Things have always been grim. The crows are just coming home to roost in America. Why do you think so many Indians and Chinese people are doctors or engineers? Fear. It is not about competence. It is not about passion. It is the fear that drives them. Because life is hard there without a safety net. A life where health care has to be paid for out of pocket. A life where your daughter's marriage requires piles of money.
“The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it”
What is the solution? I don't know. The future is going to belong to people who refuse to let themselves be nothing. It is not going to be about STEM jobs, math or science or art. The future is something you are going to have to find. Or become irrelevant. Scary, but sometimes that fear is useful.
>Things have always been grim. The crows are just coming home to roost in America. Why do you think so many Indians and Chinese people are doctors or engineers?
I think the crows are coming home to roost for America in more ways then one. It isn't just the choices we make, but our very ideology that is devouring us (so to speak). We believe in the free market and competition. We're capitalists. We used to be capitalists mostly within our own borders. Now technology has transformed our chains of distribution and communication to the point where we're capitalists with no borders. Globalization is here, intensifying, and our religion of capitalism has won converts the globe over.
It isn't that Indians and Chinese are choosing more lucrative career paths (working with your assumption there, -I'm not sure myself), -they've also got the fastest growing middle class on the globe. That's not because they are doctors and engineers. They've got what were our manufacturing jobs too. This is the logical outcome of what we preach as a country.
As long as you aren't too nationalistic, it looks like a good thing as wages continually shift and flow to the cheapest labor pools on the planet, lifting those people up, but that's really overly simplistic. What concerns me is the gap between the richest and the poor and middle class. In America it's growing, but it's a concern anywhere on Earth if it gets too large.
Life in India and China for the middle class isn't as bad as your comment makes it out to be (perhaps unintentionally). Human beings have an amazing ability to adapt. Health care and other costs in many developing countries aren't totally insane. The big difference is hope for progress - the middle class is growing in many developing countries. Also, people have a support network that would seem surprising to a westerner. E.g. the joint family system.
If I get hit by a car here, I can ER treatment. In India, a person can spend precious minutes on clogged roads while hospitals turn that person away just because they don't deal with the fucking paperwork of dealing with a dead body.
Yes, your situation here is awful too. But that is only a taste of the hell hole that exists out there. There is a reason that immigrants still come to these shores. It is because the hell here is paradise compared to the hell out there.
USA is probably the only place in the world where a car accident may do less long-term damage to quality of life than the ER bill for that accident.
In all of the "first world" and many of the "third world" ER is actually quite okay, and all of them will fix noncritical damage pretty much equally good, in EU probably even better than USA. But only in USA it carries a risk to be billed with something moderately comparable to an annual salary.
I am actually an immigrant, so I feel I'm quite informed as to the existing differences, thank you. Currently, the biggest debate I have with myself is whether I should go back, or not. It's best for the present moment that I stay here. It's best for the future that I leave. Decisions, decisions...
I am asking because HN comments by people who have lived in the US and in another country are the best way I have found to learn about countries outside the US.
Comments
Things have always been grim. The crows are just coming home to roost in America. Why do you think so many Indians and Chinese people are doctors or engineers? Fear. It is not about competence. It is not about passion. It is the fear that drives them. Because life is hard there without a safety net. A life where health care has to be paid for out of pocket. A life where your daughter's marriage requires piles of money.
“The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it”
What is the solution? I don't know. The future is going to belong to people who refuse to let themselves be nothing. It is not going to be about STEM jobs, math or science or art. The future is something you are going to have to find. Or become irrelevant. Scary, but sometimes that fear is useful.
>Things have always been grim. The crows are just coming home to roost in America. Why do you think so many Indians and Chinese people are doctors or engineers?
I think the crows are coming home to roost for America in more ways then one. It isn't just the choices we make, but our very ideology that is devouring us (so to speak). We believe in the free market and competition. We're capitalists. We used to be capitalists mostly within our own borders. Now technology has transformed our chains of distribution and communication to the point where we're capitalists with no borders. Globalization is here, intensifying, and our religion of capitalism has won converts the globe over.
It isn't that Indians and Chinese are choosing more lucrative career paths (working with your assumption there, -I'm not sure myself), -they've also got the fastest growing middle class on the globe. That's not because they are doctors and engineers. They've got what were our manufacturing jobs too. This is the logical outcome of what we preach as a country.
As long as you aren't too nationalistic, it looks like a good thing as wages continually shift and flow to the cheapest labor pools on the planet, lifting those people up, but that's really overly simplistic. What concerns me is the gap between the richest and the poor and middle class. In America it's growing, but it's a concern anywhere on Earth if it gets too large.
Hold on ...
Life in India and China for the middle class isn't as bad as your comment makes it out to be (perhaps unintentionally). Human beings have an amazing ability to adapt. Health care and other costs in many developing countries aren't totally insane. The big difference is hope for progress - the middle class is growing in many developing countries. Also, people have a support network that would seem surprising to a westerner. E.g. the joint family system.
As opposed to the US, where the safety net is so ample and awesome and...
...oh wait. Nevermind.
If I get hit by a car here, I can ER treatment. In India, a person can spend precious minutes on clogged roads while hospitals turn that person away just because they don't deal with the fucking paperwork of dealing with a dead body.
Yes, your situation here is awful too. But that is only a taste of the hell hole that exists out there. There is a reason that immigrants still come to these shores. It is because the hell here is paradise compared to the hell out there.
USA is probably the only place in the world where a car accident may do less long-term damage to quality of life than the ER bill for that accident.
In all of the "first world" and many of the "third world" ER is actually quite okay, and all of them will fix noncritical damage pretty much equally good, in EU probably even better than USA. But only in USA it carries a risk to be billed with something moderately comparable to an annual salary.
Exactly.
I am actually an immigrant, so I feel I'm quite informed as to the existing differences, thank you. Currently, the biggest debate I have with myself is whether I should go back, or not. It's best for the present moment that I stay here. It's best for the future that I leave. Decisions, decisions...
An immigrant from what country?
I am asking because HN comments by people who have lived in the US and in another country are the best way I have found to learn about countries outside the US.