[leeoniya]

things like this rub me the wrong way. you cannot compare income levels between countries with vastly different costs of living.

sure, first world countries will have a higher standard of living overall, but putting $25/hr in US up against $0.08/hr in Ghana is a misleading comparison of purchasing power.

case in point: in Ghana you can probably buy a castle full of servants on 80 acres for $25/hr.

[JumpCrisscross]

"For currency conversion we use Purchasing Power Parity Dollars (PPP$) in order to take into account the difference in cost of living between countries; PPP$ are also less susceptible to short term fluctuations."

[leeoniya]

im no economist, but i cant help but feel thereis a huge flaw with PPP comparisons between first and third world countries.

if someone made $0.08/hr in the US, they would starve. homeless people make a lot more than this in the states. but somehow, people manage to raise whole families on those wages in third world countries. what am i missing?

[a3n]

You're missing the forest for the trees. It's an awareness tool, not an economic analysis.

[leeoniya]

the tool does count trees though. i find it relevant to discuss whether it counts 1e2 trees or 1e6, or a seemingly unsurvivable wage with one that in reality sustains families.

[matchu]

I think that's exactly what PPP is about, though: income is converted to how much you have the power to purchase, so it's designed specifically to equalize that comparison. Or maybe I'm misreading.

[andrewcooke]

this isn't really that true (and i say this as a brit living in chile, so have some experience). sure, some things are cheap. but if you're talking about the kind of wealth many people here have, you exhaust those pretty quickly. it's basically local produce and labour that's cheap. anything "interesting" - media, electronics, car, brand name clothes, travel, etc - is the same (or more expensive, since it's imported).

i'm not saying you need those things to survive. you can certainly survive in chile much cheaper than in the usa. but for a good quality of life (in the consumption sense - like, global top 1% or so, which i imagine many people here are) i would guess it's actually cheaper in the usa (although health care is cheaper here, but that's kind of a weird us outlier thing).

[leeoniya]

yes, thats almost certainly the case. but it's inappropriate to boil it down to $/hr. because you're not cognitively comparing living in the US for 0.08 vs 25 an hour.

[andrewcooke]

but only for people poorer than you.

for rich people like us, the comparison works. for poorer people, they're poorer anyway. it doesn't change anything. you can't avoid the conclusion that you're still horrendously privileged (which i suspect is what you want to do, but maybe i am just a cynic).

[leeoniya]

i disagree. you cannot survive in the US on 0.08/hr. i think it would be most appropriate to establish a relative baseline at the lowest survivable wage in each country. and that includes raising kids.

i feel privilaged to have access to good health care, healthy food, clean water, relative freedom and an environment where i dont have to worry about surviving on a daily basis. having only these things, i could be just as happy without everything a high hourly wage affords me beyond this.