> Maybe compare things people buy monthly like bread, milk, cheese, etc - not an every three year purchase like an overpriced phone.
I'd suggest that some sort of a smartphone is more or less necessary to function in a modern society, as might some sort of a laptop/netbook and an Internet connection, at least when you intend to live with any semblance of fitting in. Given that complex electronics aren't produced locally, you're dealing with whatever the market prices are.
Essentially, you have to be able to communicate through WhatsApp, or browse the web to use many of the governmental e-services, or do online banking and be able to confirm payments, or digitally sign documents which is getting increasingly more inevitable thanks to the "eParaksts" ("eSignature") system we have. Technically you could go without those, but it'd be a cumbersome life that wouldn't respect your time as much.
And whilst the situation regarding public transportation is better in Latvia and certain other countries when compared to US (or at least so I've been told, possibly owing to the much smaller size of the country), the fact that many might need to own motor vehicles hasn't become untrue either, especially the further into the rural regions you go and the more items you need to transport.
Of course, instead of finding happiness in being able to purchase bread, milk and cheese, some choose to work for foreign companies and make many times more money than they could ever hope to make locally, to lead more comfortable lives, a trend that's also useful to note. Or, curiously, many of them simple emigrate, given that they don't find satisfying local salaries and thus add to the "brain drain" that certain developing nations are facing. This also shouldn't be overlooked.
Another interesting thing I've noticed people utterly miss out on in our own industry is the claim that "developers are expensive, tools/software/servers are cheap", which gets more and more untrue the more in the direction of less well off countries you look. I don't doubt that in some places a beefy EC2 instance would essentially mean the salary of another developer.
Focusing just on PPP and being able to purchase the bare essentials utterly misses out on these finer points of what the differences in the absolute numbers actually mean.
I'd suggest that some sort of a smartphone is more or less necessary to function in a modern society, as might some sort of a laptop/netbook and an Internet connection, at least when you intend to live with any semblance of fitting in. Given that complex electronics aren't produced locally, you're dealing with whatever the market prices are.
Essentially, you have to be able to communicate through WhatsApp, or browse the web to use many of the governmental e-services, or do online banking and be able to confirm payments, or digitally sign documents which is getting increasingly more inevitable thanks to the "eParaksts" ("eSignature") system we have. Technically you could go without those, but it'd be a cumbersome life that wouldn't respect your time as much.
And whilst the situation regarding public transportation is better in Latvia and certain other countries when compared to US (or at least so I've been told, possibly owing to the much smaller size of the country), the fact that many might need to own motor vehicles hasn't become untrue either, especially the further into the rural regions you go and the more items you need to transport.
Of course, instead of finding happiness in being able to purchase bread, milk and cheese, some choose to work for foreign companies and make many times more money than they could ever hope to make locally, to lead more comfortable lives, a trend that's also useful to note. Or, curiously, many of them simple emigrate, given that they don't find satisfying local salaries and thus add to the "brain drain" that certain developing nations are facing. This also shouldn't be overlooked.
Another interesting thing I've noticed people utterly miss out on in our own industry is the claim that "developers are expensive, tools/software/servers are cheap", which gets more and more untrue the more in the direction of less well off countries you look. I don't doubt that in some places a beefy EC2 instance would essentially mean the salary of another developer.
Focusing just on PPP and being able to purchase the bare essentials utterly misses out on these finer points of what the differences in the absolute numbers actually mean.