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Q: As expats, have you ever defended China against ppl who have never been here?
You guys know China.Have you ever defended it?
I seldom have contact for defending but one thing always pops in my head.
I still pay the same thing for coke as I did 8 years ago here in China, 500 ml 3 kwai,
Nixon tried wage and price controls and corporations just changed the sizes because the old size container had to be kept at the same price.
People bitch about minimum wage, people bitch about giving money to people and then every body raises prices for rent and food.
China for better or worse, tries control cost of basic needs while taxing the hell out of wants, everybody else just lets prices rise and tries to get more money for growth of wages or more social programs to offset rising costs.
I'm not sure if democracy will ever try or figure out how to bend the cost side of the equation instead of raising and tinkering with the revenue or income side of the equation.
The western elite love to sight how many people live on a dollar a day, 3 dollars a day and all this nonsense, but nobody knows in the west that I could eat in cheap places here for less 20 rmb a day. My meals at school for lunch and dinner are 5 rmb with a meat and 2 vegetables.
I remember this want versus need discussion when I was living in SIngapore.
A case of beer was 32 dollars and when I bitched at a local about the price, he said you don't need beer, milk for your baby, water and coffee is what you need but beer and soda are a "want', not a need, so the government taxes the hell out of it.
No tax to buy beef and bun and go home and make a burger, but buy a made burger and the tax is double.
Something can be said for controlling cost for basic needs,
The biggest one for me is utilities.
If you travelled for business in America and never home, I always had a minimum of 30 to 40 dollars for water, power, natural gas for just having them hooked up even if not home to use them. In China you pay for the actual usage, not for pipes in the ground that have been paid for 50 years ago. Many places you prepay, so no invoicing, or accounting department needed by the utility.
The strangest thing in defense of China is the post office. Granted economic numbers are a farce here, even still, a country growing this fast without daily mail service and western countries full of overpaid union postal workers screaming about how bad privatize mail delivery would be and paying a half a dollar or more for a stamp, and the second largest economy in the world has no daily mail delivery, some economic elite nerd needs to explain how that is possible.
