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Originally Posted by Crawford
By definition, a household making x is monetarily poorer than a household making 2x.
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Monetary on USD? This Mexican household will definitely have a much wealthier lifestyle, from housing to utilities, goods and services in general as you can buy tons of stuff in Mexico with US$ 20,000 on the way you cannot do it in the US.
You go to Mexico. You know that. You know how much a house cost there, rent or even a visit to a nice restaurant. And that's Mexico with a quite dollarized economy very exposed to the US. In a self-sufficient, inward looking, far away country like Brazil, such differences are even more pronounced.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
Ok? Mexico City certainly isn't cheap and I have no idea what a Youtube video has to do with the conversation. And if Americans are moving to Mexico it obviously makes Mexicans poorer by PPP.
Unless you're moving from NYC or SF you won't pay less for an apples-apples apartment, and you forgot about all the rest (job, healthcare, services, air quality).
My relatives live in an upper middle class area (definitely not rich, and no Americans anywhere; more like university professors, doctors and civil servants) and their simple 2 bed apartment (no elevator, no air conditioning, no amenities, no open space, concrete block from the 1970's) can be sold for around 400k USD. Such an apartment would be near-worthless in much of the U.S. But in Mexico City it's so expensive that all the apartments are inherited, as no one has the incomes to buy one.
In NYC, the poor live in permanently subsidized housing, paying almost nothing. NYCHA housing is almost free. In Mexico City, the poor live in illegal shantytowns 2 hours from anything, with no reliable water, even.
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No elevator?! Such apartment would cost USD 100k in an upmarket neighbourhood in São Paulo.
And what you really mean by "worthless in much of the US"? How much such apartment would cost in New York and San Francisco?
Again,
power purchase exists.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
I have no idea what things currently cost in SP, but this is a silly comparison. SP has very low incomes. They don't have garbage men making 150k. You know what an investment banking analyst or software engineer makes? And neither NYC nor SP are representative of their countries.
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You are the one making nonsensical comparisons between Appalachia and Germany.
You have Google: you keep saying Americans have all they want and I'm saying R$ 5,000 get a much better space for living than US$ 5,000 in New York despite the R$ 5 = US$ 1 exchange.
A garbage men makes US$ 150,000 in New York? That's R$ 750,000 in Brazil (in fact, it's about the public sector ceilling, the presidential wage: Lula makes around that). That's a rich person income, with definitely more than 1 million dollars in savings (an actual millionaire), that travel several times a year abroad staying on luxury hotels and have access to the best medical treatments in the world.
This garbage man goes to Europe several times a year or live a luxury house? Do garbage men in New York are "richer" than this hypothetical person in Brazil?