much beyond 40 hours in professional environments. I work in IT and have been exposed to many industries through consulting and long term contracts. Admittedly i’m close to an urban center with fairly high cost of living but that’s where the good jobs are usually. Rural areas / closer to FPL and you start having struggles, but there’s still SNAP and Medicaid.
I also know someone who has a full time office job making ~130k TC and they also have an almost full time side gig of being a waitress who also does the schedule and hiring (so waitress manager) and she schedules herself for the busy nights, but especially friday/saturday and sports nights. Her top tipping nights can be 1k+, but this is in fairly hcol area. She put three of her kids through college doing this because she can hustle. She sure didn’t start out with this though, like most of us didn’t.
There’s shitty jobs all over, but if we’re talking anything near median wage (66k in the US) the problems you are talking about largely go away. It’s not hard to find a job to coast at though if that’s your goal… but if you’re working retail or are wait staff and making nothing on your shifts, you should find a better place to work at. Criminal records are usually the only real thing preventing this, otherwise it’s usually a preference or choice. There’s opportunity if you pursue it, but not if you disqualify yourself or limit yourself for personal reasons.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
but we don’t have the 996 mentality here by a long shot
When I was in China I have memories of my mom taking me to her workplace when I was a kid (I think because nobody was at home, grandma was supposed to be watching us but I can’t remember why she wasn’t available for some reason), she worked in some electronic store doing sales.
I remember play some (probably bootleg) games on a portable DVD player and like you put this disc in it then you connect a controller and voila…
I remember feeling so lonely just by myself in this sort of mall-like place with a lot of people walking by, while mom worked, barely had time to check on me… I mean I don’t remember it vividly as in every detail, I was still like either like preschool/kindergarden age or 1st/2nd grade, but I remember the general vibe around there. I had an older brother but he wasn’t there so idk whete the hell he was.
But yea mom was so busy, dad had trouble finding a stable job, constantly jobseeking.
“Childcare” is just finding relatives, usually the kid’s grandparents, according to my mom, it’s said that my paternal grandparents, US permanent residents, refused to watch over us even during their short visit from the US.
Mom worked overtime a lot. Like I remember sometimes just being at home and mom and dad come home so late.
My aparment had this weird child-proof lockthing that my parents could just lock in from the outside incase no adults was home since they didn’t want their kids to go wandering outside. (firehazard lol, jeez dad wtf)
ERs accept everyone, but all they can do is basic treatment of acute conditions.
Not sure how they are as of right now, but in China, for a long time, they’d require you to pay before getting ER treatment
Medical debt is incredibly hard to collect on too.
In China, they can go after family members…
Americans just don’t understand how good they have it
Lol I remember my family didn’t have internet until we left China…
I lived in a very slum-looking area of Guangzhou right next to the 白云山 (Baiyun mountain). I asked recently about the internet thing and my dad said they were just starting to install internet like very late, like around 2010 around when we left, my dad said it was expensive… so for us, we never got internet in China
Never got to experience the “golden age of internet” that most of y’all talk about… cuz I didn’t even get an internet at all.
Parents didn’t really use internet until like 2014 and smartphones became ubiquitious and then soon afterwards they installed Wechat. That’s like the only thing they use lol.
There’s a lot of like worker safety stuff that China just doesn’t have, also no independent unions and strike-action was uncommon and almost unheard of until we got to the US and then hear about strikes on the news so often it’s kinda a culture shock.
Food safety was so… meh…
Mom mom used to warn me about the food safety thing all the time, stories about people smuggling in milk formula from Hong Kong because there was so much fake milk in mainland. My mom didn’t trust the milk and she said she just breastfed me. Water needs to be boiled… When I found out that Americans just drank from the tap, that was sort of a culture shock.
So after I found out about that, I often drink from the tap cuz I’m often thirsty and didn’t wanna waste time boiling water, also didn’r like warm water… I mean why not, we’re in the US after all (as long as “Flint, Michigan” doesn’t happen its gonna be fine), my parents still have the habit of boiling water… I feel like they’re just wasting electricity lol…
The only thing I liked was the subways in Guangzhou had the platform safety doors… I remember when I first arrived in NYC, I often have fears about just falling into the tracks, cuz the lack of doors… but yea that’s like the safety doors only thing I really missed
Lumisal@lemmy.world 1 day ago
What’s funny is your experience is similar to mine except my family was Hispanic and living in the USA. I went to work with my mom or dad s lot too, both before and after school, even up to my preteens.
We didn’t boil the tap but we didn’t really drink it either - it smelled weird (later testing showed it had some heavy metals and other hazardous chemicals - likely from the nearby refineries) - instead we went to this water well thing where we would out 5 gallon jugs of water (like the one in water coolers) and got water they’re for drinking.
We did get the internet sooner, at least I suppose. But for awhile my experience with the internet were those “free trial” discs the companies gave because internet was (and I hear still is) expensive.
drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I had a very similar childhood in the US.
I sat at a booth and played with coloring books while my mom worked in a restaurant’s kitchen, dad’s work was seasonal and very irregular. We didn’t drink the tapwater in our little town because it didn’t smell right and even came out discolored a few times; instead we’d drive to springs where a bunch of other people got their water too.
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 1 day ago
“Wealthy” white american here, child of a single parent. Third generation in the US. I went to work with said parent or family and was offloaded to childcare at YMCA or relatives or often just hanging out at the pizza place where said parent worked. I made a lot of pizza boxes over the years. I also got a lot of free pizza.
I rode the bus to school because it was cheap throughout childhood until basically high school when I could walk from my house. There were periods I walked to and from school though, even as young as 7 years old. I was most often one of the poorest families in an incredibly wealthy town. A town I can’t possibly afford to buy a home in today despite having a great job.
I didn’t have hot water in one of the houses I grew up in for over a decade. Never had to boil water though thankfully but one of the neighboring towns had a catastrophe ruining their water supply. Before I was born, my family lived in that town. We had an AC by the time I was a teenager but was instructed to never put it below ~78f with low fan speed or so. I’m totally fine today without AC and just fans… but once I got a good career I swapped to whatever AC temp I wanted, it’s the luxury I always wanted.
Modern QOL in the US is absolutely insane compared to 40 years ago, even with current difficult economy challenges.
When I travel I see conditions way worse than what we had then for most humans, but i’m not traveling to wealthy nations typically. I also don’t bother with shitty expensive resorts. Give me Lima any day (oh my god the food, best in the world imo.)
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Same boat as you but was always driven to and from school via one of my parents. However, my father worked late hours because he was a farmer so I would stay at school till 7 sometimes when I was with him that week (had divorced parents).
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Most people work two or three jobs because they can’t get full time jobs with healthcare or benefits. Which means they work 40+ hours every week regardless because it’s all they can do to survive.
ieGod@lemmy.zip 11 hours ago
He reads like heavy cope.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
Americans just don’t understand how good they have it
Yes.
Air conditioning? practically unheard of for more than half the world mostly living much closer to the equator where heat is literally killing people.
Well, not unheard of, but the way you over there use it is. Slight correction - yes. Turning it full on to have temperature 10 Celsius degrees lower than on the outside - no.
It’s not like latin america where starvation is much of an issue almost everywhere if you don’t have a job. No idea how the food situation is in China, but I can’t imagine them handing out free food to anybody.
Honestly almost everywhere outside of the golden billion countries starvation is an issue if you don’t have a job.
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 1 day ago
Regarding AC
Well, not unheard of, but the way you over there use it is. Slight correction - yes. Turning it full on to have temperature 10 Celsius degrees lower than on the outside - no.
I said half of the world, which is completely accurate. It is completely unheard of for a huge swath of humanity. The energy costs are INSANE to run a heat pump in 2026 prices outside of the wealthy elite globally. Let’s arbitrarily say top 10% or so of earners, which is something between 35k and 47k… hardly a princely sum in the US, given that the US median is something like 62k.
There are places in latin america that have air conditioning, obviously. It’s exceptionally uncommon based on my firsthand experience though outside of tourist areas like hotels and high end restaurants. There are wealthy areas in nearly every country on earth that are exceptions to the rule.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 19 hours ago
I know, I know. Another reason it’s uncommon is because the risks of catching serious cold at summer are not worth it.
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 7 hours ago
lol, what? You have to maintain filters, but if maintained properly it isn’t going to be causing all kinds of colds. If you’re immunocompromised and it’s an unmaintained system then perhaps. Filtering the air should be a net positive.
Most of the colds I get are september to may, aligning with kids going to school and parents bringing in their illnesses to work and social meetups (in US this is thanksgiving, christmas - i’m sure these things depend on the place.)
LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
This comment is so frustrating 😅 one of the only concrete statements you make about Chinese policy is “i cant imagine them handing out free food to anybody”. Literally political criticism based on vibes.
By all means there’s lots to criticize about the Chinese government but at least actually make criticisms, not just “I know China to be evil and therefore they must not do good things” 😅 also that last paragraph is such an insane over generalization. As though the entire world experiences a uniformly lower standard of living than the US. There are people in the US who live in absolute near starvation squalor with literally no rights whatsoever. Not to their health, their freedoms, nor their labor.
China is also not a uniform state. There are parts of China with higher overall quality of life and lower overall quality of life. China as a nation has improved their overall quality of life at one of the fastest rates over the past 5 decades by pretty much every metric. They have cheap electric vehicles, they have much better housing options than they used to, they have some of the largest and most technically modern public transportation systems in the world.
They aren’t doing every single thing wrong. They have done a lot of things right. Again, not that I support or endorse a lot of their politics, but dismissing it all as backwards starving impoverished who cannot fathom American opulence is both very stupidly elevating the miserable reality of being poor in America, and erasing any progress the country has made. The end goal should be a better world for all workers. This includes those in China and those in America. Dismissing progress is completely counter to that goal.
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 1 day ago
You’re welcome to provide any information, instead of complaining and providing absolutely nothing.
LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I don’t understand why it’s on everyone else to research baseless claims you are making, but sure, whatever lmao.
So to even answer the question you have to specify what exactly you mean by food bank. Providing food for people who are impoverished takes many different forms. From individual meal based facilities like soup kitchens, to dry and preserved goods providers, to international warehousing of emergency food relief supplies.
So assuming the question at hand is, does the government of China provide its citizens with any kind of nutritional assistance? Yes, they do. The available facilities vary by region, city, and even district levels. Most of the development of large organized food relief organizations has been relatively recent, with the first to adopt a “food bank” label starting in Shanghai in 2015. Between 2015 and 2023 the Oasis public food bank setup facilities across China formalized as a national network of food relief facilities.
At the same time the government of China has worked with public enterprises in China including restaurant chains and grocery stores to implement “Surplus food programs” to reduce food waste and redistribute food to relief programs and facilities.
This was all information I found on my own with pretty basic cursory searches in about 20 minutes. There is far more public information out there and I would encourage you to use free resources to research subjects yourself before making foundationless statements like that.
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 8 hours ago
You’re a tool and you’re holding up a strawman argument, and you’ve even changed your own story now.
You started out with:
Which I am sure it is for you. It doesn’t really say anything negative or concrete about china, AT ALL. It makes no claims about china. And you even acknowledge it… but try to stir up some shit without actually finding anything to stir up. It’s like you’re just a propagandist trying to say america bad, which they are for a myriad of reasons, but it’s not because people can’t be admitted to hospitals or they are dying from overwork - which is what I replied to originally.
I didn’t make a “concrete statement” about anything. And you conveniently omitted the first part of the sentence that literally said "I don’t know the food situation in china" didn’t you? Because you’re holding up the imaginary argument of “china doesn’t have even a single food bank” as your strawman argument, and you had no clue either way, because you had to google it, idiot.
China’s median wage is close to 6k/year. Chile and Uruguay is close to 12k/year. The dominican republic is ~7400/year, and they absolutely do not have any kind of real food assistance program outside of the smallest scope. Chile does have something a lot more substantial, but they make wayyyy more. Given that china is poorer in terms of median wage than any of these, that’s going to be the case for a lot of workers away from wealthy median areas.
The fact that China is even on the Global Hunger Index site shows that hunger is still a challenge. They are near the top of the chart with many of the latin american countries i’ve listed. Globally hunger has been much less of a problem in the past 10 years than ever before, only in truly troubled countries do you find horrific levels, like in Haiti or Somalia - and nobody is saying china is anything like those in the overwhelming majority of the country. Not having food banks is way less than mass food insecurity… it’s the missing gap between healthy income levels and
China does have a dibao system for an extremely area by area “basic income” where they give people a pittance per month that can partially subsidize what they have, but there’s no real federal style food assistance beyond that. China spends more money on food than any other category in rural areas by a huge margin, and you don’t need to take my word for it. You can check the PRC’s own statistics instead of “googling it” like an ignorant moron.
Overall Median income is ~41k yuan or ~5,900. About 1.4 billion people in total.
Urban Median income is ~54k yuan or ~$7,800. This is about 952 million people.
Rural Median Income is only ~23k yuan or ~$3,300 or so. This is about 452 million people.
That rural amount is despairingly low and since it’s median half of the people in rural areas make less…this is unbelievably below poverty level in so many countries around the world. Food insecurity must be a major challenge in rural areas since with that kind of income food costs become tantamount to all others.
The statistics I linked from the CCCP also call out rural spending on “food, tobacco and liquor” because clearly food is in the same category as getting lung cancer sticks and fucking your body up with booze (priorities right) and that comes out to 6226 yuan, or just shy of $900 a year. When ~32% of your income is going to just food, smokes and booze, losing a job puts you in dire straits. In poorer rural areas the “basic income” from dibao is only 200($28) to 300($43) yuan a month, and you still need to have clothes, a place to live, etc. 3600 yuan ($519/year) - I think everyone knows this isn’t going to be nearly enough.
There’s no way food banks originating from extremely wealthy urban areas ten years ago are suddenly reaching the majority of Chinese. It’s not even a state sponsored thing (yay communism, helping the people!) I still have substantial doubt as to how much food assistance there is even in many urban areas, because I know how tough food tends to be when money is tight in countries that are generally poor (but not troubled like Haiti.) Food assistance programs can only subsidize a small portion, as we see with SNAP in the US. Wait.. snap is the american government food assistance program? Who are the communists again?