You say it is propaganda but do you have an argument against his actual claims? Can you point out factual inaccuracies or omitted facts that are relevant?
That isn't entirely true, though. Your parents being poor often means you will be too simply because of the disadvantages it brings. Being a teacher is hardly a poor decision, but you will probably be poor because other people have decided it isn't worth it to pay you well.
My ex has very little chance of being anything but poor, no matter the decisions he makes. He's on disability due to a mental disorder: Anyone that is on disability, especially at a young age (no matter reason), is in the same boat.
The business you work at could close. Even if you made good enough decisions so far, you may or may not bounce back well. You might not have ever made enough money to be able to save 3 months worth of expenses, for example, and this is more likely if you are young and simply haven't had a chance. Or you might get cancer while working somewhere that isn't covered by FMLA (in the US, anyway) - and while you aren't likely to die, you also have no job and no insurance.
On the contrary, you can pretty much pile on debt if you make enough money to make the monthly payments and never really be poor. Just indebted. Heck, this might even mean you qualify for loans easier in the future as long as you don't fall behind. The person that lives in their means cannot always find the same fate.
This is a common refrain from people who believe that nearly 100% of the cause of poverty is in avoidable mistakes committed by stupid people in whom complete fault lies and who therefore deserve it. To avoid misinterpretation, you should consider elaborating, since I doubt you're one of those people.
That may be so, but this idea does absolutely nothing to help someone get out of poverty. If you were born to financially illiterate parents and grow up poor or end up poor as a result, pointing to how it was stuff out of your control that made you poor will lead to nothing else but continuing to stay poor until you start doing things and making choices that lead you out of that situation.
It sucks and isn't really fair, but the person best equipped to extract you from poverty is you. No one can make your choices for you, and you're far better off taking your life into your own hands and working to improve it than hoping that greater society will intervene on your behalf simply because your situation isn't favourable to you or because you're not entirely to blame for ending up in it.
I don't mind a wide car as long as it's not one of these absolutely fuck-ugly SUVs. They're a plague.
Go to any remotely rural place in the UK (especially if it's rich) and you'll see SUVs and 4x4 with no more than 2 people in them usually - basically just because there are some leaves on the ground, despite all the millions of Dollars, Euros and Pounds that have been spent on making normal cars safer, grip better and more efficient.
Edit: I fully expect to be seeing some Tesla Cybertrucks assuming they come to mass market.
People complain about SUVs with a lot of apparently unnecessary capability (4x4, holding lots of people), but the nature of car sales is that you kind of have to buy one that covers all use cases, because it's the only one you're going to have. I.e., maybe most of the time it's just you in the car, but you want to be able to haul you and your spouse and your parents around when they come to visit. Or you mostly commute to work, but want 4x4 for when you go skiing.
This is why long term, we need to move away from car ownership and toward something like Zipcar for all. In that world, you would just rent whatever vehicle you needed when you needed it. Step one is making it not just possible, but preferable to not own a car.
Most people don't need SUVs to go skiing, just good tires, chains, and a shovel. There's a good chance you'll need these things even if you have an SUV.
Also mhh__ was talking about rural UK. They don't have ski hills there (at least not ones with snow).
People complain about SUVs because
1. They are large and get in the way.
2. Their lights are high up, so they blind you when they tail-gate you at night.
3. They often have poor drivers, possibly because they have large blind spots, possibly other socio-economic reasons.
4. They tend to hit pedestrians and cyclists above their center of gravity, so they knock you down under the wheels instead of up and over the windshield
> but the nature of car sales is that you kind of have to buy one that covers all use cases, because it's the only one you're going to have.
Exactly. My budget only allows for one car (more precisely: my apartment only gives me one parking space). That car has to be able to do all the things I would want to be able to do. That includes driving to work in a snowstorm. That includes potentially giving my nieces and nephews (who are young enough to need car seats) rides to family functions. That includes hauling an entire warehouse's worth of networking equipment and cables to a job site. That includes occasionally having to drive on unpaved mountain roads.
An SUV is a pretty darn good intersection of those needs.
I feel the same way. I have a VW Atlas. It’s big but I often take advantage of its size including road trips with 4 adults, two kids in car seats, and luggage. I think
I use the volume of it enough to justify a large vehicle versus renting one when needed.
Unfortunately I can’t afford To also have a small car for the times I don’t need the volume. I definitely feel a little guilty when there are only 2 people in it.
My wife likes to drive an SUV because of the high vantage point of visibility for the driver, and because it's easer to put kids in a car seat when you don't have to bend over.
There are reasons people like SUVs other than "leaves on the ground".
Ironically that's why we had to get one in the first place. However, in the US, SUVs and Pickups outnumber sedans, so the majority of people sit at the same vantage point.
I don't think that's a casual relationship though. SUV drivers are probably more distracted because they are more likely to have kids in the back, they might just be worse drivers, etc. Too many factors to say if it's the SUV's fault.
One easy way to find out is to compare proneness to pedestrian collision—fatal and non-fatal—and see if the difference is nearly as great as when comparing only fatal accidents.
But I really don’t see why you’d even guess otherwise. Much larger and taller front compared to a smaller car means it’ll basically hit your abdomen instead of your legs. Higher weight means tha it’ll hit you with greater energy, and won’t brake as easily. In my mind, of course pedestrian accidents involving SUVs are more often fatal, so I wonder what goes on in yours when you say that you think they aren’t.
Is it because there are leaves on the ground? Or because it is worth the extra price to occasionally have the ability to drive 6 people around or haul all your gear up to the mountain safely or to feel safer on the road?
I've got a narrower than average car, and it's nice to fit in garages, tight parking spaces, narrow ferry lanes, etc. The seats are a little narrow, but not too bad. For some reason they built it so the turning radius is worse than a mini-van though.
China has been covering it up for 2 months. Minimal action was taken to prevent the disease from spreading and they kept denying until a couple days ago when it was no longer possible to cover it up because it is spreading to neighboring countries who have been complaining for the whole time. Regional/local governments have been trying to downplay it because it makes them "look bad". It is essentially a replay of SARS. Only admit and take action when it's too late.
China doesn't get to decide the scientific consensus. Teams of scientists spanning multiple countries + NGOs like the WHO make the risk assessment. The reason the scientific consensus was that there was no human-human transmission was because...there was no evidence of human-human transmission. All previous cases could be directly traced back to the market, and there were previously no clear evidence of healthcare workers or relatives with no exposure to the market but exposure to an infected individual getting sick.
Unlike anonymous users online, professional scientists can't make a claim, especially a very serious one, without evidence. If they do so, later the public will crucify them if it turns out the virus actually cannot spread from human-human.
It's only in the past three days that it because clear that there is evidence of people who don't have a direct link to the market being infected. A big reason for this breakthrough was that the genome of the virus was identified (by, yes, Chinese scientists working within two weeks of realizing a novel outbreak, which is also impressive). This genome sequence makes possible very sensitive tests for identifying infected people more accurately.
Hence, in the light of this new information, the scientific consensus has been updated to reflect likely human-human transmission.
Please stop spreading false information and unnecessary hatred. This only makes the response to a crisis worse.
Well, in this case professional scientists actually made claims about the classification of the virus as soon as they had evidence, and before the government had put out an official statement. But then they got prosecuted for "spreading rumors" and people stopped talking publicly about the progress of their research.
Now the government is getting criticized for this by e.g. Hu Fanzhu of East China Normal University's National Discourse Environment Research Center, whose open letter you might want to read if you think stopping people from "spreading false information" is what's important here.
All previous cases that had been reported to the WHO could be directly traced back to the market. That might be a rather important distinction if the rumours about regional and local governments covering up possible cases are accurate...
The Chinese central government has already admitted their officials have been trying to cover it up. The president Xi had made it clear that he would "nail" the officials who are covering it up on the "pillar of shame" and those people will be "criminals of 10 thousand years".
It's really sad to see that Chinese scientist and health workers are somehow 'sacrificed' due to some covering up of some regional and local official. When people refer to China I think it's more like the local officials who have done all the cover-up not only to 'save face' but more like to save their position. Yeah but I agree that a distinction between groups of Chinese people has to be clarified and referred to more precisely.
It is just pointless bashing, covering up 2 months? Think how this pandemic had escalated in a week, and neighboring countries will not notice it for 2 months?
I don't think you follow the news there. Just because you've only heard it yesterday doesn't make it new. The neighbouring countries have been on guard on the issue. There have been lots of news, leaks and complaints on this issue for the past several weeks. In fact the wet market in Wuhan had been officially "closed" for at least 3 weeks due to the disease. That means the pandemic has been spreading far longer than that.
Now they suddenly started to release updated numbers (due to pressure from their neighbouring countries) and you think it'd only "escalated in a week".
I have been following the issue since start of this month from Chinese media, where is the covering up?
Where is due to the pressure part? At first there had not been showing enough evidence of the virus's capacity to spread from human to human, which only confirmed recently because the medical staff gets infected and 2 cases in Guangdong, so the alert level is much lower than it is now.
You can blame the Chinese authority for not fully predicting the severity of the situation, but intentionally covering stuff up is a different accusation you better have strong evidence to support that.
Firstly there isn't one case confirmed in HongKong yet.
Secondly, the virus could take up to 2 weeks to start showing symptoms and it is only until recently the method to detect this virus efficiently had been discovered.
This is a new virus, and its behavior takes time to understand.
> Firstly there isn't one case confirmed in HongKong yet.
[0], [1]
I agree this is a new virus we know little about, but did you know folks in Wuhan were still gathering in crowds without any precautions [2], and ppl got caught spreading so-called fake news of this virus?
