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The percentage of shopping carts that are broken tells you about the character of the local population. The article's byline credits Eva Rothenberg, whose Link

The percentage of shopping carts that are broken tells you about the character of the local population. The article's byline credits Eva Rothenberg, whose LinkedIn lists her as living in New York City. There must be horrible people there. Here in Waxahachie, TX, there are almost no broken shopping carts, and people help when there is a broken cart.

tekla 3y ago
[flagged]
- tonymet 3y ago
  it's not uniformly distributed.
  - internetpeon 3y ago
    [flagged]
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
I’ve never used a shopping cart in Manhattan.
leviathant 3y ago
Horrible people is certainly one way of describing the population of an area with extreme income inequality.
- mc32 3y ago
  What’s income have to do with how you treat a shopping cart? I’ve been to in places in Asia with very poor (poor compared to the poor people in the US) people and they treated their shopping carts better than wealthy people in the US. There is better social cohesion and respect for other people's property. Now, there are some oddities in that if they find you lying on the street hurt, most will pass you by and kind of look at you quizzically, but they also do have good samaritans, just not as many. The reason is often people will suspect the person who stopped to help stopped out of guilt, not because they were just trying to help.
  - markdown 3y ago
    How much time did you spend watching poor asians push carts?
    - mc32 3y ago
      The carts at the discount supermarket always worked and they were not walked home, that’s for sure. People there are admirably hard workers. They don’t beg. They’ll do all kinds of itinerant and odd jobs but they don’t panhandle.
  - leviathant 3y ago
    >What’s income have to do with how you treat a shopping cart? I’ve been to in places in Asia with very poor (poor compared to the poor people in the US) people and they treated their shopping carts better than wealthy people in the US. Would you say the difference in income in the places in Asia that you're describing were on the same level as in Manhattan? There are very poor parts of America where people take more care of shopping carts, there are very rich parts of America where people take more care of shopping carts. But a thing happens when you have a notable population of mentally ill homeless people living on the same streets that New York level wealthy citizens also use. The person I replied to is from Texas, where they round up inconvenient people and either bus them or fly them to other states - including New York. That's certainly one way to level out the income inequality in the region. >There is better social cohesion and respect for other people's property. Now, there are some oddities in that if they find you lying on the street hurt, most will pass you by and kind of look at you quizzically, but they also do have good samaritans, just not as many. On that note, comparing "places in Asia" to New York, you're going to also have to factor in the effects of (presumably) thousands of years of culture, vs barely four centuries in a rapidly developed melting pot of capitalism. But this is a lot we're typing out in response to one person's weird conjecture. My point is that I think it's distasteful for someone from Texas to be giving a blanket statement that people from New York must be horrible people. If they spent any time in New York, with New Yorkers, I would hope they'd have a more informed view.
zonkerdonker 3y ago
What an absolutely wild conculsion to draw from the article. What even is the impetus for it? Just your bog standard lib owning? Or do you genuinely believe that the shopping carts are in better shape in your neck of the woods because the people are what...? Of higher moral fiber? Not ...i dunno, maybe due to the presumably massively higher usage of the carts in the big apple? Or the harsher weather? Or literally dozens of other more plausible reasons?
- chrisco255 3y ago
  NYC leaves trash on the streets all week and will let vagrants dominate and degrade their subway systems, parks, and sidewalks without any recourse. NYC just doesn't care about keeping things nice. There's urban environments with even harsher weather than NYC (ie Stockholm) and even denser (ie Tokyo) that are nicely kept. There's really no excuse for it. They just don't care.
o11c 3y ago
True, but it also tells you about the budget of the stores in the area. A significant factor is also whether the local areas uses salt on the roads or not. There are at least N failure modes for shopping carts: * shopping cart wheels not coplanar * shopping cart wheel does not turn * shopping cart left in parking lot during weather * shopping cart removed from parking lot entirely
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
There's a lot going on here.
rafram 3y ago
People in New York City don't use shopping carts too often. Fewer people own cars and drive than in Waxahachie, and they tend to go shopping more frequently and buy less at one time. I doubt that this was a story based just on the author's own experience in NYC - we've all dealt with wonky shopping carts! Waxahachie looks nice, but you should visit NYC sometime. It's a cool city and I think you'd learn a lot about the people and be less likely to write them off as "horrible" if you visited.
dguest 3y ago
how do they help?
dsego 3y ago
Oh man, I visited NYC recently and was shocked when I went into the local CVS and Walgreens in Williamsburg. Almost all shelves had plastic covers with locks on them, so you can't pick up anything by yourself. Coming from a relatively safe country in Europe and to see something like that, not a pleasant experience at all.

tekla 3y ago

[flagged]

tonymet 3y ago
it's not uniformly distributed.
- internetpeon 3y ago
  [flagged]

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

I’ve never used a shopping cart in Manhattan.

leviathant 3y ago

Horrible people is certainly one way of describing the population of an area with extreme income inequality.

mc32 3y ago
What’s income have to do with how you treat a shopping cart? I’ve been to in places in Asia with very poor (poor compared to the poor people in the US) people and they treated their shopping carts better than wealthy people in the US. There is better social cohesion and respect for other people's property. Now, there are some oddities in that if they find you lying on the street hurt, most will pass you by and kind of look at you quizzically, but they also do have good samaritans, just not as many. The reason is often people will suspect the person who stopped to help stopped out of guilt, not because they were just trying to help.
- markdown 3y ago
  How much time did you spend watching poor asians push carts?
  - mc32 3y ago
    The carts at the discount supermarket always worked and they were not walked home, that’s for sure. People there are admirably hard workers. They don’t beg. They’ll do all kinds of itinerant and odd jobs but they don’t panhandle.
- leviathant 3y ago
  >What’s income have to do with how you treat a shopping cart? I’ve been to in places in Asia with very poor (poor compared to the poor people in the US) people and they treated their shopping carts better than wealthy people in the US. Would you say the difference in income in the places in Asia that you're describing were on the same level as in Manhattan? There are very poor parts of America where people take more care of shopping carts, there are very rich parts of America where people take more care of shopping carts. But a thing happens when you have a notable population of mentally ill homeless people living on the same streets that New York level wealthy citizens also use. The person I replied to is from Texas, where they round up inconvenient people and either bus them or fly them to other states - including New York. That's certainly one way to level out the income inequality in the region. >There is better social cohesion and respect for other people's property. Now, there are some oddities in that if they find you lying on the street hurt, most will pass you by and kind of look at you quizzically, but they also do have good samaritans, just not as many. On that note, comparing "places in Asia" to New York, you're going to also have to factor in the effects of (presumably) thousands of years of culture, vs barely four centuries in a rapidly developed melting pot of capitalism. But this is a lot we're typing out in response to one person's weird conjecture. My point is that I think it's distasteful for someone from Texas to be giving a blanket statement that people from New York must be horrible people. If they spent any time in New York, with New Yorkers, I would hope they'd have a more informed view.

zonkerdonker 3y ago

What an absolutely wild conculsion to draw from the article. What even is the impetus for it? Just your bog standard lib owning? Or do you genuinely believe that the shopping carts are in better shape in your neck of the woods because the people are what...? Of higher moral fiber? Not ...i dunno, maybe due to the presumably massively higher usage of the carts in the big apple? Or the harsher weather? Or literally dozens of other more plausible reasons?

chrisco255 3y ago
NYC leaves trash on the streets all week and will let vagrants dominate and degrade their subway systems, parks, and sidewalks without any recourse. NYC just doesn't care about keeping things nice. There's urban environments with even harsher weather than NYC (ie Stockholm) and even denser (ie Tokyo) that are nicely kept. There's really no excuse for it. They just don't care.

o11c 3y ago

True, but it also tells you about the budget of the stores in the area. A significant factor is also whether the local areas uses salt on the roads or not. There are at least N failure modes for shopping carts: * shopping cart wheels not coplanar * shopping cart wheel does not turn * shopping cart left in parking lot during weather * shopping cart removed from parking lot entirely

add-sub-mul-div 3y ago

There's a lot going on here.

rafram 3y ago

People in New York City don't use shopping carts too often. Fewer people own cars and drive than in Waxahachie, and they tend to go shopping more frequently and buy less at one time. I doubt that this was a story based just on the author's own experience in NYC - we've all dealt with wonky shopping carts! Waxahachie looks nice, but you should visit NYC sometime. It's a cool city and I think you'd learn a lot about the people and be less likely to write them off as "horrible" if you visited.

dguest 3y ago

how do they help?

dsego 3y ago

Oh man, I visited NYC recently and was shocked when I went into the local CVS and Walgreens in Williamsburg. Almost all shelves had plastic covers with locks on them, so you can't pick up anything by yourself. Coming from a relatively safe country in Europe and to see something like that, not a pleasant experience at all.