You are grade A delusional if you think you are better off in Mexico.
Shit is getting more difficult financially,100% agree. It's still an absurdly rich nation. Jesus Christ, who believes this shit?
I thought the whole joke in the comic was the weird situation
I thought the point was that immigrants don't go to America to not work
It's Lemmy. It's popular to think the us is some dystopian nightmare. I'm not saying "love it or leave it" or anything even remotely like that, but the level of cluelessness here about how privileged most people living in the us are is mind boggling.
People in the US should not wait until conditions deteriorate to levels seen elsewhere before voicing concerns. I wouldn't call what they have privileges, as people had to fight for them in the past. The privileges you're talking about are not something that fell from the sky. Moreover, there's no guarantee these privileges will remain without continual effort to preserve them.
Can you not see the huge world between "voicing concerns" and claiming we are in a dystopian nightmare? Do you really not realize how privileged Americans are to live in a place - with shit like easy access to clear water, a stable peaceful society, many rights, and our social systems even understanding it lags our peers?
Yes of course you can be voice concerns. That should have been clear when I said I'm not "love it or leave it."
But, dear god, stop defending the stupid " were in a dystopian nightmare!" Because that's just straight up cluelessness.
No, I can't, because echo chambers in social media where the most extreme people are gathered don't represent the world.
And you should convince people to do that by presenting blatantly false information? People see this, roll their eyes, and call you crazy outside these echo chambers.This is propaganda veiled as humor. A good candidate for/c/theleftcantmeme if you'd like to draw a parallel content here.
Some people need to get off internet more often, read less news, if they can't laugh at a primitive joke because they read too much context.
Political brain rot
I mean it's almost certainly going to fall within our lifetime, that same privilege will also come to bite us. The 3rd largest population in the world that has next to zero experience living like the rest of the world. When it falls it's gonna fall hard.
I'm not sure how you calculated it to be "almost certain" but based on these dopes who have clearly had access to education and are lucky enough to have Internet, you're right that if they face actual adversity like much of the rest of the world, it won't be pretty.
It's Lemmy. It's popular to think the us is some dystopian nightmare
ikr, i'd rather stay in reddit where at least my fellow brethren will defend our pride without question like a rabid mob.
the level of cluelessness here about how privileged most people living in the us are is mind boggling
There are privileged people living in even in hell holes like North Korea and Russia too, my guy. And everyone knows how US came to be and why it's insanely "rich and privileged", so it isn't the flex you think it is.
It's like Russian living in Ukraine, off of Ukrainians suffering and calling Russians privileged.
But you do. That's your education system with a large dose of propaganda for ya. Blame everyone else but yourself for all your problems.
Grade A patriotism.
There are privileged people living in even in hell holes like North Korea and Russia too, my guy.
Yeah but not "most" which is an important modifying word that I used. Clearly you're not arguing in good faith, lying about what I said and then using that lie to make up a position I take and then claim that's the result of propaganda.
If you want to respond to what I actually said, feel free to make an honest attempt. But if you feel the need to be this dishonest, then it's clear you know I have a point.
As an American, we are overdue for such karma.
That said, I would fear for the world. Our glass national ego, especially among our entrenched power, wouldn't be able to handle it, and we would likely go on a militarized rampage if our economy collapsed.
We aren't mature enough to do otherwise.
Unfortunately that is our future unless we grow to change.
It's your present, mate. Your economy owes a lot to the countries you destroy and pillage already.
Eat your vegetables sweetie, there are fat children in the US who have nothing to eat
nothing to eat except Taco Bell
FTFY
I...don't get the joke?
If the US were going through a recession and suffering from high unemployment, and Mexico wasn't, then this would be a funny and topical (if obvious) joke.
But actually, US unemployment is stubbornly, almost weirdly low (at 4%), and GDP is growing faster than Mexico's. Even, like, real inflation-adjusted median income is going up steadily in the US.
So is the joke just, "Imagine if a poor country had to send money to a rich country! That's not happening, of course, but can you imagine if it did?"
It turns out unemployment is low if you don't count most of the people that are unemployed!
You're talking about people not in the labor market? That's another number you can look up, you know...it's down a few percentage points from 2000, but holding steady in line with the past 5 years, after a sharp drop due to COVID.
Two things to consider: first, a low rate of unemployment means it's much easier for those people to rejoin the labor force, if they want. And second, this includes people of all ages, including the Boomers, who are retiring en masse, which I would guess largely explains the rise starting in the mid 70s, as the boomers hit working age, and the fall starting in 2010, when the first of them started to retire.
As far as participation by "working age" people who are able to work, I see a sharp fall from 80.5% in ~2006 (pre-financial crisis) alll the way down to 77.5% today. And of course, you can factor in boomers retiring early there. Oh, and actually that only includes men, so we should also consider shifting social mores: it's far more acceptable for a man to be a stay-at-home parent than it used to be, for example.
Altogether...I still don't find the comic very timely.
That's not it, unemployed is someone who doesn't have a job but is looking for one. If you don't have a job and isn't looking for one, that doesn't go into the calculation otherwise my wife and kids would be counted as unemployed.
Is that what has happened?? Doctored statistics or some shit? Curious to know more.
No, that's not what happened. See my reply. It's true that the unemployment rate only factors in people who are actively working or looking for work: if you don't look for work for a certain number of months, you aren't factored in the 'labor market' anymore, so children and retirees aren't included, but also stay-at-home parents, people playing games in their parents' basement, people who took a few years off to travel, etc.
But that number hasn't changed dramatically in the past few years (well, except of course for a sharp rise in 2020 followed by a quick fall in 2021...). It has risen in the past few decades, but there are reasons for that (boomers aging out of the labor force, for example).
There's not some crazy new secret unemployment crisis.
Ah-ha. So basically people are working, they just aren't getting paid enough. Is that right?
What do you mean, is this a thing in the US?
It is a thing, people who aren't actively looking for work (or working) aren't factored into unemployment numbers. A stay-at-home parent isn't considered unemployed, or the unemployment numbers would be closer to 40%.
Basically, the unemployment rate means: what share of people are looking for work, but can't find any?
This also means that there's a certain number of people who try to find work, aren't able to find any, and eventually just give up to (stereotypically) move into their parents' basement or whatever. I take it that AFaithfulNihilist is implying that the number of those people is rising significantly, but there's not really any evidence for that.
A few issues with using Unemployment and GDP to get a pulse check on the economy, namely that having a job does not meaning you're making anywhere near enough to survive even modestly and GDP is Gross Domestic Product which.. just means we're being productive?
Shit costs more, we're being paid less, groceries are getting close to matching what I pay in rent, and I rarely feel like I can take a day off from work without getting behind financially. There is very little air to breathe. No room for mistakes.
The joke is that we used to be in a spot where sending money to Mexico made sense because they had 'tighter margins' and now the reverse is true. Most of us are living on a fucking thread with no ability to make real plans for the future. It's bleak in America.
Yeah, so, anticipating that argument, I included inflation-adjusted median income in my original comment. That is, the income of an average American household after factoring in price rises due to inflation. If you ignore the spike in 2020 (which I'm pretty sure was just the COVID bailouts--and incidentally, the cause of subsequent inflation), Americans--median Americans, not the ultra-wealthy, not the 1% or the 10%, are doing better than they've ever done in history.
Of course, that doesn't include rises in housing costs, education & healthcare, which by some calculations largely nullify the apparent rise in income. But overall? Mexico is not sending remittance to the US to help poor struggling Americans. In fact...
And a common misconception is that we arrived at this point due to inflation, which is not the case. Corporations have increased prices due to covid, which was fair, and have refused to lower them. This is becoming more apparent across all industries including homes where the price goes up not because of some external force but for the same reason since the dawn of capitalism.
Fucking greed.
Do you genuinely think that giving Americans a few hundred bucks caused immediate and persistent inflation? Because I'm more inclined to blame the spike on a collapse in the global supply chain due to quarantining of factory workers and container ship crews, and the subsequent increases on a combination of factors, including interest rates (or, more accurately, what caused the raise in interest rates) and corporate greed.
They say America as if they live in another continent...
"America" generally refers to the USA. People use "North America" or "South America" when referring to the continents. Since, y'know, "America" isn't the name of any continent.
Depends on language and culture and context. In the United States we use America to refer to the country and North America and South America to refer to the continents. Many Latin American countries use a six continent system though, where North America and South America are just one continent called America. This can lead to some tension and confusion when people from the United States call themselves American, since that would imply everyone in the western hemisphere bascially. While sometimes "Americano" is used to refer to people from the United States, you'll also you get descriptors like "estadounidense" in Spanish for this reason. Though this also has ambiguity, since technically Mexico is also a "united states."
Anyways, point is, a seven continent system with the western hemisphere separated into north and south America isn't used everywhere, for some people America is a continent. In some places Europe and Asia are combined, and there's other variations too. None of them like up with plate tectonics or anything perfectly, so they're all a little arbitrary in the end.
Sure, but consider this: the ones who travel and say "I'm from America" sound like boneheads, and ones who say "I'm from the US" sound more thoughtful.
Source: American who's spent a bunch of time learning through mistakes while traveling.
You should always listen to context. Languages are not competely logical.
The United States of America (USA or U.S.A.), commonly known as the United States (US or U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America, between Canada and Mexico.
Source: Wikipedia
This has been pretty much true for every country I have visited or lived in, except one time in France some one referred to my Canadian cousin as American.
"America" or "Americas" can refer to the continents which is why you should pay attention to context. When someone says they have an American citizenship, they are not citizens of a continent.
In this comic, if someone is in North America, when they say America, they are referring to USA.
The comic's usage of "America" is correct.
Don't bother, by the time people start the "USians" stage they generally can't be argued with and will only be pleased by the entire USA being skinned alive.
In my experience USians is usually used by weird liberals who are in favor of manifest destiny, but are worried about the racist baggage attached to the term. Go to Toronto or Tijuana and insist that the locals are Americans and you'll get your teeth knocked out.
The Dutch, Austrians, and large amounts of Switzerland are technically Germans. But if suddenly people from the Federal Republic of Germany started going on about how Austrians are also technically Germans, and you should refer to people from FRG as Bundesen, all of Europe would start to freak the fuck out.
They? Bro it’s a comic.
That just forwards the stupidity to the author. So the point stands.
You can't even draw the curtains.
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