> eastern European wages The caricatures of Middle America really never top, do they? Good developers in St. Louis, where I'm from, make six figures. The GDP

> eastern European wages The caricatures of Middle America really never top, do they? Good developers in St. Louis, where I'm from, make six figures. The GDP per capita in Romania (to pick a totally random example (it's literally just the first place I thought to check)) is $9,499. In Missouri it's $42,984. There's this weird perception that the Midwest is like a third-world country, a perception that's plainly ignorant.