Why are Asian-Americans Wealthier? (debt, employees, China, Chicago)

[AnesthesiaMD]

Originally Posted by ndfmnlf

Since when did the invention of the light bulb become the measure of genetic or cultural superiority? That's an arbitrary way of measuring the degree of advancement of a society. I could pick another invention from an earlier era - eg gun powder - and say "If the Euro-Americans are so smart, how come they didn't invent gun powder before the Chinese did?" I could even make the case that gun powder has had a greater impact on world history than the light bulb, therefore the Chinese must be superior.

The point here is not that some group of people is superior to another group of people, but that our body of knowledge comes from many sources, and it is absurd to claim that "we Americans invented everything" which is clearly not the case. We may have improved on the ideas of others, but we didn't create everything out of thin air.

Oh, and I never used the term Euro Americans. You did. I would certainly never belittle the great achievements of all the Americans with ancestry outside of Europe.

[Morphous01]

Originally Posted by AnesthesiaMD

WE put a man on the moon 40 years ago!

No, the Germans put us on the moon 40 years ago as they provided all of our technology.



YouTube - "The Lost Von Braun". Part One. By Aron Ranen..Edited by Douglas Robbins

[Morphous01]

Originally Posted by Donn2390

The real answer is that we would have more motivated blacks and Hispanics. Asians are driven to be all that they can be, where as Hispanics are satisified to achieve the level of their parents, and many blacks have no role model at all. If all races would be over achievers, this would be an even greater country.

No, not really as Asians have one of the highest suicide rates out of all the races due to a overwhelming pressure to succeed.


Push to achieve tied to suicide in Asian-American women - CNN.com



Also, like others have posted many, many, many Asian people are poor while only a few reap the benefits so where do you get the idea that Asians as a whole are doing so well when you are only focusing on a minority within the majority?

[AlfredB1979]

Originally Posted by Tret

Asians are smarter and more talented.

In a sense, yes.

While my Korean-born boss isn't tossing away his money on overbuilding the lab I work at or on overhiring during this recession (or whatever you may call it), you have the Michael Jackson's of the world not exercising common sense and dying trying to get back to break-even financially.

[Morphous01]

Originally Posted by ndfmnlf

There are 2 things that gave the US a leg up over the competition:

1. slavery - $20 trillion (inflation adjusted) in uncompensated labor generated the seed capital that was later used to build American industries from the ground up

2. science - the Founding Fathers were products of the Enlightenment and were strong supporters of the scientific method

Combine the 2 elements together: massive amounts of capital fused with science and sure, you'll get a technologically advanced society. However, these 2 advantages are found in our past. Slavery has already been outlawed (no more free ride there), while science is being threatened by religious fundamentalism.

I also don't believe that we invented everything in the world. That's just bull crap. Scientific knowledge is evolutionary. Nothing comes de novo. If the Chinese, Arabs, and Indians hadn't invented math, the Americans would not have been able to send anyone to the moon.

If the Chinese were to put a patent on everything they have ever invented over the last 5000 years (eg paper, gunpowder, the compass, printing, math etc), we Americans would be paying through the nose for the royalties.

That's not to say the Chinese and Indians are superior to us. It's just an acknowledgement that these much older civilizations have bequeathed us Americans a legacy of knowledge that we have built upon and we ought to be thankful for, instead of us gloating (like you do) that we are the master race.

I express the same sentiments, well said.

[Synergy1]

Originally Posted by Morphous01

I express the same sentiments, well said.

I approve of that message.

[drshang]

Anesthesia,

I think it's a complicated question. 19th century China had multiple civil wars and had many changes in government. Government shifted from national control to provincial control. Given the technology and resources available in 1800, centralized control over 300 million people and such a large and diverse geography was not really realistic or attainable (Tibet is a lot different from Manchuria which is a lot different from Hunan). There was repeated famine - again, proper distribution of food and resources among 300 million people given what's available in 1800 isn't realistic or really feasible. Now, are all of these problems solely the responsibility of overpopulation in the country? I don't think so. However, I think overpopulation played a significant role in many of China's 19th century problems that caused it's relative power to remain weak into the 20th century.

I think the one child policy was partially the result of a fear of resources, but also the idea of improving the standard of living in the country and improvings its economic standard in the world (total GDP output divided by less people will give you a higher standard of living). The policy was principly instituted for urban areas...but both reasons operate on the idea that people, after a certain point, are simply a liability.

What purpose do they serve? China came off a large baby boom and the one child policy was instituted before that baby boom could have children and create even more babies. The standard of living in China increased, as well as the economic savings rate, as a result of the one child policy. Obviously there are consequences to the policy but I don't really think those are important for this discussion. I think the core point to the policy is simply that more people is not always better.

Perhaps in theory more people is better, but the problem is in the 19th century it was simply impossible to control that many people over such a large geography, especially when there are many subcultures that have a long history of not liking each other (think Tibet and some others). China is extremely diverse and controlling it is not easy, even today, with advanced technology, distribution and communication methods. One might argue that India is suffering similar consequences today due to its problem of population...you can have too many people and there are diminishing returns as the population grows to levels the country, infrastructure and economy can no longer support. This is largely due to the fact that poor, uneducated, impoverished people in the countryside have a disproportionately large number of children compared to wealthier urbanites - this trend is not just in the US and Europe but worldwide.

Most of China today is quite poor and backward. The US focuses on Shanghai and Beijing but the countryside, where much of the people live, is extremely poor and still operates on old communist "land share" types of policies and is nothing at all like coastal China which is quite prosperous and capitalistic relatively speaking. China suffers from "two governments" to a large degree today - the coast and the interior. I think, still today, the large population could be a liability, not an asset. I don't think if China had 500 million people it would be less successful than it is with 1 billion people. The percentage of people in China that are true consumers is very small relative to the total population.

[Exitus Acta Probat]

Originally Posted by ndfmnlf

I check census stats periodicially PINC-11--Part 1, and the thing that always stands out is that Asian-Americans consistently have higher incomes than other ethnic groups - higher even than non-Hispanic whites. For an ethnic group that is fairly new to the US, that's quite an achievement. Is there something the Asians are doing right that the rest of us can learn from? Are they more entrepreneurial? Better educated? Both? My hunch is that they are more entrepreneurial. They like to take risks. Whenever I go to Chinatown here in Chicago, I'm struck by how many Chinese here could barely speak English, yet they own businesses that seem to print money left and right. I also know a couple who owns a small fast food Chinese restaurant in the suburbs. Their English isn't very good. Yet their son is now a junior in medical school.

Asians, particularly Northern Asians, are an intelligent people. And, since they've been able to ride on the coattails of affirmative action, in a small period of time they've been able to advance economically quite well.

[Huckleberry3911948]

work ethic sense of obligation to society & family
calculus instead of hip hop or salsa just guessing.

[Thomas R.]

I agree we shouldn't be making arguments on genetic superiority. Although in the case of America part of the problem with doing so is we're fairly diverse.

However most evidence says modern Asians actually do better than us in terms of science and math knowledge. Japan and South Korea both have more patents per-capita than us.

Human Development Report 2007/2008 - Patents granted to residents (per million peole)

Students from Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (the PRoC insists they call it "Chinese Taipei") also score above us on the PISA tests of scientific and math literacy.

Highlights From PISA 2006: Performance of U.S. 15-Year-Old Students in Science and Mathematics Literacy in an International Con

Although it should be noted that Finland was above those nations on both measures.

Still one source does list the US as the most innovative nation with Finland close behind.

Innovation by country. Definition, graph and map.

Japan came twelfth and Korea 21st.

I think the US's advantages are that we have more great Universities than Asia, our smartest people are competitive with their smartest, and we're maybe a bit more encouraging of creativity. I don't mean "risk-taking" as the Chinese are very risk-taking of late. However the Chinese, even the freer Taiwanese, I think tend to be a bit more stifling of individuality. This is not something I consider entirely bad as I think we encourage an almost alienating or anarchic level of individuality. Still the upside I think is a certain creativity.

The Koreans had movable type before Europe. Unlike China they also had an alphabet. However they didn't go through the same revolution because they were more skeptical of innovation and more concerned with order. They were a conservative society in many ways and in many ways I admire that. However it does have its downside when taken to excess. Modern Asia is not so conservative, but I think they're still a bit more concerned with orderliness than us. So Japanese cities are comparatively safe, but maybe they're also a tiny bit duller in some respects.