[BoppreH]

Exactly. People on first world countries (especially Americans, for some reason, but I won't go into that) seem to forget that the same dollar buys different things around the world.

For example, the workers in that factory pay ~$1.50 a day for factory food. I don't think you can get food for a day with that amount in a place that accepts dollar as the main currency.

[krschultz]

No, but I can certainly get equal food for less than $10 a day in NYC where I live now. Hell I basically buy whatever food I want when I go through the grocery store without looking at price tags (it's food, why skimp on the basics?) and Mint.com is telling me my average food in a month - including liquor and restaurants, is about $450 or $15 a day. (I cook at home almost every day, so for me eating out/liquor is about $150 and groceries about 300).

In contrast - minimum wage is $7.50. So making the absolute bare minimum I could pay for food in 2 hours in the US, and roughly 3 in China. In exchange I eat chicken, fish, steak, or ground beef for every single dinner with some vegatebles and something else. I have eggs a lot of days for breakfast, and a real lunch every day. I have dessert, fresh fruit, coffee, juice, milk.

That's everything I could possibly want. And you can pay for it in 2 hours a day in the US. What would it cost these kids to pay for that kind of food? More than their whole day's salary.

[BoppreH]

Minimum wage is not a consistent measure and doesn't even have the same meaning everywhere.

And food availability varies too. I would probably have to make twice my current salary to eat Chinese food everyday.

But if you went further in your comparison you would probably conclude that you would make many times more money than them at the same job in the US. But that's because its two different countries, not because Microsoft is underpaying employees overseas, which is the point.

Though your calculations were way better than the author's simple currency conversions.

[eru]

And we don't even have a minimum wage in Germany. (I don't know why Americans are so fond of it.)