this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
41 points (100.0% liked)

GenZedong

4406 readers
88 users here now

This is a Dengist community in favor of Bashar al-Assad with no information that can lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton, our fellow liberal and queen. This community is not ironic. We are Marxists-Leninists.

This community is for posts about Marxism and geopolitics (including shitposts to some extent). Serious posts can be posted here or in /c/GenZhou. Reactionary or ultra-leftist cringe posts belong in /c/shitreactionariessay or /c/shitultrassay respectively.

We have a Matrix homeserver and a Matrix space. See this thread for more information. If you believe the server may be down, check the status on status.elara.ws.

Rules:

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

(Obvious answer is socialism but I would like more specifics)

Often China, South Korea and Japan are treated as the "big three" of stress and expectations. Between their similar college entrance exams, demanding work schedules and environments, and social expectations for people to work hard and get rich and such.

But looking at suicide rates (which are only one piece of the puzzle of course) China places fairly low, at about 6.7 per 100,000 according to Wikipedia, half of Japan's and nearly a quarter of south korea's. Interestingly this is not just a cultural difference, as the Chinese province of Taiwan reports about 16 per 100,000 people, which is even higher than Japan. It also isn't the just case of a high density population compared to low density like Finland and Iceland, since Japan and the ROK fit this designation as well (as well as India, who has a rate even higher than Japan's)

The obvious answer is socialism, but that's a little broad and not how you actually solve things. Not to mention that cuba has a decently high rate too (although considering their current impoverishment it's not surprising). So what happened specifically? Poverty alleviation sure but that can't be all of it, I don't think so anyway.

(Additional notes and questions

A.The DPRK has a rate of 8, nearly a third of the ROK, suck it fake korea

B.Why is venezuala's rate so low? From the source Wikipedia uses its one of the lowest in the world, despite the generally high poverty and instability

C.Why is Afganistan's so low? Unsure if anyone has a concrete answer to this but I'm curious)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Not sure if your in the US but i am gonna put some tips in that i use to make money stretch farther.

One huge one is cell service. Mint Mobile requires you to pay by year, i usually use my tax return to pay it, but you can get basic service for like 200$ per year. Unlimited call/text and 5gb data a month. Much cheaper than a typical provider.

Use the instacart app to find deals in stores then go to buy them in person. Instacart usually has the same deals as the stores altho some are app specific. Its a great way to see what deals are around. Dont order thru their app tho cuz its more expensive that way. Just use it to find sales.

In a pinch every adult can sell blood plasma once every 2 weeks (some places dont have the same times to wait. It varies). You can find clinics near you online. I dont reccomend doing it regularly youll get a scar, but if your desperate it could help make ends meet. Its like giving blood kind of, but they just take the plasma, and it takes longer.

Dont be afraid to hit up the food banks near you. Thats what its there for, and it can save you money on groceries.

Make sure there arent government services your not taking advantage of that you could be. Food stamps, Unemployment for your son, medicaid, etc.

Last thing i can think of right now is some easy cheap foods. I can usually find a big bag of russet potatoes for 5$ or so on sale, and its a ton of food for the price. Plus theyre healthy when cooked right. (Not fried) Rice of course is a good one, dried beans, one thats a bit more involved is a whole chicken. The meat itself is a decent price but the real value comes from using the drippings and bones to make broth after you roast it and remove the meat. You can use that broth to make soup with canned vegetables, or put it on rice to add flavor. Some things take time to make but if youve got people at home with time to do it it can save money.

Lastly for shopping it can be tempting to entirely avoid more expensive stores. Like Publix is one near me thats more expensive generally. Sometimes though the more expensive stores have BETTER sale prices. Theyll put something up as a loss leader for a crazy low price. If you go and just get those sale items and do your other shopping somewhere cheaper you can save on some stuff. Especially if its something more expensive those high end stores will put it half off and not care if they take a loss. Since they make it up elsewhere.

Hope some of this helps you to make things stretch a little bit more.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

Thankfully, this happened just after a Costco run so we're not going to starve right away, I'm more worried about missing payments on bills in a couple of months when the little bit we'd squirreled away runs out. If things go well and one or both of them can get back to work before the end of the month/early March, we shouldn't be too bad, but I will definitely look at some of those. We're on an NVMO provider already, so our bill is less expensive than the big 3 at least. It's just overwhelming to think about and I'm just trying to keep myself sane.