undefined | Better HN

0 pointsbadpun7y ago0 comments

> Things are objectively worse today from the 20th century, everyone knows it or can definitely feel it.

That may be true in the US (although of course it's debatable). In the global scale however, things have improved tremendously. For example, my region, Central and Eastern Europe, has been freed from comunism and flourished for the most part after 1989. But that's small change compared to vast improvements in living standards of hundreds of millions in Asia (China, India, other countries). So, it'd say the boom is far from over, it's just getting more evenly distributed now, as opposed to most of the XX century, where the US was in an unique position to get so much richer than almost everybody else.

0 comments

BuckRogers7y ago

Indeed. My point of view is fixated on a working-class perspective from the USA. I wouldn't say things here feel like hell, it's just more effort and people aren't used to studying or instilling discipline in their children so they can get up to par. There's no more jobs where you have no advanced education or specific skillset, where you walk in and walk out buying a house, motorcycle and 2 cars. People aren't used to not having that available. I've spent most of my career trying to be skills-based to not fall out of the middle class here. It's no longer easy, and it was felt after 9/11 and definitely after 2008.

I certainly dislike the shift of money out of the US (and western Europe, which is really in the same boat as we are), but tough to wish poverty, dismay or anything of the sort on the rest of the world.

In my career so far, I've worked with many people from Bulgaria, along with India. Really enjoyed the experience to be honest. I'm a best-person-for-the-job sort of guy (a concept that is actually falling by the wayside in the increasingly job-strapped USA in favor of nepotism and cronyism), and don't fret over macro-economic issues that I don't control. Just do my best to survive in the environment I was born in like everyone else.

I wouldn't say everyone is getting a great deal out of the US's economic system eating its own people, plenty of the world is being ignored outright. Eastern Europe and Asia are definitely some hotspots gaining though. I think global scale might be a stretch. But I could be wrong, just thinking about the parts of the world where capitalists aren't investing as much.

I love talking to folks from Bulgaria and such about their lives from the Soviet era till today. One told me that "we didn't have much, but you didn't care or notice because everyone else was". Lack of envy etc, that individual was actually admiring his previous life in ways, which I understand given how miserable so many people appear today..

Very interesting perspectives on life and the world, to me at least. I also enjoy teams with folks from India, usually upbeat and smiling and that's (almost) all I ask for. I also suspect working with developers in Latin America would be a similar experience. The culture differences get a little abrasive though once you move out of India into the rest of Asia.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

BuckRogers7y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse