News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike sho... by IncreasePosts on Wednesday April 09, 2025 @06:13PM (#43638615)
Something like 35% of China's population works in the agriculture sector, many of whom are poor with little or no land holdings living in small villages. Is there a word for that kind of person?
Re:How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike sho... by blargey on Wednesday April 09, 2025 @07:05PM (#43638950)
That number has been falling since 2012 and was around 22% as of 2023 (ignoring the hand-wavy conflation of the entire agriculture sector and stereotypical rural farmers)

https://tradingeconomics.com/china/employment-in-agriculture...

You could just as easily massage statistics to call the US a nation of gig workers or something, but neither is productive or informative.

Re:How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike sho... by bbreier on Wednesday April 09, 2025 @11:59PM (#43640497)
Peasant has a more specific meaning than this. More importantly, it has been used as a pejorative for a very long time now and that is clearly the intent the vice president had in mind.
Re:How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike sho... by spaceman_2020 on Thursday April 10, 2025 @01:02AM (#43640780)
Would you call a midwest farmer in the US a “peasant” or just a farmer?

Let’s not pretend that peasants and farmers represent the same thing

Re:How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike sho... by 9rx on Thursday April 10, 2025 @04:11PM (#43647615)
> Would you call a midwest farmer in the US a “peasant” or just a farmer?

All peasants are farmers, but not all farmers are poor.

So, no, not as a group. Midwest farmers, on balance, are going to be some of the richest people you can find in the country (mostly because of their land ownership, which Chinese farmers don't have). There may be some individual farmers in the midwest who you could consider to be peasants, though.

But Chinese farmers are likely to be poor. Some individual farmers in China are rich, but as far as the group goes... It is not as bad as it once was, but as that group they still lag well behind the typical urban dweller.