My boyfriend told me he comes from a small town in China, so I went there and..

[Hamartia Antidote]

Your quarrel with Beijing walker is really boring.

Human nature is to pursue a better environment and life. The blue sky and white clouds are beautiful, the bustling streets are beautiful, walking with deer is beautiful, and enjoying convenient transportation is also beautiful.

When making a choice, human beings will make a comprehensive consideration, not only considering the two variables of apartment or single family house.

Just as the residents of Mima apartment in New York will not be willing to exchange their apartments for the single family residence in brownville, New York. And brownville residents would not be willing to exchange apartments in Detroit.

It sure is boring. As @Mista has pointed out earlier this is like the 69th time Beijingwalker has gone on one of his "The US should be like China and have magnificent large cities connected by HSR that their citizens should be living in and using".

If I ever said that "China should be like the US.." all the Chinese PDF members would get into an uproar and say "What you think you guys are superior or something??"

 

[beijingwalker]

Hey look man, I get the pride you have in Chinese infrastructure - it is legitimate. If americans built a bullet train network and metro network - they too will be filling up internet forums boasting about it.

But if you want americans to think they are living a poor life - atleast the ones who come here to forums like these (i assume middle to upper middle class) - its a real hard sell.

I too live in a suburban house - 3200 sqft - which does not include an additional and nearly 1500 sq ft basement btw. And a two car garage with backyard and front yard. I have a gigabit speed internet and work from home. The electricity, sewage all work. I do have an whole house filter because water taste is not great.

Now do i have some infrastructural disadvantages ? yes sure - i have to drive for every little thing from milk to bread. You cannot send your 12 year old down the street to buy some milk because he needs to drive. Maybe we buy too much to save on trips and end up fat.


Also the taxes are way too high - if you include federal, state, county, real estate, school etc.

But do you want me to feel poor ? i find that hard to accept with such a big house , cars, garage, high quality internet, electricity etc.

it is possible that you still judge me as poor but you will find it hard to convince atleast 50-60% americans with similiar lifestyles that they are poor.

One day i will visit china and i will do an unbiased comparison.

I didn't say Americans live a poor life, I never did, I said US infras are rundown and need urgent upgrades, US government also believes so , did they just pass an infrastructure bill?

Beijingwalker has gone on one of his "The US should be like China

When did I say US should be like China?

 

[letsrock]

That's a great example of China connecting two of their top major cities (541 miles as the crow flies) by HSR.

View attachment 872502
It takes 4 hours and 18 minutes by their 350km/h train.

Beijing to Shanghai by train 2024 | Times, fares, tickets

A guide to train travel between Beijing & Shanghai, with train times, fares, how to buy tickets online and at the station, and what the high-speed and sleeper trains are like.

www.seat61.com

But now look at your example of New York to Chicago and you'll realize the distances between our popular major cities are WAY larger.

Look how far 541 miles gets you from NYC and you'll understand why HSR simply wont work in the US as well as it would in China.

View attachment 872507

View attachment 872510
Our popular destination areas are much further apart. That 4 hour and 18 minute train ride is probably going to get you halfway to Miami. Meanwhile if you took a plane it would be only 3 hours and 10 minutes.

I can see NYC to DC but that is going through some of the most expensive realestate in the US. So yay maybe we have found a route that may be doable...but that it just a tiny win in the big picture of what our requirements actually are.

A bullet train from NYC to Chicago will definitely have stops in Pittsburg (maybe even philly), cleveland or columbus . All with fairly well developed businesses.

I am personally not a great fan of driving for lots of miles . And air journeys are quiet inconvenient and fairly expensive - unless you are traveling alone planning three weeks ahead.

You got it give them this - their bullet trains are awesome.

 

[MH.Yang]

So all 20,000 of our cities are falling apart eh?

Or just the oldest ones that were built up in the late 1800's to pre WW2 with a style of housing 80% of the US doesn't want to live in anymore. To a point where those cities demographics have shifted towards the "have nots" who can not afford to live in the places where 80% of the US wants to live...causing a city budget crisis.

You have been arguing with Beijing walker for so long, but you haven't talked about the real problem. Why is the infrastructure of American cities so bad?

Beijing Walker does not understand this problem, but you are deliberately avoiding it. You say that there are too many drug addicts in American cities, and you say that the immigration wave has driven the residents of the original big cities to the suburbs. Yes, you are telling the truth. But this is the result, not the cause.

The real reason is that the municipal fund distribution system of American cities has huge defects. The allocation of funds for municipal facilities in the USA is related to the amount of taxes paid by the community. Communities with high taxes have a large amount of capital investment, and societies with low taxes do not even have police.

This led to the rich only willing to live with the rich, and the poor community was full of criminals. The social common sense that bad money expels good money will lead to the spread of crime to other communities, and eventually lead to the collapse of the whole city.

If there is a problem, it should be solved instead of trying to cover it up.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Hey look man, I get the pride you have in Chinese infrastructure - it is legitimate. If americans built a bullet train network and metro network - they too will be filling up internet forums boasting about it.

But if you want americans to think they are living a poor life - atleast the ones who come here to forums like these (i assume middle to upper middle class) - its a real hard sell.

I too live in a suburban house - 3200 sqft - which does not include an additional and nearly 1500 sq ft basement btw. And a two car garage with backyard and front yard. I have a gigabit speed internet and work from home. The electricity, sewage all work. I do have an whole house filter because water taste is not great.

Now do i have some infrastructural disadvantages ? yes sure - i have to drive for every little thing from milk to bread. You cannot send your 12 year old down the street to buy some milk because he needs to drive. Maybe we buy too much to save on trips and end up fat.


Also the taxes are way too high - if you include federal, state, county, real estate, school etc.

But do you want me to feel poor ? i find that hard to accept with such a big house , cars, garage, high quality internet, electricity etc.

it is possible that you still judge me as poor but you will find it hard to convince atleast 50-60% americans with similiar lifestyles that they are poor.

One day i will visit china and i will do an unbiased comparison.

No the real question he is asking is "why aren't you living in a multi-unit building in a major city. What's your problem? Are you poor or something? Certainly builders must be putting up such buildings by the dozens as the demand for them must be really high while the demand for single family homes in the suburbs MUST be low and thus they are not being built".

---

I'm quite sure the builders in the US are out to make a profit by building things people would buy. If such demand were high for multi-units in cities they'd be tearing old buildings down by the boatload and transforming the skyline daily instead of wasting their time building 3200 sqft homes in the suburbs.

 

[letsrock]

I didn't say Americans live a poor life, I never did, I said US infras are rundown and need urgent upgrades, US government also believes so , did they just pass an infrastructure bill?


When did I say US should be like China?

China - still has a lot of catching up to do with usa in road infrastructure, pipeline infrastructure, airport infrastructure.
Even in rail - us has higher mileage - though i agree its mostly single track with no electrification.

 

[beijingwalker]

No the real question he is asking is "why aren't you living in a multi-unit building in a major city. What's your problem?

Did I? When?

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

You have been arguing with Beijing walker for so long, but you haven't talked about the real problem. Why is the infrastructure of American cities so bad?

What do you mean. I have explained it multiple times in this thread.
If I explain it again can you promise to read it?

First off there are 20,000 cities in the US and most of their infrastructure is fine.

The problem is a shift in the types of housing people want to live in. Just like China has had a shift of people finding modern cities more appealing to live in rather than their old villages so has shifts happened in the US.

Back around 1900 the US had a similar shift that China has now of moving from the countryside to big cities because they were appealing. About 30% of the US ended up in major cities.

However in the 1950's after WW2 a second shift started happening. As refrigeration and tech made it possible to concentrate agriculture in our productive regions what was once farmland surrounding/supporting big cities became available for development. However instead of putting up more multi-unit buildings most Americans desired single-family homes...and advances in heating and airconditioning had now made it practical...for those who made a good wage. Now only 10% of the population live in big cities.

Unfortunately this ended up causing flight from cities by those who had moderate to high incomes. Those who were lower income and could not afford the cost of maintaining such a home were left in the cities...usually as renters (not owners). This unfortunately led to many cities going into severe decline as the proportion of lower income people rose and more and more of the city's budget went to social services. To make matters worse since the average income went down any kind of taxes being collected also went down. So now you have budget shortfalls. Streets aren't being paved as often. Services like subways/buses that were once self-sufficient now had shortfalls because increasing fares alienated their increasing lower income ridership. Businesses that once were supported by higher income workers started failing due to a drop in their customer base. With an increase in lower income people the crime rate started going up chasing away even more people and businesses. Companies started moving to the suburbs because that was where the educated workers were living.

So what is the solution? Should the federal government step in and heavily subsidize their budgets. Pay for new subways and buses. Should the Federal government just prop up all the services and put a new coat of paint on every building every year? This isn't really solving the root of the problem. It is just hiding it.

Here are some crazy numbers just for NYC to highlight the issue.

Nearly one in four Asian adults in NYC lived in poverty in 2020: Report

Poverty rates are even higher for the city’s Asian seniors, Asians who speak limited English, and Asians with a high school education or less, according to the report.

gothamist.com

Mayor de Blasio Announces NYC Poverty Rate, Near Poverty Rate for 2019 Reached Historic low, with 52

www1.nyc.gov

"The report shows a drop in the near-poverty rate to 40.8 percent in 2019 from 2013’s rate of 47.2 percent"

---

47% of NYC was near the poverty line.
Can you now understand how the shift has caused serious problems in old cities?

Over and over and over the Chinese PDF members say major US cities are full of the wealthier people and the suburbs are full of the poor people who can't afford to buy in the cities since the housing is so expensive. Yes, the housing is typically more expensive in US cities but the people living in those expensive units are more likely RENTERS not owners. Do people really think that a city with 40-47% of a population living near the poverty line actually own those million dollar units??? So much repeated illogical thinking...

Just picture a situation where the owners of housing in Beijing/Shanghai start renting them out enmass to your migrant workers. That would be a similar situation.

 

[gambit]

You have been arguing with Beijing walker for so long, but you haven't talked about the real problem. Why is the infrastructure of American cities so bad?

Because they are continuously used since the start of the industrial revolution when your China was still a largely agrarian society?

Beijing Walker does not understand this problem,...

We know he ain't that smart.

...but you are deliberately avoiding it. You say that there are too many drug addicts in American cities, and you say that the immigration wave has driven the residents of the original big cities to the suburbs. Yes, you are telling the truth. But this is the result, not the cause.

The real reason is that the municipal fund distribution system of American cities has huge defects. The allocation of funds for municipal facilities in the USA is related to the amount of taxes paid by the community. Communities with high taxes have a large amount of capital investment, and societies with low taxes do not even have police.

This led to the rich only willing to live with the rich, and the poor community was full of criminals. The social common sense that bad money expels good money will lead to the spread of crime to other communities, and eventually lead to the collapse of the whole city.

If there is a problem, it should be solved instead of trying to cover it up.

No one is covering up anything. For starter, you cannot cover up poor leadership which is what many of these cities have. San Francisco used to be a beautiful city, but now there is a homelessness problem, and that problem came from misguided and/or bad social policies, not because of taxation policies.

Are you saying there are no problems in Chinese cities?

I don't know why you feel superior.

Because I actually own my land.

 

[beijingwalker]

We know he ain't that smart.

Are you really that smart? didn't you see the longer this discussion drags on, the more it shows even highly patriotic American members here unconsciously admit that US city infrastructure sucks? You are only arguing about why US infras sucks this much, not if it really sucks or not. I didn't mean to set up this trap, you guys walked into it yourselves willingly.

 

[gambit]

Yes, we just can't live with infested garbage dump city subways that Americans get so used to, cause we use them every day and it's something can really affect our mood, if Americans are fine with them or don't care about their abysmal infras, it's perfectly fine with us, but you can not ban us from talking about it.


I used to live in Madison city, New Jersey. it has only 2,000 people while they call them a city, In Beijing every neighborhood has way more residents than it.

I know many Chinese engineers, in the US, who bought houses, guns, and large SUVs. The only reason they did not become US citizens is because of familial ties in China. They do not care about life in the cities. They like that they can go anywhere in North America and do not care if there are no trains and they prefer the freedom of the automobile. They know that with every advantage come a cost and they rather live the American lifestyle despite the disadvantages. So as long as there are more Chinese coming to the US, you can talk about how bad are our infrastructures all you want. Your blathering is as meaningless to us as it is to your fellow Chinese who lives here. At least we do not have to pay them to talk positively about US on Youtube and TikTok.

Are you really that smart? didn't you see the longer this discussion drags on, the more it shows even highly patriotic American members here unconsciously admit that US city infrastructure sucks? You are only arguing about why US infras sucks this much, not if it really sucks or not. I didn't mean to set up this trap, you guys walked into it yourselves willingly.

What? Unconsciously? How about CONSCIOUSLY that US infrastructures sucks?

But the issue remains that they sucks because they built up a country from the industrial age when your China was still figuring out how the steam engine works.

 

[beijingwalker]

What? Unconsciously? How about CONSCIOUSLY that US infrastructures sucks?

But the issue remains that they sucks because they built up a country from the industrial age when your China was still figuring out how the steam engine works.

I heard resting on laurels is a good way to progress and develop into the future. China used to do it over 100 years ago, it didn't end up nicely for China.

 

[gambit]

I heard resting on laurels is a good way to progress and develop into the future. China used to do it over 100 years ago, it didn't end up nicely for China.

You heard wrong and it must have been from a Chinese source.

 

[beijingwalker]

You heard wrong and it must have been from a Chinese source.

So you can rest on your century old infras and boast how early you had them built and how you still rely on them without any upgrades.

 

[gambit]

So you can rest on your century old infras and boast how early you had them built and how you still rely on them without any upgrades.

They still works, right? Are you saying that no US cities are upgrading their infrastructures?

This is nothing more than another masturbatory thread from you. China needs the US market to economically survive. You needed US to grow then and you needed US still. So wank off on as many bad US road you can find.