Love Guide for Childhood Sweethearts

Chapter 178 The Little Match Girl

"That's right! Always remember that they're a capitalist country. They call it student loans, and they're designed to make money. They're not our student loans." Lin Jingzhe snorted coldly, "This was designed by the elites in both houses of the US Congress. It's not to help students, but to squeeze them dry."

"I thought it was the same as us!" Lin's mother sighed when she heard this.

"You think too highly of capitalists." Lin Jingzhe said with a slightly cold look in his eyes, "European and American universities all rely on recommendation systems. Only the rich and powerful can get letters of recommendation. Otherwise, no matter how high your scores are, you won't be able to go to university." He jokingly said, "My mother even asked me to go abroad to get a university degree!"

"Hehe..." Lin's mother smiled embarrassedly.

"Their universities have independent admissions! They have hundreds of textbooks. The textbooks used by elite schools are completely different from those used by public schools." Lin Jingzhe said calmly, "We use a unified textbook. Children from the poorest families and children from the richest families use the same set of textbooks. This at least ensures a fair starting point."

"I really don't know about that. I only know that anyone with money can go abroad." Lin's mother blinked and said, "Isn't this an artificial monopoly of knowledge?"

"That's right! We have a unified high school entrance exam and college entrance exam, and schools can only admit students based on their scores." Lin Jingzhe said with a deep gaze, "This at least ensures that any child from a poor family can change their fate through hard work." He then said, "Prestigious schools in Europe and the United States are all for children from wealthy families. How can you find an ordinary person? The American happy education system has ruined ordinary people."

"How can education bring joy?" Lin's father said with deep conviction, "Unless a child is exceptionally gifted, every child has studied very hard, hanging their head on the beam and piercing their legs with a needle." He snorted and said, "Everyone doesn't know how to play!"

"In modern industry, workers and engineers must be educated, otherwise they won't be able to operate the machines properly," Lin Jingzhe muttered. "It's not like in ancient times, when anyone with a hoe could farm. Modern agriculture is mechanized and farming is scientific! Can this kind of happy education be taught?"

"Four transformations!" Lin's mother said with a smile.

"That's right, we've been striving for it." Lin Jingzhe's clear eyes turned and he said, "Without basic education, how can we achieve the four modernizations?"

"Yeah!" Father Lin nodded vigorously. "Indeed, you need to be cultured to do anything these days."

"They first enslaved their own people and brought disaster upon themselves! Just look at the history of the rise of Europe and the United States." Lin Jingzhe raised an eyebrow slightly, "Mom should have heard this story. Our old lady saved her entire life to buy a house."

"I've heard of it. They're all over the TV commercials." Lin's mother laughed. "Old ladies abroad take out loans to buy houses when they're young, pay off their loans in their old age, and enjoy their lives. They say we're just conservative and don't know how to overspend." She sneered, "You make it sound so nice to say you're living beyond your means."

"Americans have a very heavy mortgage burden, six to seven times what we have." Lin Jingzhe's deep eyes turned as he asked, "Have you paid attention to the American financial market?"

"Is Nannan talking about the subprime mortgage crisis?" Father Lin said with his eyes slightly narrowed.

"This is all caused by real estate," Lin Jingzhe snorted. "With zero down payment, even homeless people can get loans to buy houses. Then they package these debts and push them into the financial market. With media hype, sales are going crazy. The bet is that housing prices will continue to rise in the future!"

"You put it simply, directly and clearly." Father Lin smiled when he heard it.

"How can that homeless man pay back his loan when he has no job?" Mother Lin blinked and said to her lover.

"Then it's just a waste!" Father Lin said, his pupils shrinking as he looked at her. "Once a bank accumulates a certain amount of bad debts, it will go bankrupt."

"Homeless people?" Lin's mother rubbed her nose with her index finger and said, "Do Americans have so many homeless people? They can bring down the bank."

"Mom, have you seen the American movie 'The Pursuit of Happyness'?" Lin Jingzhe said with his eyes rolling like glass beads.

"I've seen it! It's a very touching movie, starring a black man, right?" Lin's mother recalled. "I saw it online. It was from 06."

"That movie is embellished." Lin Jingzhe's eyes, which had lost their depth, flickered as he spoke. "We're wrong! We thought bankruptcy meant nothing more than having our assets and debts wiped out, and then we could work and at least support ourselves."

"Isn't that right?" Lin's mother asked doubtfully, "If I can't make it in the city, I can just go home and farm. I still have two acres of land at home, so I'll never starve."

"You think they're here?" Father Lin said, looking at his wife with amusement, "They don't have any land. The land belongs to the farmers and capitalists. They have no place to stand."

"They've lost their jobs, gone bankrupt, and struggled to find work. Then they're saddled with debt, their banks have broken their promises, and they're ready to jump off buildings," Lin's father said, his dark eyes fixed on her. "There's no such thing as a comeback."

"Dad was right. I lost my house and didn't have a proper job. I couldn't farm in the countryside, so I just became a homeless person." Lin Jingzhe raised his eyebrows slightly, "Then I became a little match girl, freezing to death on a winter night."

"Ahem..." Mother Lin coughed twice and said, "It's the 21st century now."

"So what? It's just that productivity has improved. Has the social system changed? It's no different from the past." Lin Jingzhe rubbed his nose with his index finger and said, "Aren't we still using the county system?"

"You might as well just say that we are still in a feudal society." Lin's mother said unhappily.

"If I were to mention the feudal political system, would you be angry? The Qin system has been followed for hundreds of generations!" Lin Jingzhe said calmly, "The word 'feudal' was shoved on us by the West. The 'feudal' you're referring to represents the backwardness, isolation, and conservatism of the past. It's an ideological term. The subtext is that we're inferior to the West in every way, and we should be grateful to the West for bringing us light, technology, and civilization."

"Isn't this nonsense?" Lin's mother scolded.

"Feudalism also means a political system based on fiefdoms," Lin Jingzhe continued slowly. "Weren't all the vassal states before the Qin Dynasty established through fiefdoms? After the Qin Dynasty unified China, it implemented the county system, centralizing power. The feudal lord system in Europe was based on private ownership of land. Each lord had absolute control over the land, with military power, financial power, and the power to appoint personnel all in his own hands. That disappeared after the Qin Dynasty."

"Is that so?" Mother Lin looked at her lover with a puzzled look on her face and said, "This is different from what the book teaches."

"It is better to have no books than to believe in them blindly." Lin Jingzhe said with his black eyes shaking slightly.

"This child." Lin's mother shook her head and laughed when she heard this.