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Money has corrupted us. We no longer understand what it's worth
invite response
2014 Apr 18, 2:20am 13,982 views 43 comments
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Never looked at the Hong Kong labor codes I see.
True. And again you miss my point. Opportunities exist, its a matter of pursuing them. You have a choice, to seek and pursue or not to, but not pursuing (let alone not seeking) has consequences. If you make a bad choice (to not pursue and/or not seek) then I find it hard to feel a personal responsibility to help you out. The opportunities exist, just because they don't fall in your lap and aren't exactly what one deems 'the perfect job' isn't my problem. Like I said before, I meet and see, on a daily basis, people who have come to America to seek and pursue that which is unavailable where they come from. It's not easy, nor should it be. A college degree (in any major) isn't a passport to success, it's not meant to be. If you get a degree in petroleum engineering you have a much greater chance of getting job offers than if you get one in film history. I'm tired of people getting it in film history and then complaining that they are not getting job offers. Oh, and if they did get offers, it's not within 20 miles of where they live. And the pay isn't what they want it to be. You miss my point. Opportunity IS out there, just don't expect it to knock down your door - no - go find it.
SFace
2014 Apr 22, 6:56am
In Hong Kong, the unemployment rate is 3.1% and their safety net is just about zilch. If you're an able bodied person, you are pretty much expected to find a job and fend for yourself.
I have no idea a person from Texas knows so much about the safety net in Hong Kong.
The reality is half the population lives in public housing. If you are a resident for some short period of time or married one, the welfare payment (with kids) is not too far off from working full time which amounts to less than $4 an hour. Working is kinda idiotic in HK if you are on minmum wage (almost everyone) with kids. HK has one of the greatest safety nets in the world. The unemployment rate is apples/oranges.
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http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jan/01/money-corrupted-us-understand-worth
The house across the street has just gone on sale for £850,000. A bog-standard, late-Victorian, ex-council terrace house in the rough part of Islington, with a yard billed as a garden, costs as much as a street in Middlesbrough or Stoke.
When Marx wrote, in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, that money "is the visible divinity" involving "the transformation of all human and natural properties into their contraries, the universal overturning and confounding of things: it makes brothers of impossibilities", he wasn't predicting how the north London property market would heat up in 2013, but he was unwittingly prescient. What has happened to our moral and social values? Could they be more detached from monetary values? Or, hideously, are they accurately expressed by what money can buy?