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The difference is you can still collect welfare (although not social security) even if you've never worked a day in your life (and you get even more if you have
by infinite8s 15y ago
The difference is you can still collect welfare (although not social security) even if you've never worked a day in your life (and you get even more if you have lots of kids). India and most other poor countries have no such social safety net. The point kamaal is making is that most poor people in the US live better than 70-80% of the population in India (even those considered "middle-class"). This is slowly changing as India's economy is modernizing, but there's still a long way to go before the standards of living between both countries will be anything close to par.
As an aside, when I was in grad school in the US, my lab mate and I (both of us of indian descent, although born in the US) used to joke that for half our yearly stipend (about 25K) we could afford to hire a full time Ph.D. chemist in India to do our experiments while we slept. 10K USD in the India is considered middle/upper middle class.
- mkr-hn 15y agoI get the point. I just don't see why it's necessary for someone to point out the disparity in perception every time a story about America's poor comes up. We have different standards due to the difference in national wealth. Do you see Americans dropping in to talk about how out of touch people in better educated European countries are when they talk about problems in their schools? It wouldn't make sense. People get to aspire to better things for their country, even if other countries aren't quite there yet.
- kamaal 15y agoAmericans talk endlessly about how much cheaper <foreign work> destinations have stolen their jobs. They have stolen your jobs because of my aforementioned arguments. In other words you are in this 'poor' state because of your very high standards of living.