The sky is falling! I’ll also settle the accounts for everyone.
After delaying for so long, I haven’t released this mess of an account because I’m really not interested in these nagging, trivial matters. However, recently, a large number of ‘pink maggots’ have come to roll around, saying, “If you don’t settle the accounts, you won’t know! Some public intellectuals and intermediaries are saying the sky is falling!” Later, I realized that these maggots are most likely arranged by a certain youth model who is suspected of rape and political fraud. He and his lackey, Sima Nan, haven’t finished their mess, and yet they have the mood to stir up trouble again. Then I’ll accompany you to settle the accounts and see how these maggots generate their illusory sense of pride.
1. Population Comparison:
China: 1.4 billion; United States: 335 million
2. GDP Total (2023/USD):
China: 17.79 trillion; United States: 27.72 trillion (China is 64.17% of the United States)
3. GDP per capita (2023, $USD)
China: $12,700; United States: $82,800 (6.5 times difference)
4. Minimum Wage: Shanghai VS Los Angeles (two cities with high similarity) Shanghai’s minimum monthly wage is 2690 yuan (Social Security Bureau documents, Figure 2)
Los Angeles’s 2024 minimum wage is $17.28 per hour, 8 hours a day, with weekends off, the minimum monthly income is $3041.28
5. Daily prices (vegetables, eggs, milk, meat)
Eggs: China 10—15 yuan/dozen; United States 3—5 USD/dozen (both are relatively ordinary eggs, please do not compare with the price of American phoenix eggs, ordinary eggs in the United States are 3 times lower)
Pork: China 15—20 yuan/jin; United States 3—5 USD/jin (4—5 times difference)
Beef: China 30—40 yuan/jin; United States 5—8 USD/jin (5—6 times difference)
Chicken: China 10—15 yuan/jin; United States 2—4 USD/jin (4—5 times difference)
Vegetables: Corn China 2—5 yuan/ear; American corn 0.5—1.5 USD/ear (some say American corn is 7 USD/ear, that should be Oscar-winning corn) Other vegetables are too numerous to compare one by one, the price is about the same without considering the exchange rate.
Milk: China 20 yuan/barrel/1.8L; United States 2 USD/barrel/2L (10 times difference)
Bread: It’s too cheap in the United States, no comparison. Fruits: too many varieties, prices are similar
Walmart roast chicken: China 35 yuan/piece; United States 3—4 USD/piece (10 times difference)
Häagen-Dazs: Shanghai: a small box 30 yuan; Los Angeles: 3—5 USD/420 grams
Starbucks: China 30—40 yuan; United States 5—8 USD 5, Gasoline
China (today) 92# 7.5 yuan/liter; 95# 7.98 yuan/liter;
United States Los Angeles 0.8—1.2 USD/liter (6—9 times difference), other places are 10-20% lower than California
6. Cars, taking BMW X5 as an example
China new car: 70—900,000 yuan/car; 10-year-old used car 15—200,000 yuan/car;
United States new car 7—80,000 USD; 10-year-old used car 15,000—25,000 USD (China and the US differ by 10 times)
7. Houses;
Rental:
Selecting a not-so-prosperous and high-end building in Changning District, Shanghai, the rent for a two-bedroom apartment of 50—100 square meters ranges from 6,000—13,000 yuan, taking 7,000 yuan/month;
Los Angeles ordinary apartment two-bedroom 2000—3000 USD/month, Beverly Hills luxury apartment 2-bedroom around 4000 USD, taking 3000 USD, the rental difference between China and the US is more than 2 times;
Purchase:
The average price of Shanghai real estate in 2024 is 58,000, taking 50,000/square meter, the price of a 100-square-meter two-bedroom apartment is 5 million yuan;
Los Angeles ordinary apartment around 100 square meters 50—700,000 USD, the difference in buying a house is 7—10 times. Los Angeles property tax is about 1%, annual property tax
5000—7000 USD, refer to the tax of the patriotic big V Sima Nan’s “small house”, he pays more than 4000 USD in taxes to the US government every year.
8. Clothing, daily necessities, etc.
China: a manufacturing powerhouse, daily necessities are cheap;
United States: also cheap. There is no need to compare brands with the United States. A brand of jeans that costs seven or eight hundred RMB in China can be bought for thirty or fifty USD in the United States. Discount chain stores like TJMaxx can buy brands that cost thousands of yuan in China for tens of USD.
9. Eating out
Shanghai: noodles 15—30 yuan/bowl; boiled meat slices 40—60 yuan/serving; steak 100—200/serving; McDonald’s meal: 20—30 yuan;
Los Angeles: noodles 15—20 USD; boiled meat slices 20—40 USD/serving; steak 30—50 USD; McDonald’s meal 5—10 USD. The United States needs to pay a mandatory 20% tip, except for fast food.
Egg pancake: You win, Americans don’t have such a high-end thing;
Tea eggs: You’ve won, Americans can’t make them, and can’t afford them～
11. Communications
China: 20—600 yuan/month/person; United States 30—70 USD/month/person (unlimited calls and data)
12. Medical
Shanghai: Work must have medical insurance, reimbursement rate 70%—80%. Without work, you pay for medical treatment yourself, the cost of minor illnesses is not high, and major illnesses may lead to poverty. Personally, I think China’s medical insurance system is not bad. Many people still retain domestic medical insurance after immigrating overseas for emergencies.
Los Angeles: Work has medical insurance, companies with good benefits provide family medical insurance. Freelancers need to purchase medical insurance themselves, with an average annual premium of 9,000—10,000 USD. According to the ObamaCare regulations, different income groups have different subsidies. For people with an annual income of 138% of the federal poverty line, about 20,000 USD or less, free medical care including dental and ophthalmology is provided. Vulnerable groups such as people over 65, children, and pregnant women also enjoy free medical care.
But the high cost of medical care in the United States is rare in the world, and the high price of medical care is one of the biggest problems in the United States. Americans often fall into debt due to the high cost of their own expenses, or some expenses are rejected by insurance companies, so there was a Luigi who shot the CEO of UnitedHealth Group on the street. The rejection rate of this insurance company is twice that of other American insurance companies. There are many Americans who go bankrupt because of medical expenses. This is similar in China and the United States. The only difference is that American hospitals can treat patients first and then pay the bill. Those homeless people, many of them have personal credit bankruptcy.
13. Education
Shanghai: 9 years of compulsory education is free; high school can choose public, tuition 1000—2000 yuan/semester; private 10—300,000 yuan/year;
Los Angeles: 12 years of compulsory education is free, private schools 4—80,000 USD/year
University tuition: Shanghai University of Finance and Economics 6000—8000 yuan/year; New York University Shanghai 200,000/year;
UCLA University of California, Los Angeles, in-state students 13,000 USD/year; out-of-state students 42,000—47,000 USD/year
Graduates of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics can earn 10,000 yuan/month; UCLA graduates can also earn 10,000 USD/month;
The tuition fees of private universities in the United States are high, with tuition fees ranging from 50,000 to 80,000 USD, and the fees for MBA and law schools are particularly high, but the salaries of graduates are also high.
Top universities in the United States, such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the 8 Ivy League schools, as well as some schools in the TOP30, adopt a need-blind policy and provide different levels of scholarships and student loans based on family income. The channel of “poor families producing noble sons” is still there. 40% of Americans give up higher education opportunities for various reasons and choose vocational training and direct employment.
As for the saying that you can’t pay off your loans for a lifetime, it’s nonsense. Some people set a minimum repayment amount of a few hundred dollars a month after graduation so as not to affect their quality of life, so the repayment time is long and the interest is also paid more.
Some people repeatedly emphasize “compound interest”, which is actually compound interest. This is a globally accepted loan method. Our housing loans are also compound interest, and so are China’s student loans, but the government subsidizes the interest. If there is no interest, there is naturally no compound interest. The current interest rates on US loans are very high, and the interest rates on housing loans are also similar. Whether to borrow or not is a personal choice. Some people have to describe US student loans as “predatory usury”, which is really malicious and sensational.
In the United States, higher education is an investment. If you don’t participate in higher education, you will earn 50,000 USD/year after graduation; if you get a college degree, you may earn 80,000 to 100,000 after graduation, so the US government believes that this is a personal investment behavior and rarely provides subsidies. Old Biden sympathizes with the economic pressure on students and has signed bills many times during his term, exempting hundreds of thousands of students from student loans of up to hundreds of billions of USD.
Fortunately, Americans do not have the value of “all things are inferior, only reading is high”. When blue-collar workers, especially skilled blue-collar workers, there is no occupational discrimination, and some incomes are even higher than many white-collar workers, so 40% of Americans will not enter the university campus in their lifetime, and this proportion should be even higher in China.
There are also many Americans who will choose to study a skill at a cheap public community college, two-year associate degree, tuition 2000—5000 USD/academic year, and students in poverty can also have their tuition waived, and they earn about the same as ordinary white-collar workers after graduation (the median salary for Americans in 2024 is 70,000—80,000 USD/year.)
The accounts are basically settled. There are definitely some discrepancies, but it doesn’t affect the overall situation. If you have to pick on some individual cases, then you don’t want to really settle the accounts, you want to prove your preconceived view that “you live a happier life than Americans”, and you want to be unreasonable and act like a rogue, then you should crawl as far as you can. Saying so much is just to let everyone see that, under normal circumstances, if you earn 3,000 yuan or 10,000 yuan, who do you think’s money is more spendable? Don’t do any Tian Ji’s horse racing, and don’t take the few poor people in the United States who sell blood and shout “We’ve won!” That doesn’t represent the United States. We have many more dark examples, but that doesn’t represent China either. Look at our official data: 600 million people earn less than 1,000 yuan per month, and 900 million people earn less than 2,000 yuan per month. I think you still need to be humble and don’t lick your faces everywhere and say “We’ve won!” The gap is still very large, from 12,500 USD to 82,800 USD.
I have studied and worked in the United States for 5 years and have traveled between China and the United States for 20 years. I should know more about the United States than most people. You guys are running around and shouting “The sky is falling, the sky is falling”, which is even more ridiculous and stupid than when Ah Q shouted “Revolution, revolution! I can sleep with Wu Ma!”
Anyone with a little vision knows that the United States has never been a paradise, and China has never been hell. The happiness index of small cities in China’s fourth and fifth tiers is quite high, which is beyond doubt. But the per capita GDP difference between China and the United States is 6.5 times, and the purchasing power of life is three to five times different. This is also a fact. Is it so difficult to admit that others are living better than you? Are you so self-deprecating that you have to win?
Don’t be self-deprecating, and don’t deceive yourself, right?
You only know today that there are dishwashers in the United States, that some people have to work two jobs to earn tuition, and that some families worry about medical expenses. That’s because you are ignorant and have no experience, not because of other people’s problems. May I ask which public intellectual and intermediary told you that the United States is a paradise, and the government is waiting to feed you? You can pick up bundles of USD by bending over? You have a golden-haired beauty to massage your back when you get home? Are you dreaming?
The sky is falling, my ass! Get back to your mental hospital～
In fact, when looking at the United States, you don’t have to look up, and you don’t have to look down. It is an economically strong country, but with a population of more than 300 million, there must be people who are poor and rich, with advantages and disadvantages. Believing that you can lie down or make a fortune after going to the United States is your own ignorance. You are so ignorant that you have to wait for a few dishwashers and construction workers from Xiaohongshu, and then you “suddenly realize”: it turns out that ordinary Americans don’t eat steak every day, and not everyone has a Porsche! Isn’t this nonsense! Didn’t you know that Americans can’t afford McDonald’s? Didn’t you know that there are “zero-dollar shopping” and “shootings every day” everywhere in the United States? What are you pretending to “suddenly realize the sky is falling”?
The social structure of the United States is spindle-shaped, with small ends and a large middle. The middle class has not achieved financial freedom, and they still have to live within their means and plan their lives. Is this difficult to understand? The United States has never been a place to support lazy people. The middle class has almost no benefits that benefit everyone, and they have to work hard on their own. If you want to lie down and have a good life, it’s best to go to Europe, Canada, and Australia, with high taxes and high welfare, and the lives of ordinary people are more guaranteed. The state covers birth, old age, sickness, and death, but you can’t make a fortune.
Since there is no wool to be harvested, why do so many people still have to cross mountains and rivers and risk their lives to go to the United States?
This is what we often call the “American Dream”, that is, the belief that as long as you work hard and strive, you can get a better life. The charm of the United States lies in the fact that on that land, success has no ceiling, which is especially suitable for those who are ambitious, have clear goals, are smart and hardworking to venture out. The education there is good, the funds are sufficient, there are many entrepreneurial opportunities, and the environment is relaxed. As long as you are hardworking and smart enough, it is easier to achieve success.
The typical representative of the “American Dream” is Musk. A poor South African student, who illegally stayed in the United States to start a business, still received the favor of capital. It is difficult for any country in the world to support a foreigner with no foundation to become the richest man in the world.
Not everyone can become Musk. Why do ordinary people also flock to it? In addition to a small number of people following the crowd, the vast majority of people have clear goals and are aware of them: either for their children’s education, or for themselves to break through the bottleneck of their careers and live a relatively prosperous life. The United States has a good economy and relatively more job opportunities. You don’t need to work 996 or 007 to live a life with a house and a car. At least you don’t have to put “having a house, a car, and a betrothal gift” on your mind all the time when you are looking for a marriage partner. With the same effort, it is easier to reach the middle-class state in the United States.
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