I don't like playing cultural imperialist, but something about current Asian cultures seems to me to be broken: this isn't exactly the first suicide of its sort, or even an uncommon phenomenon, just one of the more high-profile cases (since it's Apple, and a senior guy). Western culture isn't immune to these effects either (cf. high-profile financial advisors committing suicide in 2008-2009), but I understand that it's significantly more of an issue in Asia. I'd hazard that it's something in the common imp
China has their Yuan fixed to the dollar, rather than allowing it to float freely. If you take any value around GDP in China (or India) of a common money, then it is total nonsense. As it is, many economist think that the Yuan should be 300-400% higher (i.e. about 1.5-2 yuan/dollar instead of the 7 yuan / dollar that the run).
> China has their Yuan fixed to the dollar, rather than allowing it to float freely.
For China, having the Rinminbi pegged to a strong foreign currency is probably a good choice, for the time being. It's easier to maintain than a specie standard, especially in the modern world, and it effectively delegates the problem of monetary policy at a time when China has bigger issues to deal with, such as how to effectively allow the continued modernization of their economy and the urbanization of their populace
Problem is, that when we gave them MFN in 1994, it was with the agreement that in 2002, they would drop trade barriers AND free their money. They reneged. W did not make them stick with it, which is EXACTLY why America is in the shape that we are. Had the Yuan risen slowly, then trade would have leveled off. Now, we have to get China to do the right thing by the WORLD and SLOWLY free their money. I doubt that they will.
My guess is that next year, we will bring pressure on CHina to live up to their obligat
"when we gave them MFN in 1994" lol I love how 'normal trading relations' are a gift now.. China was opening up and the USA wanted to be first in line to make use of them.
You also talk about China doing the right thing.. which by what you mean is something to benefit US. To put things in perspective China has to have economic growth of about 8% or so just to prevent massive rises in unemployment (8 or so million people a month) and the instability that would come from that.
In short, the politicians said that "government should be run like a business", and then they ran America like a business.
Poorly, while selling off its core assets and embezzling the proceeds...leaving only a shell company which they use to launder money - and the taxpayer's money, all too often, at that.
Your arrogance and foolishness is amazing (as well as your cowardice). China has their money FIXED against the dollar. They put it in a "basket" and it adjusts upwards/downwards only in relation of the euro to the dollar. It has adjusted less than 5% even though China now has 3 trillion dollars. For China to continue to have MFN and have things be RIGHT by economics, the west will be after Chinese gov. to live up to their agreements. THey have NOT. THey were to free the money, not just control it ever so sl
They speak about the dollar dropping, but that is as much, if not more, their fault.
Meanwhile, they're buying up all the gold they can get their hands on, while the Dollar is sinking below the value where it's a reasonable world reserve currency. China and Russia are going to keep at it until the IMF creates a new one (or 'the basket'), at which point China will depeg and overnight have a 40% return as the idle dollars come home.
We can try to shame China into not taking advantage of our ludicrous monetary
Your information is outdated, this was true up to 2005, but now the currencies are no longer pegged.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume you're confusing pegging with the fact that the RMB is not convertible to the USD.
China uses a basket, which they control and they keep the value fixed against the dollar even though they have accumulated 3 TRILLION dollars. In a proper economy, the dollar would plummet against the Yuan/Renminbi. In fact, most economists say that if China allowed it to properly float, that they Yuan would trade at about 1.5-2 yuan/dollar. Right now, it trades at ~7 yuan to a dollar.
On September 30, 2008, the renminbi traded at 6.7899 yuan per U.S. dollar, which is a 17.3% increase and the highest rate [wikipedia.org]
You have noticed an important thing but strongly mis-interpreted it. Ask yourself: what can drive a sane, grown up person to a suicide?
Two things are common. A deadly illness and a falling down of status. If you read up some history of all the misery and changes people of former USSR and former Warsaw pact have expirienced (and many still do) it is no wonder that the suicide rate is that high. This feeling of having fallen down and the lack of hope that it ever gets better is especially strong in the Russia
Those are tragic reasons that help explain the high suicide rate in eastern europe. It is strange that Asia has such a suicide-eager image when the reality is so different.
Just an FYI, in Asia most suicides are classified as something else in true crime rates. In order to affect a lower suicide rate in the overall data trending. European data trending can be higher because they sometimes include 'other' crimes into their suicide figures during data reporting.
Never trust data, unless you see the raw data sets yourself.
Is that like some cops classifying "white guy walking into a black gangsta neighborhood while wearing a t-shirt with racially inflammatory words printed on it" as suicide, and some not?:)
Is that like some cops classifying "white guy walking into a black gangsta neighborhood while wearing a t-shirt with racially inflammatory words printed on it" as suicide, and some not?:)
Well not quite, more like this. In Japan for example a suicide, where someone jumps off a bridge and drowns may be classified as a drowning. Where as someone who commits suicide but pillpopping is an overdose, and someone who hangs themselves is an actual suicide.
Russia's land is mostly in Asia, but a very disproportionate amount of the population lives west of the Urals, in the portion generally considered to be European.
The profile of who is committing suicide tells the full story. In Western countries, it is overwhelmingly young (teenage to early twenties) males, followed by young females. This coincides with the most emotionally unstable period of most peoples lives. In Japan (and possibly other Asian cultures), the figures are overwhelmingly dominated by middle aged men - middle to senior management and politicians who are under a lot of pressure not to let their company or country down.
Okay, but Eastern Europeans commit suicide because they are clinically depressed and don't want to go on living, not because they are honor-bound to commit suicide in order to save face and avoid bringing shame on their families for seven generations.
The European scenario is certainly unfortunate, but the Asian way is weirder.
By simple math, 68.1 per 100k plus 12.9 per 100k would be 81.0 per 200k, which is 40.5 per 100k. This is close to the number above, but not exactly. The reason is that by adding the numbers together like that, that's assuming a population with exactly the same number of females as male. However, this is not the case, with most countries having more females than males, so that's why the number is a bit lower than you would otherwise expect. If you're clever, you can back out the male:female ratio from th
It's a weighted average. 68.1 males per 100k males. 12.9 females per 100k females. You can't just add, you have to account for how 100k of a population is made of both males and females.
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Poor guy... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I don't like playing cultural imperialist, but something about current Asian cultures seems to me to be broken: this isn't exactly the first suicide of its sort, or even an uncommon phenomenon, just one of the more high-profile cases (since it's Apple, and a senior guy). Western culture isn't immune to these effects either (cf. high-profile financial advisors committing suicide in 2008-2009), but I understand that it's significantly more of an issue in Asia. I'd hazard that it's something in the common imp
Re:Poor guy... (Score:5, Informative)
According to this [who.int] the top 7 are not Asian. China is way down there, below France, Poland, Switzerland, Uruguay.
Country, Male Suicide per 100k, Female suicide per 100k, total pop suicide per 100k, year
Lithuania 68.1 12.9 38.6 2005
Belarus 63.3 10.3 35.1 2003
Russia 58.1 9.8 32.2 2005
Slovenia 42.1 11.1 26.3 2006
Hungary 42.3 11.2 26.0 2005
Kazakhstan 45.0 8.1 25.9 2005
Latvia 42.0 9.6 24.5 2005
Japan 34.8 13.2 23.7 2006
I assumed the suicide rate would be much higher in Asia, but I guess it is just reported more or happens in more high-profile cases or something.
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Two things:
1) Those are per-capita. China's got a shitload more people than Lithuania...
2) Do we trust the Chinese (especially) numbers?
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Is there a list adjusted for per capita gdp?
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How would you adjust it? Should higher GDP mean more or less suicides? Should it be linear?
I don't think GDP would tell much of a story. Rich-poor divide might be a bit better, but that's harder to give an objective number to.
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Suicide rates are related to latitude (closer to the equator = less suicides). I think that should be the first thing to correct for.
That would be worthless (Score:4, Informative)
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For China, having the Rinminbi pegged to a strong foreign currency is probably a good choice, for the time being. It's easier to maintain than a specie standard, especially in the modern world, and it effectively delegates the problem of monetary policy at a time when China has bigger issues to deal with, such as how to effectively allow the continued modernization of their economy and the urbanization of their populace
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My guess is that next year, we will bring pressure on CHina to live up to their obligat
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"when we gave them MFN in 1994" lol I love how 'normal trading relations' are a gift now.. China was opening up and the USA wanted to be first in line to make use of them.
You also talk about China doing the right thing.. which by what you mean is something to benefit US. To put things in perspective China has to have economic growth of about 8% or so just to prevent massive rises in unemployment (8 or so million people a month) and the instability that would come from that.
China you say did not live up to
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In short, the politicians said that "government should be run like a business", and then they ran America like a business.
Poorly, while selling off its core assets and embezzling the proceeds...leaving only a shell company which they use to launder money - and the taxpayer's money, all too often, at that.
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They speak about the dollar dropping, but that is as much, if not more, their fault.
Meanwhile, they're buying up all the gold they can get their hands on, while the Dollar is sinking below the value where it's a reasonable world reserve currency. China and Russia are going to keep at it until the IMF creates a new one (or 'the basket'), at which point China will depeg and overnight have a 40% return as the idle dollars come home.
We can try to shame China into not taking advantage of our ludicrous monetary
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You are correct.
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Sorry for the self-reply. Don't know why my link didn't work:
http://www.thesunsfinancialdiary.com/china/chinese-currency-rmb-vs-us-dollar-2/
You are wrong (Score:2)
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You have noticed an important thing but strongly mis-interpreted it. Ask yourself: what can drive a sane, grown up person to a suicide?
Two things are common. A deadly illness and a falling down of status. If you read up some history of all the misery and changes people of former USSR and former Warsaw pact have expirienced (and many still do) it is no wonder that the suicide rate is that high. This feeling of having fallen down and the lack of hope that it ever gets better is especially strong in the Russia
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Re:Poor guy... (Score:5, Funny)
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Huh, interesting... makes you wonder if playing Russian roulette counts as suicide...
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Huh, interesting... makes you wonder if playing Russian roulette counts as suicide...
No, it counts as "Accident while cleaning the gun".
Re:Poor guy... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Poor guy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just an FYI, in Asia most suicides are classified as something else in true crime rates. In order to affect a lower suicide rate in the overall data trending. European data trending can be higher because they sometimes include 'other' crimes into their suicide figures during data reporting.
Never trust data, unless you see the raw data sets yourself.
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Is that like some cops classifying "white guy walking into a black gangsta neighborhood while wearing a t-shirt with racially inflammatory words printed on it" as suicide, and some not?
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Well not quite, more like this. In Japan for example a suicide, where someone jumps off a bridge and drowns may be classified as a drowning. Where as someone who commits suicide but pillpopping is an overdose, and someone who hangs themselves is an actual suicide.
Where in some countries in Europe, pillpo
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I expected to see Kerplakistan in that list.
Top 5, not Top 7 (Score:3, Informative)
Your top five are not in Asia. You may not think of it as such, but Kazakhstan is most definitely an Asian country.
Mal-2
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You should adjust your statistic for age and look at suicide rates among people ages 8-45.
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Russia and Kazakhstan are both in Asia.
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Re:Poor guy... (Score:4, Insightful)
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mod up please. Suicides in Japan/South Korea jumped tremendously during the currency crisis that swept through Asia in the late 90s.
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I have no joke, I'd just like to quote:
"Suicides in Japan/South Korea jumped"
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The European scenario is certainly unfortunate, but the Asian way is weirder.
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By simple math, 68.1 per 100k plus 12.9 per 100k would be 81.0 per 200k, which is 40.5 per 100k. This is close to the number above, but not exactly. The reason is that by adding the numbers together like that, that's assuming a population with exactly the same number of females as male. However, this is not the case, with most countries having more females than males, so that's why the number is a bit lower than you would otherwise expect. If you're clever, you can back out the male:female ratio from th
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It's a weighted average. 68.1 males per 100k males. 12.9 females per 100k females. You can't just add, you have to account for how 100k of a population is made of both males and females.