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by Cyph0n 164 days ago
The example I like to use to demonstrate how broken labor vs. service costs are in the UAE is to compare the price of a Big Mac meal to the price of a standard manual car wash (closer to detailing tbh).

In the UAE, a Big Mac meal costs approximately 35 AED ($10). On the other hand, a manual car wash - approx. 1-2 hours of labor - can cost you around 20 AED.

In other words, you could get almost two manual car washes for the price of a Big Mac.
2 comments
robkop 164 days ago
Can you elaborate? I would have thought the main driver for the price of a service is the labor?
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Cyph0n 164 days ago
You essentially have two stratums of society:

(1) the middle class (and above) who have money to spend on services

(2) the migrant working class, the bulk of whom send every last extra penny back home as remittances to support family

The second class of people are not considered as a market for the majority of services in the UAE. In the case of food, when they do eat out, they frequent traditional, low cost/quality establishments.

As for why a Big Mac costs that much, labor definitely doesn’t have much to do with it. My impression is that prices continued to get pushed up as long as sales didn’t take a hit, which means it’s mostly pure profit.

Keep in mind that the median salary isn’t that high. Without looking it up, I would guess it’s approx $25k USD/year, but I haven’t lived there in a while.

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ineedaj0b 164 days ago
You can probably get that here in the US near a high school during team sports donation times.

Not a great car wash but probably $5-10 on the low end.

One should be uncomfortable the Arab States are doing so well. They have no democracy but seem to be thriving. Not expected post 9/11 imo.

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Cyph0n 164 days ago
Why should one feel uncomfortable?
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ben_w 164 days ago
To the extent that a dictatorship is doing well, it is evidence against the idea that democracy is the natural way to have a good economy.

That said, I don't think those states are doing *well enough* to justify such a fear. What we're looking at from the outside are basically the promo reels from a version of Disney Land made for people whose childhood dream wasn't to be a princess or a knight, but a CEO with a Lambo; what the kids see when they visit Disney has little in common with the effort needed to present the park.

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