klfrs
chill out
Klassik Sr. lived in places such as Czechoslovakia and the DDR for a number of years and was even married to a local for a while who eventually came to the US. Klassik has a half-brother from that who is American educated, but who lives in Poland currently. Klassik Sr. knew what it was like living in these places as well as Western Europe, the US, and some other places as well.
And Klassik Sr. had the means, knowledge and liberty to move, presumably because they thought a better quality of life was available in USA. Or was there another reason for relocating?
It seems to me that such differences existing are self evident. What are the odds they’d all be similar?Klassik will not assume that quality of life is better for someone in the US than in China.
Agreed.As always, there are certain variables. Things are going to be different for a wealthy American versus a poor Chinese person and things will be different from a wealthy Chinese person compared to a poor American person. There are very impoverished Americans who are living in tent cities or out of their cars. There are a number of people living in such squalor in Houston, but some cities are even worse. It's quite well-known that the US has a large population of incarcerated people as well. There was a report this past week in the media discussing research from Texas A&M University discussing oppressive heat in some Texas prisons where there is no A/C. They found one cell where the temperature was 149 F (65 C).
Why is that?There might be certain limitations on freedoms the Chinese have, but Klassik knows not if these are things the average Chinese person spends much time thinking about in their daily lives.
The salient point being which country is irrelevant, because they all excrete disingenuous and deceitful propaganda when necessary.While western propaganda and natural thoughts are about the evils of the Chinese form of governance, Chinese propaganda, and the logic of their own people, surely look at US/western governments and think it must be chaos. If an outsider takes a look at US news, for example, one would see constant squabbling and changes of power, protesters getting arrested, corporate-dominated politics, racial/immigrant/refugee unrest, many instances of involvement in foreign military conflicts, and so forth. They probably view this as discord and something which hinders governance as compared to a more stable system like they have. At the very least, someone trying to be fair to both sides can see advantages and disadvantages to both systems.
Not sure what the relevance is to my question, or why you are being coy. I’m not trying to land a gotcha. Do you have the means and liberty to move?Just looking at the US, or the UK as there are a lot of similarities, the people collectively do have a large say in government, But, yet, what we see year after year are corporate-driven neoliberal policies being implemented by government from all the parities of relevance. The corporate class are very united in their ideology and support. Their voices will be heard. With the public, well...not so much. Thus, the major parties are accountable to corporate power and not to the needs of the public. Thus, we see 40+ years of eroding public funding, 40+ years of eroding employment standards, 40+ years of rubber stamp mergers and acquisitions without concern if commerce is operating under fair competition, 40+ years of globalization leading to decreased employment, decreased wages, and increased global pollution.
In the few cases that the public gets something they want, it's usually right-wing nonsense such as Republican Party support for anti-abortion judges and legislation. The Republican Party will fight hard for their base to support such things in exchange for the public supporting the religious-like zeal of deregulated free market economics. The Democratic Party gives lackluster (at best), often unsuccessful support for things they public wants (and they make no effort for things such as nationalized healthcare) while still religiously supporting the same deregulated free market economics. Perhaps the best things the US public has gotten from the Democrats are their judicial branch appointees, but what we've seen from the Democrats as far as executive and legislative branch work is truly dreadful. Even then, it could be argued that the Republicans are better at getting judges they're happy with than the Democratic-voting public has received from their party given some of the right-wing decisions of the courts even though the Democrats have had more years to appoint federal judges since the 1990s.