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Today, almost half of BPO employees are women, many of whom outearn both of their parents. Free-market cheerleaders, conflating rising wages with rising spirits

by bh42222 15y ago

Today, almost half of BPO employees are women, many of whom outearn both of their parents. Free-market cheerleaders, conflating rising wages with rising spirits, are quick to applaud India's "maturing" markets. But the truth is more complicated: Studies show that once people move out of poverty, increasing wealth does not necessarily lead to happiness. Yeah but it sure cuts down on malnutrition. The above paragraphs is a shibboleth for well-off far lefties. And boy does reading it piss me off. What a way to miss the forest for the trees! This article started out great but then slowly started to go bad. Our plucky western kid, son of doctors, with a liberal arts education freely admits he just can't quite grasp the basic geography of Australia. If that was a badly done attempt to compliment the Indians, good. Badly written, but good intent. If it was an honest admission of his... jeez is this what liberal education does to a son of two doctors!? The writer also goes the extra mile by sharing a bed with a stranger, but all he seems to get out of it is a few sentences mentioning that he shared a bed with a stranger, and this one time the power went out. Not exactly many deep insights form all this self imposed hardship. Or as the kids say these days, cool story bro. Lastly, the author spends a lot of time writing about one depressed guy. There was some good stuff, globalization, the changes in Indian society, and it could have been a great article. But instead it seems to be just a vague money doesn't bring happiness story, also westernization is kind of sucky. You don't say.

jrockway 15y ago
You're missing the point. This was not an opinion piece; it's just a description of what the author encountered while working in India. Any opinion you attribute to the author is most likely something you are imagining based on your own opinions.
- davidw 15y ago
  > This was not an opinion piece; it's just a description of what the author encountered while working in India. Just like anything in reason.org is bound to have a certain slant, things in Mother Jones are not going to get published if they don't have their own slant. > Any opinion you attribute to the author is most likely something you are imagining based on your own opinions. The same phrase he mentioned popped out at me too, and if you look at it, it carries a lot of opinion: "Free-market cheerleaders, conflating" First of all, "cheerleaders" certainly contains a sense of someone in favor of something in a sort of rah-rah, go-team way that is not entirely positive. "Conflating" means: "they're mistaken". That said, yeah, it's mostly his experiences, but it's sprinkled with stuff to make it "on-message" with where it's published.
  - bh42222 15y ago
    What's sad about the attempts to make it "on-message" is how bad and shallow they are. India is a big and complicated place, and there is a lot to think about its economic development. Are big foreign companies favored over small and/or local ones? Why, what kind of dynamic is at play here? How does the new economic power of women affect the sex selection of infants? There's just two examples, right of the top of my head, that I think (hope!) would be of interest to the hard core mother jones readers. But that's not where this goes, instead we get the shallow, almost caricaturish, money isn't everything undertone. Mixed with not enough money undertone, the workers should be getting paid more, they work 30+ hours shifts and still have to have bunk mates. All this mixed with, life sure can be complicated in this modern ever changing world. And none of these issues are explored in depth, it's just "doesn't it suck how little they are paid, doesn't it suck that money doesn't make you happy, hey look a Marxists!" I guess I would mind "on-message" editorializing a lot less, if it was part of a really good article. And what's most disturbing is this sense I get that maybe there could have been a much better article, but then it wouldn't have been on message, and to make it on message some bad things had to be done to the writing.
    - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
      >How does the new economic power of women affect the sex selection of infants? // It was an article not a book. Isn't the purpose to raise in your mind these sorts of questions? He presents his experience to enlarge your outlook and enable you to address such questions in a more informed way. He's surely not attempting to offer an exhaustive insight into Indian culture just a snapshot from a long visit.
brown9-2 15y ago
Presumably malnutrition is not much of a concern after one has left poverty. The author is citing studies that show that once you are beyond poverty and have the means to attain whatever things you want, then "increasing wealth does not necessarily lead to happiness."
- klbarry 15y ago
  And data supports this theory. See some of Hans Rosling's Ted talks, as income goes to $60,000 in the U.S.A., happiness steadily increases, then levels off.
- Symmetry 15y ago
  Its probably not much of a concern for the person working in the call center, but what about the family they're sending money back to? I'm not sure if giving money to your relatives so they aren't malnourished will increase your happiness, but it should certainly increase theirs.
- bh42222 15y ago
  Presumably malnutrition is not much of a concern after one has left poverty. That's exactly the point! The big win here is gaining one up on the basic necessities of survival. The fact that ennui is unaffected well sure that's a downside, money is not the same as happiness, but it sure beats starving or freezing to death. Basic necessities of life vs ennui. If you mention both in the same sentence in an attempt to even out the benefits from steady work, well then you're a dick.

by bh42222 15y ago

jrockway 15y ago

You're missing the point. This was not an opinion piece; it's just a description of what the author encountered while working in India. Any opinion you attribute to the author is most likely something you are imagining based on your own opinions.

davidw 15y ago
> This was not an opinion piece; it's just a description of what the author encountered while working in India. Just like anything in reason.org is bound to have a certain slant, things in Mother Jones are not going to get published if they don't have their own slant. > Any opinion you attribute to the author is most likely something you are imagining based on your own opinions. The same phrase he mentioned popped out at me too, and if you look at it, it carries a lot of opinion: "Free-market cheerleaders, conflating" First of all, "cheerleaders" certainly contains a sense of someone in favor of something in a sort of rah-rah, go-team way that is not entirely positive. "Conflating" means: "they're mistaken". That said, yeah, it's mostly his experiences, but it's sprinkled with stuff to make it "on-message" with where it's published.
- bh42222 15y ago
  What's sad about the attempts to make it "on-message" is how bad and shallow they are. India is a big and complicated place, and there is a lot to think about its economic development. Are big foreign companies favored over small and/or local ones? Why, what kind of dynamic is at play here? How does the new economic power of women affect the sex selection of infants? There's just two examples, right of the top of my head, that I think (hope!) would be of interest to the hard core mother jones readers. But that's not where this goes, instead we get the shallow, almost caricaturish, money isn't everything undertone. Mixed with not enough money undertone, the workers should be getting paid more, they work 30+ hours shifts and still have to have bunk mates. All this mixed with, life sure can be complicated in this modern ever changing world. And none of these issues are explored in depth, it's just "doesn't it suck how little they are paid, doesn't it suck that money doesn't make you happy, hey look a Marxists!" I guess I would mind "on-message" editorializing a lot less, if it was part of a really good article. And what's most disturbing is this sense I get that maybe there could have been a much better article, but then it wouldn't have been on message, and to make it on message some bad things had to be done to the writing.
  - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
    >How does the new economic power of women affect the sex selection of infants? // It was an article not a book. Isn't the purpose to raise in your mind these sorts of questions? He presents his experience to enlarge your outlook and enable you to address such questions in a more informed way. He's surely not attempting to offer an exhaustive insight into Indian culture just a snapshot from a long visit.

brown9-2 15y ago

Presumably malnutrition is not much of a concern after one has left poverty. The author is citing studies that show that once you are beyond poverty and have the means to attain whatever things you want, then "increasing wealth does not necessarily lead to happiness."

klbarry 15y ago
And data supports this theory. See some of Hans Rosling's Ted talks, as income goes to $60,000 in the U.S.A., happiness steadily increases, then levels off.
Symmetry 15y ago
Its probably not much of a concern for the person working in the call center, but what about the family they're sending money back to? I'm not sure if giving money to your relatives so they aren't malnourished will increase your happiness, but it should certainly increase theirs.
bh42222 15y ago
Presumably malnutrition is not much of a concern after one has left poverty. That's exactly the point! The big win here is gaining one up on the basic necessities of survival. The fact that ennui is unaffected well sure that's a downside, money is not the same as happiness, but it sure beats starving or freezing to death. Basic necessities of life vs ennui. If you mention both in the same sentence in an attempt to even out the benefits from steady work, well then you're a dick.