3 ms·

Is the income disparity bigger in China or in the US?

thejynxed 6y ago
China by far. Our homeless have iPhones, their homeless get run over by trucks and public busses without any consequence and suffer the indignity of being forced to perform labor to be able to use a toilet. Now if you mean the lowest overall classes, I've been to rural areas in China where the entire community shits in a hole dug in the ground, it gets filled, a new one is dug. They also all share a single water source. We're talking a few hundred people here. On the opposite end of the spectrum I've met someone in Shenzen who owns two houses in London, one in Toronto, and one in Hawaii. Each house is nicely furnished and has a few luxury sports cars to choose from.
- moreorless 6y ago
  I live in San Francisco and I see indignities on our streets on a daily basis.
dirtyid 6y ago
China due to very uneven development, but the stratification is more organized and part of the development strategy, i.e. cheap labour makes the construction projects and gig service models viable in ways that are not in the west. There's migrant labour / houkou (domestic passport) system that controls the availability of rural labour pools between provinces, hence tier1 cities has a lever to reduce number of poor in the region to amounts sufficient to support industry and businesses. The result is you actually have less visible vagrancy - migrants who can't afford to the city gets displaced to less developed provinces with lower costs. You will not find as many homeless people in a tier1 Chinese city compared to many western countries. At least not anymore, there was a lot in the 90s. Note: it's not an issue of hiding the poor but being able to optimize disparity over regions with different development levels. To dovetail, this system still exist in the west in the form of agricultural migrant workers, their work is outside of populated areas so it's more palatable.

China by far. Our homeless have iPhones, their homeless get run over by trucks and public busses without any consequence and suffer the indignity of being forced to perform labor to be able to use a toilet. Now if you mean the lowest overall classes, I've been to rural areas in China where the entire community shits in a hole dug in the ground, it gets filled, a new one is dug. They also all share a single water source. We're talking a few hundred people here. On the opposite end of the spectrum I've met someone in Shenzen who owns two houses in London, one in Toronto, and one in Hawaii. Each house is nicely furnished and has a few luxury sports cars to choose from.

moreorless 6y ago
I live in San Francisco and I see indignities on our streets on a daily basis.

dirtyid 6y ago

China due to very uneven development, but the stratification is more organized and part of the development strategy, i.e. cheap labour makes the construction projects and gig service models viable in ways that are not in the west. There's migrant labour / houkou (domestic passport) system that controls the availability of rural labour pools between provinces, hence tier1 cities has a lever to reduce number of poor in the region to amounts sufficient to support industry and businesses. The result is you actually have less visible vagrancy - migrants who can't afford to the city gets displaced to less developed provinces with lower costs. You will not find as many homeless people in a tier1 Chinese city compared to many western countries. At least not anymore, there was a lot in the 90s. Note: it's not an issue of hiding the poor but being able to optimize disparity over regions with different development levels. To dovetail, this system still exist in the west in the form of agricultural migrant workers, their work is outside of populated areas so it's more palatable.