Yeah, it’s like people have never heard of welfare reform, and it happened 15 years ago! No longer are people living their whole lives on welfare, and their children their whole lives, and I doubt they ever did it “comfortably”, but even less so now. And no, you don’t get more ca$h when you have more children, the amount stays the same. These old stereotypes and myths about welfare sure die hard.
People like to enjoy their righteous indignation without those pesky facts getting in the way.
I there was a second motto to this board behind fighting ignorance I think this would be it. 
That I have an expanded vocabulary for some high falutin’, big talkin’, hokier, and “smarter than thou” reason. I am compelled by language to find the source, the proto-languge ever reiterating in contemporary usage. Poltergeists of the original structure and stricture.
While the science-y word may be chrysalis, the concept is more or less equal, so I can understand why people only use the much easier to say cocoon.
People’s ideas about China are strange.
On one hand, there is the idea that China is getting to be better off than America. This simply isn’t true. While a handful of cities are reaching a first-world standard of living and are outfitted with show-projects like Shanghai’s mag-lev train, the rest of China is just barely reaching the middle-income area (think Latin America) and huge, massive, even overwhelming chunks of the countryside are solidly third world. When we talk about the progress that China, we are talking about bringing people up to the point where they can eat on a regular basis and afford tin roofs for their mud houses. China has a long way to go.
The government does not completely suppress the news, nor does it monitor everything you do. State news does dominate, foreign news is slightly difficult to get and they will black out stuff they don’t like, but as long as you do not question the party’s right to rule, journalists are able to get some controversial stuff out. There is plenty of hard-hitting investigative journalism. While a lot of websites are blocked (which is laughably easy to get around, although many don’t bother and just stick to easy-to-use Chinese sites), it’s not like they are keeping a log of everything you do and put it together in any meaningful way. You will get in trouble if you are hanging around places that organize subversive action. But nobody is going to come knocking on your door because you looked at the wikipedia page on the Tiananmen Square massacre or IMed some criticism to a friend. Security does sometimes show up in ways you didn’t expect, but most it is disorganized, inconstant, and just kind of random. I had a friend who told me one day that he couldn’t use his cell phone for a month- he had texted “fuck the party” and so they cut of his phone for 30 days. Anyway, as a foreigner, unless you are actively organizing riots or something, the worst thing that will happen is they will send you home.
Also, China is not a land of unbridled capitalism. State owned-enterprises play a dominent role in business, and the government regularly directly intercedes in business. Nor is the party withering away as the market gets freer. They are still there and still rule pretty absolutely. The difference is that they found a way to do that and make money and have chosen to allow people to have more freedoms. But the party structure has not changed significantly and it’s not going to any time soon.
Arguably you are the one with the misconception here. Or at least, you are glossing over a really complex issue. There is a lot of research showing that social inequality in itself makes people less happy.
pdts
Well, yeah, I glossed over it because happiness based on lack of knowledge is a sociological problem, not economic. People are better off. If they’re not happy about it, then why?
For the reasons I quoted in my response to you (which you haven’t addressed). If you have money but poor health, are surrounded by crime and likely to be Depressed (with a big d) or stressed due to your living environment then the money doesn’t really make for that. This isn’t entirely sociological, it’s partly economic as well, at least when you get past the mantras that economists rely on that state that x amount of wealth buys amount of happiness, because reality just isn’t like that.
Because ‘better off’ doesn’t it just mean material goods – it might include dignity and respect. And they (for example) might have more of that in a more equal society.
pdts
It also includes the ability to live a meaningful life and have enriching social connections.
If you got paid a million dollars a year to spend the rest of your life working twelve hour days in a factory slaughterhouse on a mountaintop with only an old man who insults you constantly for company, you’d probably be a lot worse off than scraping by with a job at McDonalds and having low-cost fun with your friends on the weekends.
One of the big ones I can think of now that directly touches me is that just because I know about computers and can program them doesn’t mean I know everything about every piece of software. I mainly know what I use, which at this point is Linux, and I don’t even know more than a small fraction of everything people use Linux for.
(On the other hand… yeah, I likely can fix things wrong with your Windows or Macintosh computer you can’t fix, especially if you let me install software you’ve never heard of. This is partially because I know specific things about both those OSes, but mainly because, unlike a lot of people, I don’t get nervous around computers and I take the time to break problems down into manageable parts. In some cases, this means I understand the problem better and can go right to the solution. In others, it means I’m capable of doing trial-and-error more effectively.)
Another, related to the above, is that the computer will not explode. Seriously: No computer maker packs cases with C4 or even thermite unless you pay extra. This means clicking or typing the wrong thing is probably not going to destroy very much, if anything, unless you’re some half-clever moron in which case you aren’t taking my advice anyway and are about to destroy your partition table because you think you can use dd without reading the man page first.
Finally, if you put something out for the public it is public. It is no longer private. Public and private are opposing concepts, like yin and yang, except that mixing them doesn’t lead to ‘effortless effort’ so much as ‘effortlessly ruining your life.’
even sven: However, if you survive the first scenario a few years, you can turn your experiences into a black-and-white arthouse film and become a massively rich auteur for the rest of your life. The only way to monetize the second experience is to be Judd Apatow or Kevin Smith, and both those jobs are taken.
Well, duh. Some of you have to play the accordion.
I’ve only heard it used to ‘from the Indian sub-continent,’ including people who’ve spent their whole lies in India/Banngladesh/etc.
Similar to the welfare queen stuff: lots of people think that social housing is subsidised housing. It’s not, at least not in the UK; most social housing turns a profit. This is so obvious when you think about it - the buildings are mostly really old, so it’s not like they’re still mortgaged.
Lots of people think that sushi is raw fish. It’s not it’s the rice, and there’s plenty of vegetarian maki rolls and the like.
I can’t speak to how it used to be, but with two kids, I was recently told that I “might” get as much as $300 a month, but that I’d either have to find a job (which they’d try to help me with) OR work volunteer work 30 hours a week for the cash. Which, honestly, makes utter and total sense, and seems like a really good plan. Unfortunately, I don’t have 30 hours a week these last two months of nursing school, but if I can’t get a job right away when I graduate, I’ll gladly work the job or volunteer hours. But still…$300 for 120 hours of work? Not exactly riding high on the gravy train, are they?
There was a woman in the next cubby over who gets $19 a month in cash. Yep, that’s some welfare queening going on! :rolleyes:
And yeah, I felt like a total asshole moocher going into the office in the first place, and probably annoyed the hell out of everyone there constantly repeating, “I just need to get through the next three months!” And, as it turns out, they can’t help me with the cash anyhow because I am a full time student. Still waiting to hear on LINK (food “stamps”).
nm
I work at a museum. Here are a few I have experienced:
-Any number of things regarding evolution. Pick one.
-We sell food here. Some folks think that this means that they can eat or drink by the exhibits. I can understand the general thinking behind this (if the food is in relatively close proximity to the exhibits, it must mean it’s allowed), but the fact remains that we do have very old and fragile things here, things that can, will, and have been damaged by pests.
-We use the dating system BCE and CE (rather than BC and AD) on our historical exhibits. People sometimes have a problem with this, but whatever, we’re used to it by now. But what I’ve noticed is the sheer amount of folks who don’t know what AD stands for. I’ve had folks tell me that it stood for “After Death.” No sir, it’s Anno Domini, or “year of our lord.”
-Actually, another misconception is that BCE and CE is a new system, or that we made it up. Nope and nope–the first recorded use of it (as the Common Era) was in 1708. Not to mention Jews have been using it for at least a century.
Heh… Canada has rednecks?
(just kidding, although I bet many Americans don’t realize that Canada has rednecks just like we do)
The big misconception that I see almost every day at work is that somehow we IT folks solve these problems because of my vast computer knowledge and training. Generally speaking, it’s because we’re good, practical problem solvers, not because we’re necessarily experts in everything computer related.
When I was stationed in California, I was told by at least a couple people that everybody in the military was just a bunch of cold blooded killers.
Mind you, he wasn’t being antagonistic towards me, this was just him making conversation with two guys waiting for a crossing signal downtown.
I replied:
“Some are, but most of us try to be good people.”
He just kinda looked at me, looked at my haircut, looked at my friend’s haircut, and bustled off on his way.