@saxnot I have an Indian living with me, and he regularly points out something on the other end of the spectrum: a dollar isn't a dollar isn't a dollar. If he buys something in the west, he's sometimes paying 2, 5, 10, 50 times as much as he's used to paying for the exact same thing.
Not saying it's great living off of 2 dollars a day. I'm saying that it's not necessarily a comparison that tells the whole story.
Not saying it's great living off of 2 dollars a day. I'm saying that it's not necessarily a comparison that tells the whole story.
@saxnot My point is that it *isn't* dirt cheap in western society.
You can make hundreds of dollars a month and not have enough for water, food, and shelter. Easily. That's why there's a constant drive for first 15 dollar minimum wage and now they're talking about a 20 dollar minimum wage.
There's people who are going to be destitute if they retire in the west -- they can't afford basic water, food, and shelter -- and they move to a developing nation and they can live like a king for the rest of their lives on the exact same amount of money.
You can make hundreds of dollars a month and not have enough for water, food, and shelter. Easily. That's why there's a constant drive for first 15 dollar minimum wage and now they're talking about a 20 dollar minimum wage.
There's people who are going to be destitute if they retire in the west -- they can't afford basic water, food, and shelter -- and they move to a developing nation and they can live like a king for the rest of their lives on the exact same amount of money.
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@saxnot @saxnot if theory says reality is wrong then theory is wrong.
The prices of different things are different in different places as a simple function of what the local market will bear. One undeniable example is cell phone access. You can get unlimited voice unlimited data cell phone access in India for a month for $3.58 USD. You can rent a massive apartment in a capital city for $200, or a small apartment outside the city center for $100. $2 for a meal at an inexpensive restaurant. 60 cents for a litre of milk. 30 cents for a kilogram of potatoes. Textbooks are famously a tiny fraction of the price. Software is a fraction of the price. It keeps going and going.
Someone making American minimum wage would be able to live like a king. That's why it's deceptive to talk about dollars per day.
Maybe they mean ppp adjusted costs, but they don't say that. They just say a number and act like that's it.
There's another side to the same coin that lifestyles can be different in ways that mean you don't need to buy the same thing in two places. In Minnesota you must have a heater, but in Delhi you don't need one so the cost of a heater is irrelevant. There may be licensing costs, insurance costs, and other regulatory barriers that apply in one region but don't in the other which break PPP. One example of this is driving a motorcycle. In the us a motorcycle is one of the more expensive forms of transportation because of insurance costs, whereas in India it's one of the cheapest.
The prices of different things are different in different places as a simple function of what the local market will bear. One undeniable example is cell phone access. You can get unlimited voice unlimited data cell phone access in India for a month for $3.58 USD. You can rent a massive apartment in a capital city for $200, or a small apartment outside the city center for $100. $2 for a meal at an inexpensive restaurant. 60 cents for a litre of milk. 30 cents for a kilogram of potatoes. Textbooks are famously a tiny fraction of the price. Software is a fraction of the price. It keeps going and going.
Someone making American minimum wage would be able to live like a king. That's why it's deceptive to talk about dollars per day.
Maybe they mean ppp adjusted costs, but they don't say that. They just say a number and act like that's it.
There's another side to the same coin that lifestyles can be different in ways that mean you don't need to buy the same thing in two places. In Minnesota you must have a heater, but in Delhi you don't need one so the cost of a heater is irrelevant. There may be licensing costs, insurance costs, and other regulatory barriers that apply in one region but don't in the other which break PPP. One example of this is driving a motorcycle. In the us a motorcycle is one of the more expensive forms of transportation because of insurance costs, whereas in India it's one of the cheapest.
@saxnot I don't know what else you'd call it. In order to not die on that kind of money you're talking about a fundamentally different way of living. Sort of elitist not thinking of their lives as lives because they don't live the way you do?