[HN Gopher] Koreans react to startling results in Pew "what make...
___________________________________________________________________
Koreans react to startling results in Pew "what makes life
meaningful" poll
Author : debo_
Score : 61 points
Date : 2021-11-24 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (koreaexpose.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (koreaexpose.com)
| terrorOf wrote:
| People got to consider at least two following points:
|
| - Chosun Ilbo is news media that is right-wing and always produce
| news articles (even fake news) that against left-wing parties
| inc. current government. Many Koreans do not trust Chosun Ilbo. I
| have no idea why Chosun Ilbo was even interviewed. - South Korea
| has even poorer than any other countries only 50-60 years ago.
| There was pretty much nothing to feed on back then after the
| Korean War which was happened after Japanese horrible invasion
| was just over. This is different situation than any European
| countries.
| lisper wrote:
| What an egregiously misleading title. The actual underlying facts
| are that South Koreans' resposes to a survey about what makes
| life meaningful were different (when placed in rank order) from
| all of the other countries in the survey. Not _absent_ , just
| _different_. And also, if you actually look at the numbers, not
| all that much different.
| politician wrote:
| Maybe? The final two paragraphs:
|
| "What the Pew survey shows isn's that Koreans are far more
| materialistic than their counterparts in other developed
| economies. It's that Korea suffers from an absence of
| existential purpose.
|
| Many of its people say they have nothing to live for, and
| that's the country's biggest problem."
| lisper wrote:
| But the data don't support that conclusion at all. It's a
| _value judgement_ that materialism is somehow invalid as an
| existential purpose.
| politician wrote:
| That's a good point. Historically, groups religious and
| otherwise have looked unfavorably on the idea that one's
| purpose in life is to concentrate material wealth for one's
| self. Acceptable beneficiaries are usually the government
| or family or religion, depending on the period.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Yep. I've replaced the title with something more neutral now.
| Unfortunately I actually had to write something new (this is
| almost never necessary-- https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&
| page=0&prefix=true&que...).
| debo_ wrote:
| Ah, I didn't realise I was supposed to rewrite headlines
| under certain conditions. I understood the rule to be "use
| the headline as written, even if you can think of a better
| summary." I'll try that next time.
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! The rule is " _Please use the original title,
| unless it is misleading or linkbait; don 't editorialize._"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| There's sort of a subrule, which is below the detail line
| that makes sense to include in the guidelines, but which is
| a good practice: when changing a misleading or linkbait
| title, try to use representative, neutral language from the
| article itself. You can usually find that somewhere,
| whether in a subtitle, the HTML doc title, a photo caption,
| the first paragraph, or even a 'thesis statement', as high
| school English teachers used to call them, buried somewhere
| in the middle of the piece. That way the article still gets
| to speak for itself; more so, in fact, because media
| headlines are usually written by someone other than the
| author. It's almost never necessary to make up language to
| replace a baity title with. I did so in this case, but
| that's rare.
| tmm wrote:
| The actual survey results seem more interesting:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/11/18/what-makes-lif...
|
| For instance it highlights the finding that 62% of South Koreans
| and 58% of Japanese respondents provided only one source of
| meaning in life vs only 1% of Spanish respondents and then goes
| on to clarify how that skews the results:
|
| > These differences help explain why the share giving a
| particular answer in certain publics may appear much lower than
| others, even if the topic is the top mentioned source of meaning
| for that given public. To give a specific example, 19% of South
| Koreans mention material well-being while 42% say the same in
| Spain, but the topic is ranked first in South Korea and second in
| Spain. Given this, researchers have chosen to highlight not only
| the share of the public who mention a given topic but also its
| relative ranking among the topics coded, both in the text and in
| graphics.
| franciscop wrote:
| This might be a direct consequence of language; in Spanish,
| when you ask questions like this you are normally specifying
| whether you expect a single or multiple answers by default
| (akin to "what thing(s) make life meaningful", noting that you
| can ask with or without the "s" but that _is_ a choice). In
| Japanese, singular and plural are not distinct except in very
| particular situations, and IIRC the singular is normally the
| default unless context makes you think it 's plural, so I
| expect this to contribute greatly (akin to "which makes life
| meaningful?"). I don't know Korean to comment on that though.
| didibus wrote:
| These surveys in my opinion are meaningless (pun intended). It
| depends too much on interpretation, who answered them, what their
| current life situation is, and most importantly the set of
| answers is too reductionist, and can't possibly capture a complex
| dynamic system like human meaning and happiness.
| smexy wrote:
| In Korean and most Asian cultures, it goes without saying that
| material well-being is a means to supporting your family.
|
| I wouldn't take much away from a multiple choice question about
| such big, abstract, interconnected concepts.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| To be fair, if you don't have material well being, you can't
| afford your partners healthcare and ...
|
| The ability to provide for your family is also key .
| franciscop wrote:
| That's mainly in the US; in e.g. EU you can afford your
| partners healthcare because it's been already paid with your
| taxes. In Japan it's "affordable" and I am unsure of Korea but
| if media is correct it's not as cheap as Japan.
| kazen44 wrote:
| i don't know if the survey stated it as suchs, but material
| wellbeing doesn't mean you need money (per se). It usually
| means you have the means to live your life in safety. having
| proper infrastructure, housing, food etc to not have to worry
| about basic needs in life. (like, getting food).
| dsizzle wrote:
| Supposedly the group is more important than the individual in
| "Eastern" cultures,
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170118-how-east-and-wes...
| so it's perhaps curious that Korea is the outlier in rating
| "family" relatively low.
| angelzen wrote:
| That is a rather superficial "narrative" article that ignores
| the major impact of industrialization on culture. It is not
| Western vs. Eastern cultures, it is pre-industrial vs.
| industrial cultures. Obviously, within those two big clusters
| there are differences, the point is that those differences are
| dwarfed by the industrialization variable.
| dsizzle wrote:
| Anecdotally I first heard this distinction from a Japanese
| person, that Japanese culture is more "collectivist" than in
| the US. The article includes general statements like this
| that also include Japan:
|
| > Generally speaking - there are many exceptions - people in
| the West tend to be more individualist, and people from Asian
| countries like India, Japan or China tend to be more
| collectivist.
|
| One thing Japan is not is "pre-industrial"!
|
| As an aside, you labeled the article as superficial, but I
| thought it actually went deeper into some nuance. For
| instance, it mentions that in Hokkaido, people tend to be
| more individualistic, possibly because it's a "frontier" of
| sorts compared to the rest of Japan. And the US is largely
| populated by people who (themselves or their ancestors) went
| to a similar "frontier".
| SlowBall wrote:
| In Spanish the idiom "Salud, dinero y amor" (health, wealth, and
| love, in that order) is (very) commonly used when talking about
| what's important in life. I wonder if that had an influence in
| the results for Spain, which seem quite different from the rest
| of European countries.
| singold wrote:
| My grandma used to say that and added "que lo demas, todo se
| arregla" (that everything else can be fixed).
|
| I'm not from Spain but from a Spanish speaking country
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps this explains the quirky TV shows like Squid game, which
| basically revolves around the misplaced idea that if one can't
| have wealth, they might as well be dead.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| The characters weren't just poor, they were in crippling debt
| or desperately needed money for other pressing reasons.
| terrorOf wrote:
| That person surely hasn't watched the show so no idea about
| it in the first place.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| Definitely. Some of the most powerful scenes in that show stem
| from the notion that a life crippled by debt is worse than no
| life at all.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I would recommend reading the entire article before drawing any
| conclusions, not just the headline or the summary graphic.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| pretty hard to square the results with lived experience on
| several fronts. For one Singapore turns out to allegedly rank
| material well being-relatively low, when from personal experience
| it's kind of 'late capitalist' on steroids even compared to SK or
| other East-Asian countries. Often in Singapore when I asked what
| people do for fun the first answer was 'go to the mall'. SK still
| does have a fairly active cultural life besides work in
| comparison and a thriving art scene.
|
| The general trend of a lack of life satisfaction beyond material
| terms is right but I'd say it's a global condition, somewhat more
| intense in East-Asia but not by much, the differences in the
| survey seem random or probably dependent on how open people are
| about these questions.
| didibus wrote:
| I think oftentimes people find meaning in what they can have,
| because simply put, you have too, otherwise your life would be
| meaningless.
|
| So I wonder if that means a lot of countries still see that
| material wellbeing, health, hobbies, nature, travel, new
| experiences, romantic partners, friends, etc. are all too hard to
| have or keep or sustain, where-as family is all you end up with,
| and thus what you have to find meaning in of itself?
|
| That would mean from a different lens, seeing family as number
| one would be indicative of issues in that country in acquiring
| anything more? And if you were to see family rank low, it be a
| good sign, which means that you don't have to find meaning in
| family, because while you have family, you also have other
| avenues you can rely on to find meaning.
| zwkrt wrote:
| if it's worked for 10000 years I wouldn't be so quick to knock
| it.
| didibus wrote:
| That just reinforces my statement. For 10000 years, most
| people only had family, because they couldn't afford the
| cost/time for friends, material wellbeing, good health,
| nature, travel, new experiences, etc. Thus you had to find
| meaning in family.
|
| My thesis is that you will always find meaning in what you
| have. If your whole family is dead, you might find meaning in
| your pet dog for example, or in your friends. Similarly, if
| you only have family, you will find meaning in them.
|
| Family tends to be the only thing you are given for free at
| birth, so it makes sense that it ends up what most people
| find meaning in. All the other stuff require work/chance on
| your part to acquire. And are thus much harder to lean on to
| find meaning, since they can be easily taken away, or simply
| be unaccessible to you.
|
| Which means maybe in a country that shows other things beyond
| family as what they find meaning in is actually a sign that
| in that country people are easily able to have a lot more
| than just family, and can thus find meaning in more things.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| _Besides material well-being (19 percent), the things that are
| more likely to give Koreans meaning in life are health (17
| percent), family (16 percent), general satisfaction (12 percent),
| society (8 percent), personal freedom (8 percent) and work (6
| percent).
|
| But even then these higher levels of interest are far below the
| median, except in the category of general satisfaction, where
| Korea has the second-highest portion of respondents (12 percent)
| saying they are satisfied with life, after Germany at 17 percent
| (at the other end of the spectrum only two percent of Americans
| say they are satisfied with life, and one percent in Greece)._
|
| If "material well-being" was at 19%, health 17%, and family 16%,
| that doesn't sound like an outlier in and of itself, and not
| entirely that alarming. Somewhat concerning to me is in the next
| statement, where it's stated that only 2% of Americans say they
| are satisfied with life, compared to 17% of Germans. As an
| American, that speaks volumes about our lifestyle and culture,
| and I find it disappointing. Satisfaction is contagious; I want
| to live among others who feel this way. Most of my friends work
| from home and are either alone most of the time, or have
| significant others but few friends whom they see on an active
| basis.
|
| Secondly, I wonder (not trying to cast doubt, genuinely wonder)
| how surveymakers level-set these questions to be linguistically
| neutral. How do they account for "material well-being"
| translating perfectly across most European and some Asian
| languages? Or even the expression "meaningful"? Just something I
| think about when it comes to large surveys.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > As an American, that speaks volumes about our lifestyle and
| culture, and I find it disappointing.
|
| I wonder if the dissatisfaction started the tribal political
| wars, or if the wars precipitated the dissatisfaction. In the
| end, I think that much of the problem lies with politics at
| this point, regardless of whether it was the chicken or the
| egg.
| pestaa wrote:
| So in a way, does the current political atmosphere fulfill
| our need to feel dissatisfied?
| nomorecommas wrote:
| I think that's probably true for some. It's a kind of
| perverse power fantasy. Fills the void of knowing deep down
| that you've never done anything worthwhile, and never will.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| You may have a good point there. Life has been so peaceful
| over the last 50 years or so (at least in the grand scheme
| of things; by comparison the earlier part of the 20th
| century was all kinds of exciting). So we need things to
| complain about.
| dboat wrote:
| The problem lies with all of the little ways a dysfunctional
| democracy fails to take care of it's people. I don't think it
| makes any sense to suggest dissatisfaction causes these
| policies.
|
| Politics is the culprit only in the sense that many otherwise
| straightforwardly practical issues have become politicized to
| the point that objectively poorer and often dangerously
| irresponsible choices are preferable to any choice that is
| associated with one's political opponents.
|
| Looking at it this way, it is clearly the political situation
| that is causing dissatisfaction.
| titanomachy wrote:
| "it's stated that only 2% of Americans say they are satisfied
| with life, compared to 17% of Germans"
|
| This isn't actually what the original study says, it was quoted
| in a confusing way by this article. 2% is the number of
| Americans who "refrain from offering detailed responses,
| responding instead that they are satisfied with life, that they
| feel fulfilled, or something else broadly general but still
| positive." [0]
|
| So 17% of Germans find life fulfilling but don't particularly
| feel inclined to share their reasoning.
|
| The percentage of Americans who find meaning from _some_ source
| is clearly much higher, although I 'm having a hard time
| finding that number.
|
| [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/11/18/general-
| rather...
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Current statistics seem to suggest that around 82% of people
| in the US are satisfied with their lives [0].
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if these numbers are inflated, but
| it's way more than 2%.
|
| Actually US mean satisfaction is higher than most places in
| Europe [2]. I don't doubt that social isolation and culture
| are a problem, but it's nothing compared to extreme poverty
| and not being safe.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/happiness-cantril-
| ladder [2]
| https://thehill.com/homenews/news/537118-americans-
| personal-...
| jakeinspace wrote:
| That question which the article claims is asking whether
| respondents are generally happy with their lives was completely
| misinterpreted. I had a difficult time discerning the meaning
| of it without seeking out the actual appendix from the PEW
| study. But certainly more than 2% of americans are happy in
| life, we're not all that depressed and stressed out.
| bartart wrote:
| Yeah, the actual pew summary for that question was "Germans
| more likely than those in other publics to say they are
| satisfied while offering few specifics".
|
| It seems like the takeaway is only two percent of Americans
| say vague positive things when talking about what gives them
| life satisfaction, with many more saying specific positive
| things
| Camillo wrote:
| > Secondly, I wonder (not trying to cast doubt, genuinely
| wonder) how surveymakers level-set these questions to be
| linguistically neutral. How do they account for "material well-
| being" translating perfectly across most European and some
| Asian languages? Or even the expression "meaningful"? Just
| something I think about when it comes to large surveys.
|
| We're talking about survey professionals here. Experts. To
| suggest that they did not take care in aligning translations in
| an international survey is borderline insulting.
|
| On the other hand, the article says:
|
| > But in these four European countries many provide more than
| one answer to the question on what makes life meaningful so
| material well-being is pushed down to the position of the
| second- or third-most common answer.
|
| > (Interestingly, in Asian countries respondents were far more
| likely to mention only one source of meaning in life, with
| Koreans most likely to do so at 62 percent.)
|
| Which to me sounds like most Koreans might have not realized
| that they were expected to provide multiple answers. I can
| easily see that happening, given that European languages tend
| to have grammatical plural ("Please list the most important
| things that give meaning to your life"), while Korean doesn't,
| AFAIK.
|
| So yes, I guess it's entirely possible that they fucked up the
| basics of their international survey.
| rossitter wrote:
| > "Please list the most important things that give meaning to
| your life"
|
| The actual English-language version[0]:
|
| > ...What about your life do you currently find meaningful,
| fulfilling or satisfying? What keeps you going and why?
|
| So respondents in English were not prompted to list more than
| one item. _What_ is not marked for plurality.
|
| Unfortunately I've only been able to turn out the English-
| language prompts for this study.
|
| As far as Korean goes, it might not require speakers to mark
| (certain) nouns for plurality, but there are of course common
| ways to do so when desired. There is a particle (deul), and
| there are various modifiers that could be translated to e.g.
| _some, several, many, a few, one or more..._ The difference
| is that if you use these modifiers, you don 't (as in English
| et al.) have to make the noun "agree" in number. Roughly
| speaking, _one or more thing_ would be fine.
|
| [0]: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/11/18/what-
| makes-lif... (under "How we did this")
| ralph84 wrote:
| So 83-98% of people are unsatisfied with life regardless of
| what country they're in. Maybe humans have evolved to be
| unsatisfied because those who are unsatisfied have outcompeted
| those who are satisfied.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Or maybe "The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have
| been a disaster for the human race."
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| Or maybe you are a retard?
| rumblerock wrote:
| >* As an American, that speaks volumes about our lifestyle and
| culture, and I find it disappointing. Satisfaction is
| contagious; I want to live among others who feel this way. Most
| of my friends work from home and are either alone most of the
| time, or have significant others but few friends whom they see
| on an active basis.*
|
| This puts into words my motivation to enact policies that would
| free up time and resources for people to better optimize or
| remove unnecessary weight from their lives. Whether it be
| healthcare, childcare, rising rents, etc. - the time-suck
| nature or just constant level of financial stress created by
| some issues weighs on the individual psyche, and in turn the
| collective one. When you can't leave your job because of
| healthcare, need the money for childcare or to service debt or
| pay rising rents, of course personal life and overall outlook
| on life take a hit. I may not live in a cycle like that, but I
| don't want to walk down the street knowing how common it is
| among the people around me. Death by a thousand cuts, it seems
| like.
|
| And yes, much of this lives at the societal / cultural level as
| well, not purely the political. But in my opinion the
| collective burden of the problems that can be fixed by
| political means imposes an inertia on life that drags
| everything else down with it.
| throwaway2331 wrote:
| Very nuanced take; I agree.
|
| Unfortunately, it's impossible for the societal / cultural to
| progress at all without having the free time and tranquility-
| of-psyche to actually reflect on life.
|
| Concurrent is a severe lack of noblesse oblige in the U.S.
| The highest strata has forgotten its cultural roots, and
| lacks spiritual depth in this age.
|
| Take for example Beatrice Webb calling Andrew Carnegie a
| "reptile" -- a time-honored tradition. Now, there is a
| complete lack of self-policing within the betters, a la
| "Michael O. Church."
| gretch wrote:
| "Unfortunately, it's impossible for the societal / cultural
| to progress at all without having the free time and
| tranquility-of-psyche to actually reflect on life."
|
| I mean, this take isn't wrong, but it implies that society
| isn't the best it's ever been. People used to have to work
| themselves to the bone resisting death by nature. Some
| people have to work 2 jobs, maybe 60 or 70 hour weeks -
| that sucks, but it's still better than literally being a
| serf.
|
| "Concurrent is a severe lack of noblesse oblige in the U.S.
| The highest strata has forgotten its cultural roots, and
| lacks spiritual depth in this age."
|
| When has noblesse oblige ever been a main proponent of
| change? I don't think there was noblesse oblige during the
| french revolution. Did Webb's spatter with Carnegie _do_
| anything? I feel like rich people have spatters all the
| time, none of it material to actual cultural change
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| "Some people have to work 2 jobs, maybe 60 or 70 hour
| weeks - that sucks, but it's still better than literally
| being a serf."
|
| This is definitely someone who was never in desperate
| poverty, lol
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Spoken like someone who has never been a serf.
| gretch wrote:
| I mean, you are kinda flippantly dismissing my claim...
| do you disagree? You would rather be a serf?
|
| Today we have all of modern technology to help us - we
| have vaccines for debilitating diseases. If you break
| your leg, you don't just die... And even the lowest class
| of people can afford smartphones and access the internet.
|
| These are all vast and material improvements to quality
| of life
| chrischen wrote:
| We all get heavily sold the "American dream" which is a lie to
| keep the lower classes constantly working hard.
| missedthecue wrote:
| A lie? Americans have the highest median disposable income in
| the OECD _after_ adjusting for government transfers like
| healthcare and education and for purchasing power parity. And
| it 's not even close. US is at $54k, second place is tiny
| Luxembourg with $49k, Germany is at $42k, United Kingdom and
| Sweden at $35k, and Korea at $27k.
|
| https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm
|
| (change net to gross adjusted in the menu to view the data)
| biophysboy wrote:
| I think the argument is that it is a lie that this will
| translate to life satisfaction. Americans could probably
| take more vacation, for instance.
|
| The survey is being misinterpreted though. Its not that
| only 2% of Americans are satisfied, its that 2% of
| Americans offer vague positive vibes rather than a specific
| answer to what gives them meaning. I don't think I am
| stereotyping when I say Germany, Japan, and South Korea are
| more reserved culturally, so of course they're going to be
| more likely to say "yeah things are going fine overall".
| rvense wrote:
| Dane here. I work 30 hours per week as a programmer. My
| wife works full time for an NGO. Looking at that chart I
| think we're fairly average for our country, maybe a little
| bit higher.
|
| My wife is currently on maternity leave with almost full
| pay. I am allowed by law to take paternity leave, and as is
| common my contract gives me several months with full pay.
| Even if you don't get paid by your work, you have the right
| to take up to a year off (in all for both of us) with
| government support.
|
| Even if we both lost our jobs, our (government-subsidized)
| unemployment insurances are enough to mean we would be able
| to live more or less as we do now for the two years that
| the insurance covers, without finding jobs. With some
| adjustments to our living standard, we might just about be
| able to at least stay where we live now, even with just the
| lower benefit rates that we would be able to collect after
| the two years. We are, however, both in positions where
| finding new work is fairly simple.
|
| Health care is free and not tied to our employment
| situation. If either of us become gravely ill, we can worry
| about the illness, not the cost of treatment. There is no
| such thing as a "medical bankruptcy" here, and we don't
| have GoFundMe.
|
| We were paid a little to go to university. I still have
| some (government) student loads from that time because I
| was a bit of a fuck-up and didn't work while studying, but
| it's not so bad.
|
| All in all, I live mostly free of fear and certainly free
| of want. You think I'd trade that for 18k per year? Would
| saving up all of it mean I could get even close to this?
| And how do the people who are below average fare?
| hashmush wrote:
| But what are you gonna do with that income if you're
| constantly working?
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Given the American ethos, I bet the USA will be one of
| the last countries to introduce the 4-day work week.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Americans work only an hour more per week than the OECD
| average.
|
| https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm
|
| Americans watch an average of 600 hours of Netflix per
| year. They aren't short on time.
|
| https://www.nexttv.com/news/analysis-americans-
| averaged-600-...
| raffraffraff wrote:
| > Americans watch an average of 600 hours of Netflix per
| year.
|
| Ah. So that's why they're dissatisfied.
| asoneth wrote:
| When James Truslow Adams coined the term "American Dream"
| in 1931 he defined it as: "life should be better and richer
| and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each
| according to ability or achievement".
|
| Social mobility in the United States is better than most
| countries in the world but not particularly high compared
| to similar countries. More worrying is that it has been
| falling over time. This kind of social stratification
| eventually results in large swaths of the country and
| citizenry for whom life is not better and who do not have
| the same opportunities.
|
| Having more money certainly helps -- it's hard for anyone
| to live a "better and richer and fuller" life if they
| cannot afford necessities. But past a certain point the
| correlation between a country's wealth and measures like
| happiness, life expectancy, social mobility, life
| satisfaction, etc seem to break down, especially in the US.
| Which to me indicates that we're probably not using our
| wealth efficiently.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Social mobility in the States is lower because the income
| quintiles are further apart.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The US has substantially larger household sizes than any,
| except Korea, of the rest of the top 5 by household income,
| so comparing median household figures is misleading:
|
| https://www.oecd.org/els/family/SF_1_1_Family_size_and_comp
| o...
| missedthecue wrote:
| How much income does your four year old haul in on an
| annual basis?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The US has a much higher than OECD average share of
| households that are neither single, single-parent or
| couple with or without children, because of non-family
| adults living together for economic reasons.
|
| The difference in household size isn't just kids.
| hakimguen wrote:
| Check the posters history. A heavy CCP sympathizer.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I strongly disagree with the statement, United States,
| although behind a lot of countries in social mobility index,
| still ranks pretty high in the world. It also leads with 8.8%
| of the adult population being millionaires, only behind
| Switzerland and Australia. That speaks volumes on how many
| opportunities exist in this country to make yourself better.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I was shocked by a statistic I saw somewhere that one
| million millionaires live in the new york metro area - it
| made more sense once i realized anyone who bought a house
| in the 80s is now a millionaire thanks merely to rising
| cost of housing. I don't think this metric is very useful
| for measuring economic opportunity.
| brnt wrote:
| Superstarism is the bias of only looking at success (which
| here is defined in a very narrow which betrays a secnd bias
| but that's another discussion).
|
| Superstarism is a old tool and well documented (for those
| who read) tool of the rulers of courts to keep their
| entourage in check. In brief: be an abbedient lackey or
| lose the favour of the court. Because it misses the bottom
| percentiles overlooking, it overlooks them; as e.g. the
| French revolution shows, it may become untenable, for good
| reasons, at any moment.
|
| The existence of opportunity is best proven not by looking
| at how high one might go, but at how many are left behind.
| And how, according to certain measures, they are in fact
| regressing.
| convolvatron wrote:
| or, it means that 80% are left behind with no real
| opportunity for advancement whatsoever. I'm not saying this
| is true - but largest number of millionaires isn't maybe
| the best metric for the overall happiness of the
| population?
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Thats why the comment also mentioned social mobility
| index. But curiously, everyone seems to be ignoring that.
| carabiner wrote:
| I'm surprised by some of the things reported by zero percent of
| respondents to make life meaningful, particularly pets and
| nature. It's been reported that Koreans are obsessed with their
| pets and that hiking is practically a national sport. When I
| lived in LA, there were huge groups of Korean hikers on popular
| trails. I wonder if there is a language barrier in Pew's survey,
| if "life meaning" carries some other nuance or significance to
| Koreans (maybe it means "outward life" or something?).
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-economy-pets/l...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/travel/along-the-trail-of...
| arcturus17 wrote:
| I find it funny being Spanish but having lived in Germany how we
| rank family third and yet family bonds into adulthood seem much
| more important in Spain than in Germany...
| throw3849 wrote:
| First you buy a house and get established, then you start family.
| In Asian culture it is not even possible to get married without
| that.
| Jensson wrote:
| I wonder how much this has to do with language barriers? I doubt
| these terms have the exact same meaning in every language as they
| are very abstract.
| mdorazio wrote:
| Pew is not some random company doing research - it's a well-
| respected non-profit that focuses on demographic and religious
| research and has been operating for ~17 years. I'm quite sure
| they know how to run a proper survey to account for things like
| language differences.
| Jensson wrote:
| > I'm quite sure they know how to run a proper survey to
| account for things like language differences.
|
| I'm quite sure it is impossible to do that since there are no
| perfectly equivalent terms between languages for these
| things. The results can still be interesting, but if there
| are big outliers I'd look at that first. For example, what is
| included in the word "family"? Or "health"? Those things can
| cover very different things in different languages.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I've got a feeling that the reason most Koreans only gave one
| answer as opposed to western countries where most gave multiple
| is language barriers.
| zz865 wrote:
| The article didn't talk about how S Korea was dirt poor two
| generations ago. All the other countries have been wealthy for
| centuries.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-11-24 23:02 UTC)