4 ms·

Something like 35% of China's population works in the agriculture sector, many of whom are poor with little or no land holdings living in small villages. Is the

Something like 35% of China's population works in the agriculture sector, many of whom are poor with little or no land holdings living in small villages. Is there a word for that kind of person?

blargey 1y ago
That number has been falling since 2012 and was around 22% as of 2023 (ignoring the hand-wavy conflation of the entire agriculture sector and stereotypical rural farmers) https://tradingeconomics.com/china/employment-in-agriculture-percent-of-total-employment-wb-data.html https://tradingeconomics.com/china/employment-in-agriculture... You could just as easily massage statistics to call the US a nation of gig workers or something, but neither is productive or informative.
bbreier 1y ago
Peasant has a more specific meaning than this. More importantly, it has been used as a pejorative for a very long time now and that is clearly the intent the vice president had in mind.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
spaceman_2020 1y ago
Would you call a midwest farmer in the US a “peasant” or just a farmer? Let’s not pretend that peasants and farmers represent the same thing
- 9rx 1y ago
  > Would you call a midwest farmer in the US a “peasant” or just a farmer? All peasants are farmers, but not all farmers are poor. So, no, not as a group. Midwest farmers, on balance, are going to be some of the richest people you can find in the country (mostly because of their land wealth, which Chinese farmers don't have). There are likely to be individual farmers in the midwest who you would call peasants, though. Chinese farmers, on the other hand, are likely to be very poor. Some individual farmers in China are rich, but as far as the group goes... It is not as bad as it once was, but as that group they still lag well behind the typical urban dweller. As that group they are peasants.

4 ms·

Something like 35% of China's population works in the agriculture sector, many of whom are poor with little or no land holdings living in small villages. Is the

by IncreasePosts 1y ago

Something like 35% of China's population works in the agriculture sector, many of whom are poor with little or no land holdings living in small villages. Is there a word for that kind of person?

blargey 1y ago
That number has been falling since 2012 and was around 22% as of 2023 (ignoring the hand-wavy conflation of the entire agriculture sector and stereotypical rural farmers) https://tradingeconomics.com/china/employment-in-agriculture-percent-of-total-employment-wb-data.html https://tradingeconomics.com/china/employment-in-agriculture... You could just as easily massage statistics to call the US a nation of gig workers or something, but neither is productive or informative.
bbreier 1y ago
Peasant has a more specific meaning than this. More importantly, it has been used as a pejorative for a very long time now and that is clearly the intent the vice president had in mind.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
spaceman_2020 1y ago
Would you call a midwest farmer in the US a “peasant” or just a farmer? Let’s not pretend that peasants and farmers represent the same thing
- 9rx 1y ago
  > Would you call a midwest farmer in the US a “peasant” or just a farmer? All peasants are farmers, but not all farmers are poor. So, no, not as a group. Midwest farmers, on balance, are going to be some of the richest people you can find in the country (mostly because of their land wealth, which Chinese farmers don't have). There are likely to be individual farmers in the midwest who you would call peasants, though. Chinese farmers, on the other hand, are likely to be very poor. Some individual farmers in China are rich, but as far as the group goes... It is not as bad as it once was, but as that group they still lag well behind the typical urban dweller. As that group they are peasants.