• @[email protected]
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    fedilink
    5211 months ago

    I wish when governments said they want to be competitive with China they did like the one thing China does that would raise our quality of life. As in make trains.

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      2611 months ago

      People: Can we have competitive with china [trains]?

      Governments: we have Competitive with china at home.

      Competitive with china at home: Low wages and no labor rights.

        • @hellishharlot
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          211 months ago

          And there are some Americans working similarly because they have rent to pay

                  • @[email protected]
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                    fedilink
                    111 months ago

                    In 2021, 1.4% of workers in the United States were paid hourly rates at or below the official minimum wage. The percentage of hourly paid workers earning the prevailing federal minimum wage or less declined from 1.9% in 2019 to 1.5% in 2020, which remains well below the percentage of 13.4 recorded in 1979. Around 44.3 percent of wage and salary workers paid hourly rates at or below the federal minimum wage were aged between 16 to 24 years.

                    https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2020/home.htm

                • @hellishharlot
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                  111 months ago

                  In the US it’s usually 2 part time jobs or 1 ft and 1 or or 1 ft and gigs. Regardless the idea isn’t that they make enough with one job and get spending money from the other. It’s basically that you need to make as much as the top 15% of earners in the US to be ok in most areas. So we work as hard as we can to survive

                  • @[email protected]
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                    fedilink
                    011 months ago

                    Big cities like Beijing or Shanghai in China are much worse, lower wages and rents north of $1000 and salaries of about $1350

                    Workers cram into one apartment just to have a place to sleep