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| 13 |
Helping by Hiring Patrick: A country's standard of living is measured by GDP per capital. A country's GDP is important for its political and economical position in the world. It is perfectly fine that you do not care, but business world cares immensely. Chinese GDP is growing 10% per year and the West thinks Chinese is underestimating. While other wealthy nations struggle to grow 2 to 3%. At this rate, the poor people population in China will shrink quickly. My point is: do not worry about the Chinese. Their government is doing fine. Their people are doing well. Worry about yourself. You might have more serious problems than the Chinese. |
| 12 |
Helping by Hiring Patrick: One has to start somewhere. China today is definitely not the same as the developed counties. Please give time. It takes the US more than 150 years to past Britain. If it takes China another 50 years to reach the level of the West, that would be remarkable. If you knew China 20 years ago when everyone was in poverty, You would be super impressed about their achievement. Nobody knows how much the government can achieve, but these 500 million people's life will be vastly improved. |
| 11 |
Helping by Hiring Boran: You probably have not seen the latest article on business week. The government plan to migrate 500 millions farmers to the cities in the next 15 years. This is very ambitious because 15 years is very short period of time to do that. Sure everything has positive and negative sides, but look at what they have accomplished. It is unbelievable. The US business world predicts that it will take the Chinese even shorter period of time to rise to the world top (becomes the largest GDP country) than it took the US (when US overtook Britain to be the number 1). |
| 10 |
Helping by Hiring Stephen: I lived in Vancouver, Canada for two years about 20 years ago. It was very hard to get ahead. There were much less opportunities than the California (right now the 5th largest economy in the world). I am not talking about being comfortable. I am talking about being able to go to the top, being the best. The problem is that you are spoilt. It is good for you, but maybe really bad for you. You could have fulfilled higher potential if the situation was worse. Just like the children of the rich families are sometimes not as driven. People have different priorities. If you want to be the best, it is hard everywhere. However, someplaces have more opportunities than others. |
| 9 |
Helping by Hiring Stephen: Go to China, feel it yourself. It is full of optimism. People are by large very happy there, because the standard of living is improving rapidly for the majority of the people, everywhere. There is plenty of job for everybody if you desire to work. And there is no immigration problem like here. So much anti-immigrant sentiment in the US because job opportunities are so scarce. It is a sign of low confidence in the economy. When GDP growth is more than 10%, jobs are created exponentially more than an economy that grows only 3%. You can work in China without much restriction. The local Chinese may have much less income compare to the Western salary, but they have vastly better life than before. They might have more buying power because goods for basic living are cheap there. Their confidence level is high. China now is a much better land of opportunity than the US. |
| 8 |
Helping by Hiring Shanghai will be more mixed than SF one day. There are already black, white, latino and any other races. Going to any Jazz club in Shanghai at night, chances are you will see a black performer from NY. Shanghai is like 1903 New York where there is a rush of people going there from all over the world. China also had the civilization 500 years ago. This is the revival. This civilization is not going to be an exact copy of the Western civilization. It will have its own unique character. Chinese culture is too rich. By the way, the Chinese government is doing an as a good job as they can, given the most difficult task of improving over 1 billion people's standard of living. They have a lot of challenges, so do any other governments. Compare to the Bush administration, they deserve a lots of credits. You should be open minded. Do not be sad that China left your behind because you are not there to make the difference. |
| 7 |
Helping by Hiring Bluekite: It is not a problem that there are larger percentage of the whole population can only work as Ayi and Ming Gong. The society cannot function without them. For them also, it is a vast improvement from where they were. Things takes time to change, sometimes it takes one or two generations. All dynasty rises and falls. The 21th century belong to China. As far as Europe, you may like their 35hours per week life style. Eventually, somebody will have to pay for this life style. It is not free. The cost might very well be "losing its competitive edge" and decay in the end. Tough_lefse: Ayi includes all full time domestic helpers, live-in or out. If you are ultra rich, you have a separate apartments for your staff to keep your privacy. These staff may live mucher nicer than majority of the people. |
| 6 |
Helping by Hiring Bluekite: Just for your information, only 2% of the US household makes more than $250,000 a year. IF you live in West LA and make that kind of the money, you can barely afford a full-time Ayi. "Staying at home wife" is definately not a sign of "well-off", instead, a sign of "middle class". It costs more to hire an Ayi than the wife can make at work - after tax and other job related expenses. It just does not make sense for the wife to work. The sign of "well-off" is "staying at house wife and with an Ayi". Less than 2% in the US can afford that. In Europe, that number is even smaller. This goes beyond Ayi, including all kind of services. On the contrary, majority of the professional people can afford Ayi in Shanghai. In that sense, the quality of life is better in Shanghai. The spending power is relatively higher than the West. Living expenses of $1000 in Shanghai is equivelent of $20,000 in California. After visiting Shanghai a few times, I found people there more "well-off" than in the West. |
| 5 |
Helping by Hiring Majority of the Ayi in the US work for the woman of the household. Men simply stay out of it. It is foolish to assume people do not treat their Ayi nicely. An Ayi is an employee who works at home. |
| 4 |
Helping by Hiring There is nothing wrong with being a Ayi. Sometimes Ayi makes more money than computer programmer in the US. It is simply "supply and demand" at work. Believe me, when Ayi is in short spply, they will be treated like royalty. |
| 3 |
Helping by Hiring Seeing post by "Stephen" makes me very disturbed. If you cannot afford Ayi, then you or your family member are the Ayi. You will do all the housework yourself and no time for career (as for a lot of women in the US) or fun (as for a lot of families in the West). A single person will not experience that situation until children arrive. In Los Angeles area, I see many moms struggle becuase the going rate for Ayi is $1,700 US per month and $10 per hour. As a result, 95% of my friends cannot afford Ayi and are resentful of the situation. I have a America friend recently moved to Shanghai with her husband and three school age boys. Do you know how much work there is to raise three kids? Her quality of life improved so much in Shanghai that she vows never to return to the US. I believe the situation in Europe is much worse. Workers rather sit at home and collecting money from their government than going out to work. Why work if you can ask for it. A society operates like that will lose its competitive edge sooner than later. |
| 2 |
Life in a Low Cost Labor World The going rate for hiring an Ayi in the Los Angeles area is $1,700 US per month, or $10 US per hour, all cash deals. That is far more than majority of the white collar workers can make in Shanghai. As a result, 95% of my friends in the US cannot afford to have help. In some aspect, the quality of life is not so good here. |
| 1 |
Install Perl on Windows XP Isn't there any way to run perl programs without using your computer as a server or installing Apache or IIS? I have the same thing happen when trying to open the .pl file, a dos window which quickly disappears when I use the backward slash in the URL to point to the .pl file in the browser, (it's on my system, not online) and I get a "open file or save file" prompt when using the same URL with forward slashes. (C:/Documents and Settings/blahblah). I use XP Home Edition, and have no plans to use this computer as a server, but I want to educate myself on the uses of CGI/Perl. After appearing to learn that IIS is only available on XP Pro (still not real sure about that one, but I don't find it on my system) I decided to intall Apache -- merely for the purpose of toying with perl scripting -- of course it works fine. But, why did I have to do this, or is there any way at all I can get perl scripts to work in XP Home Edition without being a server, without setting up "virtual hosts" etc.? What was Microsoft thinking making it so difficult? I had no problem executing perl scripts on Windows 98. By the way, I have seen your blog at least 2 dozen times in a variety of searches, and appreciate your contribution to general information sharing. Very nice. Thankyou. |