| It strikes me how little is the salary gap in Europe, even in the UK. In Turkey, it starts with 2K and easily goes up to 15K as you advance in your career or have a profession that is on demand. This leads to drastically different lifestyles among regular people. The 3-4K people almost don’t meet the 8-9K except in work environment and there are a lot of both. Restaurant and other venue prices almost act as gate keepers between workers of different classes. In Europe that might be said for super rich but mostly any place can be occasionally afforded by anyone. The most striking that I’ve seen was in Cuba. In restaurants where regular people eat, a meal would cost about 0.5CUC, in restaurants where tourists and the ruling class eat a meal would cost 15CUC, which is about half of the salary of most people. Also, Cubans with access to tourism are orders of magnitude more well off(bribes, contraband, dealing with tourists easily brings more than a salary per dealings). Both in Turkey and in Cuba, drastically better income brings you closer to the western lifestyle, so the range usually means the difference between living like a middle class in a western country v.s. living a century behind in terms of tech and comfort. |