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>Will this still be the case in 30 years when India and China’s economies have matured and high paying tech jobs can be found elsewhere? Even EU can't compete

>Will this still be the case in 30 years when India and China’s economies have matured and high paying tech jobs can be found elsewhere? Even EU can't compete with the US on funding and high tech skilled wages(except London and Switzerland which aren't in the EU), what makes you think India and China can? > where they’ll be developing the economy of those countries rather than that of the US To develop companies that can threaten the established US ones you need more than educated capable brains, you need massive amounts of VC funding, which even the EU doesn't hand out, let alone see India and China match not only enough money to catch up with the US, but also to overtake it. Returning Indian and Chinese engineers and scientists means nothing if there isn't tens of billions waiting for them in funding when they get home.

xvilka 3y ago
China salaries are surprisingly high for skilled specialists (IT, robotics, biotech, etc), if you factor in cost of living and taxes, they would be higher than EU ones even now.
- reacharavindh 3y ago
  As an Indian techie who moved away in 2011 and still living in the West(US & EU), I was recently shocked by this revelation. A fellow Indian engineer who moved to Amsterdam recently scoffed about the economic state of affairs here, and said he was able to save so much more while living similar lifestyle back in India. I blindly asked “how could it possibly be?!, with Indian salaries..” and we got down to details. Boy was he right. The purchase power of an Indian techie is so much more than one even in Amsterdam. Although he, and I chose to move and live in Netherlands for many reasons(cleaner air, cleaner/saner/safer/more equal society, etc.), the case still holds true purely by numbers that a techie working in tier-1 companies in India earns more(after expenses and taxes) than the same metric in EU. As like most things in life, to each their own. But, I was surprised to learn of this shift in balance.
  - saiya-jin 3y ago
    The biggest shock my indian colleagues percieved when coming for few weeks into Europe - wow, you guys dont have home slaves err maids that you pay like half a dollar a day and abuse err 'employ' to no end? You actually clean your home, do the dirty parts of raising kids, do errands? Why are you living so poor? Their star-struck eyes about Switzerland very quickly sobered up, life aint a Bollywood movie. I've spent 6 months backpacking all over india, seeing all the dirty underbelly some decade and half ago, interacting mostly with poor and poorer. Life-changing, extremely intense, beautiful and harsh experience. Those indians getting to the west are mostly from those top layers like brahmins, not your usual poor hard working common indians - 'american dream' is hard to achieve anywhere, but is nigh impossible there, regardless of talents and hard work put in. Everybody knows it, and profit from it as much as they can. Young brahmin couple telling me its fine that 5 year old kids work in fireworks factories instead of going to school, at least they bring some money home. Small kids with various medical situations begging on streets. Some sights and their utter unfairness still haunt me to this day. I know damn well how extremely, ridiculously unfair indian society is, to the core, for millenias. Upper castes dont give a nanofraction of a fuck about poorer people, their suffering. Yes, you can live there like a king on IT salary, maybe not in central Bangalore or Pune, but India is bigger than Europe in more than 1 way. Yet once you stop being poor, money is of little concern. Things like clean air, water and nature, safety, not having 50 C during summer, free good healthcare if not in US, free good education or social services are things we often take for granted, so do the immigrants over time. Life with some poor immitation of that is not that great, and it doesnt matter how high are the walls you build around yourself to shield yourself from the crap behind them, it simply ain't a great life. So, comparing how much one earns, or saves is largely meaningless in longer scale. You decide which system overall you want to live in and often raise your kids, the rest are details.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      >wow, you guys dont have home slaves err maids that you pay like half a dollar a day and abuse err 'employ' to no end? You actually clean your home, do the dirty parts of raising kids, do errands? My colleagues from Israel also said they missed having cheap Arab maid back home that would take care of the house chores whereas in EU they'd have to pay over 20 Euros an hour which is out of their budget, for the wages here. Yeah mate, it sucks not having exploitable labor. /s >I know damn well how extremely, ridiculously unfair indian society is, to the core Both India and China have a pretty nasty caste system.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  East-Germany also has some amazing skilled wages when you factor in the cost of living, but there's a reason the cost of living there is so low. Nobody wants to live there. US is still much more attractive for ambitious people from Asian countries than India, China and even the EU.
  - silisili 3y ago
    Can you explain briefly why nobody wants to live in East Germany? Is it a holdover from the before the wall came down? I'd assumed, perhaps wrongly, things were more unified by now given the age.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      Right wing mentalities are present there.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- hypertele-Xii 3y ago
  And what are they going to do with those salaries? Buy unbuilt or unfinished apartments in sinking tofu-dreg towers from bankrupting construction companies?
  - mysterydip 3y ago
    Right now it seems the answer has been buying up western real estate: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-investors-buy-6-1-150313338.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-investors-buy-6-1-150...
  - DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
    Probably but an apartment in a nice, modern building, which China has plenty of.
- user_named 3y ago
  I make about the same as a very good offer in EU would get me, but my costs are much less and taxes are about 5%. I guessing I save 2-4x as much. This is in China.
  - rfoo 3y ago
    How do you get ~5% effective tax rates? With EU-level salary you should be hitting 30% in their progressive income tax system. China has hidden sales tax (in the form of VAT), too. IIRC As long as you work in tech (OK, there's some more subtle rules but let's assume parent gets it), Shenzhen caps your income tax at 15%. Still nowhere near 5%.
    - user_named 3y ago
      Shanghai has a foreign employee tax system, which works out to about 5% income tax. This system is only available to choose at some companies and provinces. At a previous company I did indeed pay something like 25-30%.
polshaw 3y ago
To a considerable extent, Europe has ceded it's tech sector to the US. We use American search engines, retailers, social networks and messaging apps. China especially has fervently avoided that mistake. India not so much, Facebook, WhatsApp and Amazon reign supreme, but even they have blocked tiktok. So they provide the space for domestic competitors to build up in a protected environment before having to compete with US VC money.
Obsnold 3y ago
Is the VC funding part important or just the lots of money part? I've got the impression that VCs aren't really interested in hardware so it's governments that have to step in and fund it. I also believe the Chinese government is throwing crazy money at this sector at the moment, I heard they were giving money out to anyone with a PhD that mentioned RISC-V or semiconductors. This was a couple of years back so not sure if this is still the case.
- yogthos 3y ago
  This is an excellent read on the subject https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-value-of-nothing-capital-versus-growth/ https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-value-of-noth...
slushh 3y ago
>Returning Indian and Chinese engineers and scientists means nothing if there isn't tens of billions waiting for them in funding when they get home. China has a huge trade surplus and they are starting to trade in the BRICS currency. Why shouldn't there be billions? Once the investments pay off, why shouldn't there be even billions more?
netheril96 3y ago
> what makes you think India and China can? They don't have to do anything. The US visa system already excludes most of the Chinese and India people eager to immigrate to the US. The brain drain is bounded above by the US policy.
em500 3y ago
> Even EU can't compete with the US on funding and high tech skilled wages(except London and Switzerland which aren't in the EU), what makes you think India and China can? India and China tolerate more inequality than continental EU. Software engineers probably only make 2 to 3 times as much as teachers or nurses here, rather than maybe 4 to 10 times as in the US (and probably also India and China).
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >Software engineers probably only make 2 to 3 times as much as teachers or nurses here No, 2 to 3 times more than nurses or teachers is huge an unrealistic by socialist western EU standards. More like 10 to 40% tops is realistic. For context, a nurse earns 3k to 4k/month in Austria while a SW dev in the ballpark of 3k to 5k tops, so not that much more. There's no companies paying you 2 to 3 times more than a nurse.
  - happymellon 3y ago
    What has socialism got to do with large variations in salary?
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      Flatens the pay gap. Taxes high corporate wages and profits and pays it to public workers.
      - tarsinge 3y ago
        You mean like the US in the 50’s? Labeling reducing the pay gap and taxation as socialism is not intellectually honest.
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        You're confusing socialism with Soviet communism and the red scare. Some of the EU countries I talked about are social democracies, and are ruled by socialist parties and have socialist policies who's consequences are a healthy lower class at the expense of a hot sw engineering market due to high taxes on businesses. Maybe do some reading before talking fud.
goodbyesf 3y ago
> Even EU can't compete with the US on funding and high tech skilled wages(except London and Switzerland which aren't in the EU) 1. Because EU isn't a centralized nation. Maybe one day. 2. It is a vassal of the US. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-05/us-pushing-for-asml-to-stop-selling-key-chipmaking-gear-to-china https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-05/us-pushin... > what makes you think India and China can? Because they have to. > To develop companies that can threaten the established US ones you need more than educated capable brains, you need massive amounts of VC funding I don't think china is desperate for funding. And china has already created such companies. That's why china is being sanctioned.
wkat4242 3y ago
> Even EU can't compete with the US on funding and high tech skilled wages(except London and Switzerland which aren't in the EU), what makes you think India and China can? Wages aren't the only point though. Life is not all about money. I had to take a pay cut to move to Spain but quality of life is so much better here.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  We're talking about what attracts top talent to move somewhere in terms of geopolitics. The US is vastly more attractive to top tech worker than Spain, even if you choose otherwise.

xvilka 3y ago

China salaries are surprisingly high for skilled specialists (IT, robotics, biotech, etc), if you factor in cost of living and taxes, they would be higher than EU ones even now.

reacharavindh 3y ago
As an Indian techie who moved away in 2011 and still living in the West(US & EU), I was recently shocked by this revelation. A fellow Indian engineer who moved to Amsterdam recently scoffed about the economic state of affairs here, and said he was able to save so much more while living similar lifestyle back in India. I blindly asked “how could it possibly be?!, with Indian salaries..” and we got down to details. Boy was he right. The purchase power of an Indian techie is so much more than one even in Amsterdam. Although he, and I chose to move and live in Netherlands for many reasons(cleaner air, cleaner/saner/safer/more equal society, etc.), the case still holds true purely by numbers that a techie working in tier-1 companies in India earns more(after expenses and taxes) than the same metric in EU. As like most things in life, to each their own. But, I was surprised to learn of this shift in balance.
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  The biggest shock my indian colleagues percieved when coming for few weeks into Europe - wow, you guys dont have home slaves err maids that you pay like half a dollar a day and abuse err 'employ' to no end? You actually clean your home, do the dirty parts of raising kids, do errands? Why are you living so poor? Their star-struck eyes about Switzerland very quickly sobered up, life aint a Bollywood movie. I've spent 6 months backpacking all over india, seeing all the dirty underbelly some decade and half ago, interacting mostly with poor and poorer. Life-changing, extremely intense, beautiful and harsh experience. Those indians getting to the west are mostly from those top layers like brahmins, not your usual poor hard working common indians - 'american dream' is hard to achieve anywhere, but is nigh impossible there, regardless of talents and hard work put in. Everybody knows it, and profit from it as much as they can. Young brahmin couple telling me its fine that 5 year old kids work in fireworks factories instead of going to school, at least they bring some money home. Small kids with various medical situations begging on streets. Some sights and their utter unfairness still haunt me to this day. I know damn well how extremely, ridiculously unfair indian society is, to the core, for millenias. Upper castes dont give a nanofraction of a fuck about poorer people, their suffering. Yes, you can live there like a king on IT salary, maybe not in central Bangalore or Pune, but India is bigger than Europe in more than 1 way. Yet once you stop being poor, money is of little concern. Things like clean air, water and nature, safety, not having 50 C during summer, free good healthcare if not in US, free good education or social services are things we often take for granted, so do the immigrants over time. Life with some poor immitation of that is not that great, and it doesnt matter how high are the walls you build around yourself to shield yourself from the crap behind them, it simply ain't a great life. So, comparing how much one earns, or saves is largely meaningless in longer scale. You decide which system overall you want to live in and often raise your kids, the rest are details.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >wow, you guys dont have home slaves err maids that you pay like half a dollar a day and abuse err 'employ' to no end? You actually clean your home, do the dirty parts of raising kids, do errands? My colleagues from Israel also said they missed having cheap Arab maid back home that would take care of the house chores whereas in EU they'd have to pay over 20 Euros an hour which is out of their budget, for the wages here. Yeah mate, it sucks not having exploitable labor. /s >I know damn well how extremely, ridiculously unfair indian society is, to the core Both India and China have a pretty nasty caste system.
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
East-Germany also has some amazing skilled wages when you factor in the cost of living, but there's a reason the cost of living there is so low. Nobody wants to live there. US is still much more attractive for ambitious people from Asian countries than India, China and even the EU.
- silisili 3y ago
  Can you explain briefly why nobody wants to live in East Germany? Is it a holdover from the before the wall came down? I'd assumed, perhaps wrongly, things were more unified by now given the age.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Right wing mentalities are present there.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
hypertele-Xii 3y ago
And what are they going to do with those salaries? Buy unbuilt or unfinished apartments in sinking tofu-dreg towers from bankrupting construction companies?
- mysterydip 3y ago
  Right now it seems the answer has been buying up western real estate: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-investors-buy-6-1-150313338.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-investors-buy-6-1-150...
- DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
  Probably but an apartment in a nice, modern building, which China has plenty of.
user_named 3y ago
I make about the same as a very good offer in EU would get me, but my costs are much less and taxes are about 5%. I guessing I save 2-4x as much. This is in China.
- rfoo 3y ago
  How do you get ~5% effective tax rates? With EU-level salary you should be hitting 30% in their progressive income tax system. China has hidden sales tax (in the form of VAT), too. IIRC As long as you work in tech (OK, there's some more subtle rules but let's assume parent gets it), Shenzhen caps your income tax at 15%. Still nowhere near 5%.
  - user_named 3y ago
    Shanghai has a foreign employee tax system, which works out to about 5% income tax. This system is only available to choose at some companies and provinces. At a previous company I did indeed pay something like 25-30%.

polshaw 3y ago

To a considerable extent, Europe has ceded it's tech sector to the US. We use American search engines, retailers, social networks and messaging apps. China especially has fervently avoided that mistake. India not so much, Facebook, WhatsApp and Amazon reign supreme, but even they have blocked tiktok. So they provide the space for domestic competitors to build up in a protected environment before having to compete with US VC money.

Obsnold 3y ago

Is the VC funding part important or just the lots of money part? I've got the impression that VCs aren't really interested in hardware so it's governments that have to step in and fund it. I also believe the Chinese government is throwing crazy money at this sector at the moment, I heard they were giving money out to anyone with a PhD that mentioned RISC-V or semiconductors. This was a couple of years back so not sure if this is still the case.

yogthos 3y ago
This is an excellent read on the subject https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-value-of-nothing-capital-versus-growth/ https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-value-of-noth...

slushh 3y ago

>Returning Indian and Chinese engineers and scientists means nothing if there isn't tens of billions waiting for them in funding when they get home. China has a huge trade surplus and they are starting to trade in the BRICS currency. Why shouldn't there be billions? Once the investments pay off, why shouldn't there be even billions more?

netheril96 3y ago

> what makes you think India and China can? They don't have to do anything. The US visa system already excludes most of the Chinese and India people eager to immigrate to the US. The brain drain is bounded above by the US policy.

em500 3y ago

> Even EU can't compete with the US on funding and high tech skilled wages(except London and Switzerland which aren't in the EU), what makes you think India and China can? India and China tolerate more inequality than continental EU. Software engineers probably only make 2 to 3 times as much as teachers or nurses here, rather than maybe 4 to 10 times as in the US (and probably also India and China).

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>Software engineers probably only make 2 to 3 times as much as teachers or nurses here No, 2 to 3 times more than nurses or teachers is huge an unrealistic by socialist western EU standards. More like 10 to 40% tops is realistic. For context, a nurse earns 3k to 4k/month in Austria while a SW dev in the ballpark of 3k to 5k tops, so not that much more. There's no companies paying you 2 to 3 times more than a nurse.
- happymellon 3y ago
  What has socialism got to do with large variations in salary?
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Flatens the pay gap. Taxes high corporate wages and profits and pays it to public workers.
    - tarsinge 3y ago
      You mean like the US in the 50’s? Labeling reducing the pay gap and taxation as socialism is not intellectually honest.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        You're confusing socialism with Soviet communism and the red scare. Some of the EU countries I talked about are social democracies, and are ruled by socialist parties and have socialist policies who's consequences are a healthy lower class at the expense of a hot sw engineering market due to high taxes on businesses. Maybe do some reading before talking fud.

goodbyesf 3y ago

> Even EU can't compete with the US on funding and high tech skilled wages(except London and Switzerland which aren't in the EU) 1. Because EU isn't a centralized nation. Maybe one day. 2. It is a vassal of the US. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-05/us-pushing-for-asml-to-stop-selling-key-chipmaking-gear-to-china https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-05/us-pushin... > what makes you think India and China can? Because they have to. > To develop companies that can threaten the established US ones you need more than educated capable brains, you need massive amounts of VC funding I don't think china is desperate for funding. And china has already created such companies. That's why china is being sanctioned.

wkat4242 3y ago

> Even EU can't compete with the US on funding and high tech skilled wages(except London and Switzerland which aren't in the EU), what makes you think India and China can? Wages aren't the only point though. Life is not all about money. I had to take a pay cut to move to Spain but quality of life is so much better here.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
We're talking about what attracts top talent to move somewhere in terms of geopolitics. The US is vastly more attractive to top tech worker than Spain, even if you choose otherwise.