New hope for the poor.

Graham_Devon

She should take a trip to China, and see can find a way that many of them can actually work any harder. Maybe she'd like to pop to Mumbai and tell street cleaners working 14 hours a day 7 days a week that if they just worked a little harder, they too could be rich.

There was a programme on last night actually, and I had so much admiration for a girl who'd moved to the city, lived in one room, and worked 7 days a week all year round cleaning rich peoples cars, only having the chinese new year off work.

She sent half of her money back home, saved a quarter and spent a quarter.

She doesn't have any rights as she's not from the city originally, whereas those from the city originally are pretty well covered and raking it in.

I'd like to see her tell that girl how to work harder to make herself richer.

To become super rich, it's rarely a case that working hard is what you need to achieve. It's who you know, who your family was....and in the rarer cases, either working hard and striking lucky, or simply striking lucky.

Working hard is obviously to be commended. However half the planet is covered by people working harder than she's ever worked.... It's your situation that 9 times out of 10 provides the key to wealth.

buglawton

She's got rich on the back of China in fact. It's China's manufacturing engine, based on low wage costs, that sucks in all those raw materials that Australia is now exporting.

An earlier post mentioned she supports some good causes. I wonder if they include ones that look out for the interest of workers in China/Burma/India/Thailand/Indonesia etc?

Loughton_Monkey

buglawton wrote: »

She's got rich on the back of China in fact. It's China's manufacturing engine, based on low wage costs, that sucks in all those raw materials that Australia is now exporting.

An earlier post mentioned she supports some good causes. I wonder if they include ones that look out for the interest of workers in China/Burma/India/Thailand/Indonesia etc?

A common sentiment, but not one that holds water in my opinion.

We should not forget how UK became 'rich'. Something to do with the Industrial Revolution. Were we rich in the dark ages? Were our ancestors of late 18th/early 19th century 'rich' leaving school at 12 and then working 6 days a week up chimneys, in cotton processing, or in the fields?

Families that were starving, started to have kids going to work and earning. Say what you like about 'wealth distribution' but throughout the 19th and 20th century, British working families became 'rich' beyond all their dreams. We even became richer up to a point where we got complacent, invented a top-heavy 'state', lived on credit, and ended up where we are now.

I find it insulting in the extreme to criticise countries like China and India (let alone try to prevent) for going through exactly the same social development. Any street cleaner in Shanghai - earning perhaps $1,000 a year, was probably earning zilch 30 years ago. Living purely on the rice he could grow in his fields. His children go to school, now, and could well be lawyers, teachers, or doctors in 10 or 15 years.

All of this is possible because (a) they have industrialised, paying real wages to hundreds of millions of people, (b) the population (generally) is more than willing to work hard, earn the large (to them) money, (c) their factory owner has money and is prepared to risk it, (d) they can sell for a fair price to (say) Australians, and (e) Australians can make a fair profit as well.

To mistake this as "exploitation" of the Chinese is so wide of the mark as to be laughable. To try and impose 'reform' in these countries - quicker than it will happen naturally - just exposes those who try to do it as charlatans! "We got very rich this way. You are getting rich this way. Therefore we frown on you getting rich that way."

When you work with Chinese; realise how much better educated than we they are; realise how much harder they work than us; realise how independent they are and don't want a Nanny State like ours; realise how they recognise personal and family responsibility as a by-law; then you will probably recognise why they will be far more economically, and socially, successful than us.

An acid test question. Ask yourself if any Chinese Finance Minister would ever come to UK, to look at our policies on welfare, taxation, economy etc., in order to learn anything?

roonaldo

Eellogofusciouhipoppokunu wrote: »

What dreadful slums of Manchester? .

Moss Side.

Eellogofusciouhipoppokunu

roonaldo wrote: »

Moss Side.

A camera crew was once in Moss side after a shooting there and they were searching for a particularly deprived bit to do the pice to camera. They couldn't find a particularly bad area so they filmed in Withenshawe instead and cracked on that it was Moss side. :rotfl:

While they both might be deprived area in relation to Alderley Edge, they are paradises when compared with Dharavi in India, for instance. You'd be hard pressed to find any Moss side residents raking the local dump for metals and bottles.

Spot the difference.


Dharavi, India.


Moss Side, Manchester.

buglawton

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

...A common sentiment, but not one that holds water in my opinion....

....I find it insulting in the extreme to criticise countries like China and India...

....To mistake this as "exploitation" of the Chinese is so wide of the mark as to be laughable...

...When you work with Chinese; realise how much better educated than we they are; realise how much harder they work than us; ...

Wow that loosed off a big reaction.
Now exactly where did I use the word 'exploited'?
Also looking hard to see where I 'criticized'. Sure you replied to the correct post?

On a point of fact though among the throwaway generalisations I'm seeing:
The idea that Chinese are better educated than say, us in the UK is a common myth.
Need to compare like for like - percentage of population.
In 2010 around 6% of the Chinese population graduated.
That compares with something like the 40% to 45% mark in Western developed countries (Korea maybe 65%).

What we are talking about here is an entrepreneur in a Western democracy making good profits from a market situation of relatively low wage costs in China that sucks in raw materials. All in a Globalized economy. Happening all the time, but this entrepreneur, see opening post, had drawn attention to herself with some rather bold statements.

Loughton_Monkey

buglawton wrote: »

Wow that loosed off a big reaction.
Now exactly where did I use the word 'exploited'?
Also looking hard to see where I 'criticized'. Sure you replied to the correct post?

On a point of fact though among the throwaway generalisations I'm seeing:
The idea that Chinese are better educated than say, us in the UK is a common myth.
Need to compare like for like - percentage of population.
In 2010 around 6% of the Chinese population graduated.
That compares with something like the 40% to 45% mark in Western developed countries (Korea maybe 65%).

What we are talking about here is an entrepreneur in a Western democracy making good profits from a market situation of relatively low wage costs in China that sucks in raw materials. All in a Globalized economy. Happening all the time, but this entrepreneur, see opening post, had drawn attention to herself with some rather bold statements.

You didn't say "exploited", and I didn't say that you did.

I was having a rant about sentiments about China that gain ground on these boards. I admit your post did not, in itself, say all these things.

I don't believe education is all about exam results or university entrance %ages. Having lived and worked in Shanghai, it comes through quite strongly that a Chinese person who did go to university seems to come across as more bright than a UK equivalent. It is also well known that virtually no mathematics students at UK universities could pass the Chinese entrance exam. [Their lecturers have been proven not to...]

There is nothing wrong with taking advantage of low wage costs, and if raw materials are to be found in China, then that's where you are forced to go to get hold of them. In the 1950's, as far as I know, no major coal resources were to be found in London. Coal was mined in South Wales, Nottinghamshire etc., where wages happened to be lower as well. Nothing wrong with that?

buglawton

The topic of education is an interesting one.
- Shanghai is an elite world city, some sectors of it are much richer per square KM than prime London suburbs. I think competition means you'll tend to meet the most talented/educated, but not representative slice of people in Shanghai.
- The Chinese higher education system cannot begin to cope with potential national demand.
- All most all middle class Chinese city families are seriously considering sending their child abroad for higher education. Just about all those who can afford it do. There must be some merit in it!
- There's even a rapidly growing market for children below 18 to be sent to Western boarding schools, due to the perceived merits of the non-Chinese education culture.

To me the jury is out. What you might be perceiving is better upbringing as opposed to better education. An interesting topic to expand on, maybe for another thread though.

kabayiri

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

...
All of this is possible because (a) they have industrialised, paying real wages to hundreds of millions of people, (b) the population (generally) is more than willing to work hard, earn the large (to them) money, (c) their factory owner has money and is prepared to risk it, (d) they can sell for a fair price to (say) Australians, and (e) Australians can make a fair profit as well.
...

China could not industrialise this fast without Western help from large corporations. It's not down to their ability alone, though they weren't slow in learning.

I remember being in meetings 2 decades ago where we would sit and listen to reports on the infrastructure there, from a guy who would tour all the potential manufacturing sites. Issues like poor quality would be recurring topics.

It took a vast amount of Western capital to get them up to spec. One single Silicon fabrication plant capable of producing processors to Intel specification cost more than $2bn dollars, and I'm sure my figures are out of date now! I'd shudder to think what the FoxConn plants cost.

The growth of China and India economies is as much an engineered situation by Western corporates, who probably saw an unending resource of cheap labour.

headcone

Eellogofusciouhipoppokunu wrote: »

What dreadful slums of Manchester? That's a ridiculous statement to make when there is no comparison between the poorer parts of the UK and the slums all around the third world or even the Projects in the US. Especially when the people in these slums can manage to work their way out of them, becoming millionaires.

If you are not doing well financially then look in the mirror for someone to blame. You have had access to a top drawer free education system, a labour market without restrictions on age, race, gender and have the opportunity to acquire further education and training cheaply and easily. If you want to be rich then stop wallowing in self pity and start working towards a brighter future.

I am rich you eejit,i was merely pointing out the difference between being born rich as opposed to poor.