The product of generational convincing of populations to have automatic irrational fear of anything that isn't ultra-capitalism.
People in the US don't actually starve to death. They die from exposure and malnutrition first 🙃
I remember one time when I was very young and working as cashier at a grocery store a family came through (mom, dad, and like 2 year old kid). They scanned their EBT card and it came up like 1.25$ short. The mom said she would put the bread back and I just did a manual coupon for 1.25$ to 0 out their balance instead. They acted as if I'd just done something so amazing for them but like this is a multi-million dollar company I think it can afford to give you a 1.25$ coupon so you can have bread? To me it wasn't even a big deal. We gave stupid boomers coupons to shut them up when they compained all the time. But America is so backwards that helping someone out in need is seen as a shocking thing. While it's entirely normal to give free stuff to annoying petit-bourgeois who are having a temper tandrum.
Many places in the US have laws that prevent you from feeding the homeless. Most, if not every state has laws to prevent you from dumpster diving, but also laws to prevent you from giving away food that you're going to throw away. Kids can rack up lunch debt.
"School lunch debt" is one of the most vile phrases in the English language.
my job throws away mountains of food and we'll be fired if we take any home even though we all openly did for years until a guy was like no that's against corporate policy
burger king had a lock on their food waste bin.. i used to purposely leave it unlocked in the hopes it was helping someone somewhere
Another benefit of US users getting on Red Note and learning about Chinese culture was the average Chinese person finding out how bad it really is in the US. Obviously things don't compare to some parts of the world, but a lot of them honestly didn't believe we have such a problem of homelessness, drug use, poverty, and so on.
NGL I'm skeptical of all these "I went to China and everything and everyone was BASED!" posts.
I think China is a geopolitical force for good on the world, but it's also a big country that I'm sure has lots of disfunction and people who are assholes.
I think it makes sense when you remember that alot of the bad is being controlled out of it through people being tourists and likely not speaking high level or in many cases any Chinese.
Tourists are not really going to interact with many/if any of the systems with real issues like the hukou system but will have daily interaction with systems that work incredibly well like the metros.
And then through not speaking the language spotting assholes becomes exponentially less likely.
China doesn't have to be BASED, and likely isn't. It just has to be better enough than the US, which in the 2020s is an embarrassingly low bar to pass.
more like since the 1770s
(Wouldn't be surprised if this quote was originally meant to be chauvinistic or mean-spirited given it comes from the arch-neocolonialist and generalissimo of failing upwards, though China Daily seems to represent it in a positive light.)
I don't know much about China, what structures does China have in place to help folks who can't afford food, or don't have enough? Are there things we could learn from them about how to adress hunger?
In the US I feel like the main ways we aim to adress that are food banks and food programs like WIC. Which I frankly also dont know a ton about
The issue with food banks and food programs is that they often do little to address the underlying cause, which is that housing is not a guaranteed right. Difficult to store stuff long term if you have nowhere to store it. Fresh shit is basically right out.
The other thing is that most, if not all, of these private organizations are tied to religious organizations, most of which (Unitarian Universalists ftw here) make you attend a service or join a group in order to have basic access to these things. Hell around here, even the domestic abuse shelters are all run by Christian fundamentalist groups, and while it is good that someone is doing it, they actively turn away trans survivors because 'they are actually men'.
The issue is that it isn't a right. We give up so much to the state in terms of freedom and we don't even get the right to the basic security of goods.
That isn't to say that China doesn't have its own issues, but in giving up some of your freedoms your are guaranteed some level of basic security.
welfare system called the Five Guarantees (五保) if you want to look into it further. as far as I understand it if you qualify for the Three Withouts (三无): without livelihood source, without the ability to work, and without family support then the state guarantees basic food, clothing, housing, medical care, and burial expenses
Damn if they don't live for Number Plural Noun over there
Five Guarantees, Four Cardinal Principles, Three Withouts, Two Whatevers, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree
And I believe there was/is an 'n' number of household appliances, as a sort of economic benchmark, which has been revised a few times. However now I can't find any details about it.
Three Alls.
yikes, not as fun
Sadly the most mild 
The harsh reality is that if you have some sort of redeemable quality to the capitalist class (a lot of the time that means being white and neurotypical), you can at least be thrown into the mix of a comically absurd bureaucratic pipeline (local and statewide orgs as well as Christian churches) giving you the bare minimum
If you miss one channel along the way though, you will surely be shamed by liberals for not accepting help
A thousand points of light
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Slop posts go in c/slop. Don't post low-hanging fruit here.
