News Story of the Day: What a difference a generation makes.
For years, the Chinese people were known for saving their money. They were better at it than Americans. In the United States, the national savings rate is a putrid three percent. In China, it was in the double digits.
Well, it turns out that Chinese youth are not following in their parents’ or grandparents’ footsteps.
From Newsmax:
Due to its turbulent economic history, many older Chinese are quite used to spending little and saving much of their earnings, but the over 330 million people being born in China between 1990 and 2009 are spending much more freely on entertainment, travel and technology.
The Journal notes that many young Chinese are opting for short-term loans, one of the most popular methods being Huabei, a revolving credit line in the country’s Alipay mobile payments network. Since launching in 2015, Huabei has extended more than 1 trillion yuan in loans. Short-term lending in general has skyrocketed since 2004, reaching almost 50 trillion yuan in 2018.
25-year-old Liu Biting, who works in marketing in Shanghai, told the Journal that about one third of her 10,000 yuan, or $1,400, monthly paycheck goes to rent and the rest is spent on food, hobbies, music, going out and other products.
“For my parents’ generation, for them to get a decent job, a stable job, is good enough — and what they do is they save money, they buy houses and they raise kids,” she said. “We see money as a thing to be spent.”
She added that her parents frequently ask her how much she has saved after working for three years.
“I say, ‘I’m sorry, probably nothing.’ All my friends are like this. We have no savings and we don’t really care about it.”
Interesting trend.
Chart of the Day: Want to make a lot of money? Go to these universities, which possess the richest graduates:
Illustration of the Day: Climate change is back in the news, so here is a funny meme:
Quote of the Day: With Labor Day on the horizon, here is some great stuff from Tom Woods:
I see. So all those Third World countries need to escape poverty and enjoy additional leisure is…some labor unions?
(What’s the point of foreign aid, then?)
Until society grows wealthy enough, all the labor unions in the world can’t make it possible to take two days a week off from work.
Can you imagine, in the primitive economies of 300 years ago, agitating for a shorter work week? People would have thought you insane.
With little capital, and with most goods produced by hand, it takes all the labor power all the hours it can spare just to make life barely livable.
That’s why people worked long hours in terrible conditions in the past (and why they do in the Third World today). Not because short men with white mustaches and a monocle took delight in oppressing them.
What emancipated people from these dehumanizing conditions was capital goods. With workers vastly more productive than before, thanks to the assistance of machines, physical output was multiplied in quantity and quality many, many times over. This greater abundance put downward pressure on prices relative to wage rates, and people’s standard of living rose.
At that time they opted for more leisure and more pleasant working conditions rather than more cash.
But if you ask people who work in sweatshops today if they’d rather have more pleasant conditions (or fewer working hours) and less take-home pay, they overwhelmingly say no.
Ben Powell of Texas Tech University actually bothered to ask. And 90+% of them said they wanted the money.
Meanwhile, American workers had the eight-hour-day well before their much more heavily unionized counterparts in Europe did, and they earned much higher wages. Unionism never accounted for more than a third of the American labor force, and that was at its height.
I can hardly blame AOC for her error; I’m sure she’s only repeating what her teachers taught her.
Whatever your kids’ teachers are crediting unions for, just roll your eyes.
Tweet of the Day: Here is something hilarious:
NEW: It appears like @jack has been hacked. A couple of his recent tweets include the n-word and praise Nazi Germany.
Read about it via @dcexaminer:https://t.co/sbi6L0kMxm pic.twitter.com/qe0uVUpXPw
— Mike Brest (@MikeBrestDC) August 30, 2019
Video of the Day: So, former Vice President Joe Biden made up some odd and phony war story. But you know whose fault it is? President Donald Trump!
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