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Yet the average American makes more money than the average German by ~15%.

Link

What's Socialism's excuse?

Obviously. One year means nothing, 2000 people only can't have any impact on the overall economy of a country, and $690 in a northern Europe country? What are people going to do with this? Seriously?

I'm personally not favorable to this universal basic income thing, but let's be serious when we experiment. You can't seriously not work when you just earn $690 in Finland (just take a look at this: http://www.worldsalaries.org/f... ), unless you become poor and dependant. Is that what this is really all about? And if you still need to find a job to get a decent living, what's the point of the basic income then? Just pulling all salaries so low that it will look like slavery?

Basically, the point of UBI is that even if you fall to the bottom, you still have a roof over your head and food in your belly. That's it. It's not a great roof (it's supposed to be something like a barracks style room you share with 7 other people, but you do get a private locker for your stuff), and the food is nutritious, but that's about it. You can live, and the money pays for all that, medical treatments, etc.

And some people are happy with that. Which is entirely fine.

Most people though would want to upgrade their lfiestyle to something more traditional - a private apartment or house and all that. That's human nature - you'll find the vast majority of people actually do aspire to these things, so they will work.

Thing is, by having housing and food everyone can fall back to, you eliminate a lot of the exploitative jobs - the ones that pay crap and are dangerous. If you know you have at least a bed and 3 meals a day, would you take a minimum wage job that required you to work 16 hours a day at a physically demanding job? Not likely, but these days, there are a lot of people in a lot of those kind of jobs, because if they weren't, they'd be out on the streets.

Then there's also a lot of alternative self-employed jobs out there - plenty of people "make stuff" out of wood and such, and most only do it to scrape by. Instead, they can out there doing it to upgrade their lifestyle, so it goes from working to barely survive, to working to better one's life.

The point is, basically, yes, you will get housed and fed, even if you want to be a complete lazy ass. If that kind of living suits you, go right ahead. For the vast, vast, vast majority of people though, they will work to upgrade their lifestyle. But they will be less afraid to leave exploitative employers and into working for the betterment of themselves not just survival.

I'm personally not favorable to this universal basic income thing, but let's be serious when we experiment. You can't seriously not work when you just earn $690 in Finland (just take a look at this: http://www.worldsalaries.org/f... ), unless you become poor and dependant. Is that what this is really all about? And if you still need to find a job to get a decent living, what's the point of the basic income then? Just pulling all salaries so low that it will look like slavery?

Its not bankrupted any other first world country which has universal healthcare free at the point of need. The tax burden per capita of the UK NHS is the same as the tax burden per capita in the USA for Medicare and Medicaid yet the NHS covers 100% of the population. It may not be perfect but people don't have to make the choice between getting treatment and eating.

That's not a plan. Do you propose to cut doctor salaries in the US to the level of the UK? How about nurses? How do you think that political fight will go?

Do you think we can easily afford to have a system like the UK's health system with personnel costs like the US system?

Just saying "but the UK...." isn't an answer. Vermont tried it. They couldn't find a way to pay for it. There must be some actual reason. Unless you think everyone in Vermont's government is just a moron...?

Its not bankrupted any other first world country which has universal healthcare free at the point of need. The tax burden per capita of the UK NHS is the same as the tax burden per capita in the USA for Medicare and Medicaid yet the NHS covers 100% of the population. It may not be perfect but people don't have to make the choice between getting treatment and eating.

That's not a plan. Do you propose to cut doctor salaries in the US to the level of the UK? How about nurses? How do you think that political fight will go?

Do you think we can easily afford to have a system like the UK's health system with personnel costs like the US system?

Just saying "but the UK...." isn't an answer. Vermont tried it. They couldn't find a way to pay for it. There must be some actual reason. Unless you think everyone in Vermont's government is just a moron...?

It's mostly because health care workers in the US make a lot more than in other countries. Here's a survey of nurse salaries in different countries.

Total executive bonuses for ~100 guys don't come close to the amount it costs to pay millions of doctors and nurses more.

Is your single payer system going to cut health care worker pay by 25-50% and keep it down?

How about we stop telling each other fanciful stories (that appeal to our personal tribal biases) long enough to do simple a little arithmetic?

Did his house in Thailand say "AlphaBay Founder".

Dude. He had four Lamborghini and three houses in Thailand. The price of a lambo is like $200k. The average monthly wages for a worker in thailand is evidently $4k. The price of those cars was equal to 16 years of the average worker's wages.

Fuck checking ID at the border. A 26 year old throwing that kind of money around is going to be all the ID law enforcement outside of a very small number of rich countries need to demand payoffs. You know he's doing something illegal.

I'd guess that's why he was "found" dead.

DS is right. No matter what country you're in, unless you're from old money and make regular payoffs up VERY high, don't attract that level of attention if you're a criminal.

Help! The sky is falling! A companies revenue in one country now only dwarves 62 countries!

They should be worried, shouldn't they? With that sharp decline, their revenue in China is now "only" equal to the yearly income of 870 thousand chinese (or 92 thousand americans).

I will readily admit I'm an Apple fan. But wtf is this article? A piece of whining, like a super-rich complaining that this years champagne doesn't taste as nice as last years'. I don't think the author has a grasp for the numbers he posted.

A little googling gets you the following links:

http://www.worldsalaries.org/china.shtml
An engineer or a programmer makes $252/month on average. Are you shitting me that a factory worker making $275/month AT ENTRY LEVEL is worse off?! Entry Level. Starts at $275/month. Makes *more* money than a programmer or an engineer.

Please stop it with your assumptions and "$700 is the median wage" bullshit.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/30/apple-foxconn-workers-idUSL3E8EU4I820120330
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/apple-economy/reporters-notebook-both-sides-gates-foxconn

Better articles with wage information.

An interesting note - in addition to being able to send US$250/month back home (equivalent to a programmer's monthly pay), the worker had also saved enough in 3 years there to start his own construction company once he leaves. The average American has 10% to 30% credit card debt alone, much less think about doing anything other than continuing to work day in day out.

Who is actually worse off?

http://www.worldsalaries.org/teacher.shtml ... US teacher salaries are amongst the highest in the world even after PPP adjustment.

Apparently a "computer programmer" in Riga earns on average around $790 per month:

http://www.worldsalaries.org/latvia.shtml

http://www.worldsalaries.org/china.shtml

You think a pilot or programmer in china does not have a decent living standard? You must be oxygen starved when you were born.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/30/apple-foxconn-workers-idUSL3E8EU4I820120330

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/apple-economy/reporters-notebook-both-sides-gates-foxconn

Oh look - the guy, working for 3 years, can send money back to his family and support them *AND FUCKING SAVE ENOUGH TO START HIS OWN SMALL BUSINESS*.

So, no, this is not about relative living standards you fucking moron, because he obviously has a far better living standard than most americans.

Why not do some research?

http://www.worldsalaries.org/china.shtml

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/30/apple-foxconn-workers-idUSL3E8EU4I820120330

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/apple-economy/reporters-notebook-both-sides-gates-foxconn

Where do people get this idea that American teachers are underpaid? Do the teacher unions do that great a job of convincing the population?

American teachers are some of the highest paid in the world.

It's just not true that in Finland or Germany... (insert whatever country) that teachers are somehow given higher pay than American teachers.

http://www.worldsalaries.org/teacher.shtml

This is especially true in comparison to other jobs and the cost of living.

There is no problem with funding in education or teacher salaries. If anything, America spends too much on education... just like healthcare.

That's excellent wage for China. People keep forgetting that these jobs are in China. That is almost as much as a nurse makes in China. As for hours and working conditions, these workers are paid for as many hours as they work unlike salaried positions. As such many of them volunteer to work longer hours. As for working conditions, China as a whole has horrible conditions. The conditions at Foxconn are much better than most places in China. So let's see: High wage, better conditions, chance to earn more money with extra hours. I can see why they would line up.

The point that needs to be made. Is that manufacturing in the US or anywhere in the western world incorporates large amounts of robotics and automation.

In China humans are cheaper and more disposable than machines. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H-abkO-9Sw. Have a good long think about that labour, machines have been doing that kind of work in the western world since the 1930s odd.

Apple is in China to inflate profits, nothing more and nothing less. Everything regarding the way Apple publicly thinks about labour is pure PR=B$ (lies for profit). What you suck of the workers pocket goes into executives pockets, http://www.worldsalaries.org/china.shtml.

Arg ... I gave a lengthy answer but the browser crashed and I'm pissed (have to use IE at work :-/). So a very short reply:

Anyway to make it short, a few links (albeit not very good ones): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income
and http://www.worldsalaries.org/

Keep in mind lots of countries are missing on that Wikipedia page. Income per person in 2008 was $50,670 in San Marino. (However it is unclear how that was calculated from Euro into $)

First, even if you were right (which you are not) my estimated $2/month cost for unrestricted internet comes out to 1.3% of monthly income. A small--but not insignificant--amount to pay for unbridled access to information.

But your number was incorrect. China earned in $12/day nationwide in 2004. And, more apropos to the discussion, China's urban citizenry is brought home $20/day in 2004. It is beyond dispute that the average income in China has increased dramatically since 2004.

My point is that $2/month still represents the relatively small contribution of 0.5% of the average urbanites' monthly income in 2004. The relative cost is at least half as large today.

To repeat myself: the cost of unfiltered internet in China is very small. New broadcasting mechanisms are an inconsequential contribution to the current availability of unrestricted information.

Japan isn't a third-world nation, though. Wages there are actually pretty high: http://www.worldsalaries.org/japan.shtml

I would think chip factory workers are in the $2000-$3000 per month range, but I have no data on that. Seems right when you compare all the sectors, though. Japan is about as expensive as a North European country, with wages to match. $20 per month would be unsustainable and illegal ;)

Maybe it's because Japan is in the middle of the world? About as far east and west, and close to China/Taiwan, where they take chips and make motherboards and other things from them. Also centrally located for distribution (and incidentally much cheaper, not adding so much overhead once final products are built).

I sincerely doubt that, as no decent programmer should be doing work for less than 50 bucks an hour. Which is around 100k a year before taxes.

Wow. I hate replying to AC's but this is just idiotic and arrogant...

http://www.worldsalaries.org/computerprogrammer.shtml
http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Programmer&l1=United+States
http://www.suite101.com/content/computer-programming-career-information-and-wage-expectations-a247160

All of these vary somewhat on what they report incomes to be but they all solidly put the vast majority of programmers short of 6 figure incomes. I'm more than confident that there are a LOT of competent programmers out there making making less than 100,000/year.

If you are getting paid less, it is either because of the industry you are in is surfeit with programmers or you are not specialized enough.

The vast majority of programmers make less. I'm sure some of them are incompetent. And some of them are inexperienced. But there are a lot of experienced competent programmers making less than 6 figures.

Chinese sweat shop labor, e.g. at Foxconn, make about $168-176 per month

Yep, and a baker in China makes less than $100 per month. Seeing as how there's not much demand here for Chinese bread, I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the "sweatshops" apparently pay better than what the chinese themselves are willing to pay.

Here's a bunch more numbers for you to look at:
http://www.worldsalaries.org/china.shtml

Furthermore, we need to eliminate the debt load for student doctors. You can't expect doctors to work for lower salaries (as I propose above) when they are graduating with hundred of thousands in debt.

Would these lower salary expectations not put downward pressure on education costs? After all, if we shift the burden of costs to those who cannot make individual cost/benefit decisions, have we not re-created the very health care market dysfunction we seek to remedy?

P.S. A comparison of average general physician salaries across countries: http://www.worldsalaries.org/generalphysician.shtml

Take two paragraphs from it:

For as little as 34p an hour, the men and women work six or seven days a week, making computer mice and web cams for the American multinational computer company.

It was the militaristic management and sleep deprivation that affected the worker most. 'I know I can choose not to work overtime, but if I don't work overtime then I am stuck with only 770 Chinese yuan (£72.77p) per month in basic wages,' the worker said.

If the basic wage is £72.77 a month and they earn £0.34 an hour that gives a working week of just under 50 hours which doesn't seem like slavery to me. It also puts them at a comparable income to a chambermaid or baker, which makes sense since it's working the line at a factory.

If they are working 15 hours a day, 6 days a week at £0.34 that's £132.60 per month. That puts them at a comparable income to an accountant, which is insane amounts of money for working the line at a factory.

Chinese incomes taken from: http://www.worldsalaries.org/china.shtml (and using the "770 Chinese yuan=£72.77p" conversion rate from the paragraph quoted above).

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.korean/browse_thread/thread/63a135baa9ae8b87

> Average annual income: Taiwan US$16563, Korea US$19921
> PPP: Taiwan US$32041, Korea US$23331
PPP is the purchasing power.

I.e., Because many items are much cheaper in Taiwan than in the US (partially because of laws the corporations have had passed to prevent importation of substantially cheaper medicine and items-- i.e. killing what should happen in a true capitalist economy), the $16,563 annual income allows a citizen of Taiwan to live as well as a person making $32041 dollars in the US. So they live about 3/4 as well as the average income $46,000 american citizen.

http://www.worldsalaries.org/taiwan.shtml
Personal Average Income (2005)
17,138 $US.
297,862 NT$

For example:
http://www.footprintsrecruiting.com/cost-of-living-in-taiwan/cost-of-food-in-taiwan
Monthly expenses (for an expatriate english teacher)...

* Rent: NT$10,000
* Utilities: NT$1,750
* Food: NT$7,500
* Transportation: NT$700
* Entertainment: NT$2,500
* Internet: NT $500
* Cell Phone: NT $1,000
* TOTAL: NT$23,950 (NT$256,000 annually)
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China and India have the lower wage structure, not Taiwan.

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India has some advantages over the US for costs. Medical is about 20% of our cost (for nearly identical care for many procedures) and a college degree is about 10% of the cost. The college degree is going to be very intense (so like advanced placement classes here) but perhaps less creative and definitely less networking with other US people in your field.

Medical and University costs have grossly outpaced inflation for the last two decades in the US. Since I got my degree in 93, the cost of an in state degree has gone up 500%.

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These lower prices are an artifact and they will shed away quickly. I think within 8 years. Wages here will stagnate and wages their will rise.
For exmample:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_13/b3977049.htm
"Last year salaries surged 40%, to an average of $160 a month."

"Wait a minute. Doesn't China have an inexhaustible supply of cheap labor? Not any longer. From the textile and toy factories of the south to the corporate headquarters and research labs in Beijing and Shanghai, the No. 1 challenge today is finding and keeping good workers. "

http://www.moneyweek.com/news-and-charts/economics/what-chinas-changing-labour-market-means-for-the-west.aspx
Incomes are rising at double-digit rates - even rural incomes.

http://www.forbes.com/2007/07/02/china-wage-growth-markets-econ-cx_jc_0702markets1.html
On a per-capita basis, the average Chinese worker earned an annual wage of 12,422 yuan ($1,630) in 2002, or 1,035 yuan ($136) per month. As of 2006, they were making 21,001 yuan ($2,756) a year, or 1,750 yuan ($230) a month.

Chinese workers experienced 400% wage inflation at the lowest tiers from 1995 to 2006 alone. Wages for US workers went up about 50% in the same time period (wages for executives went from 85x us workers annual pay to 531x us workers annual pay) http://www.svsu.edu/emplibrary/Whelton%20article.pdf

I

The word you're looking for is "complement." As to the rest of this, the materials are created as work for hire which means that they shouldn't be sold in this fashion.

As for pay, teachers make more than is often times acknowledged, sure it's not enough for the time actually worked, but the income is higher than it is for the general populace. And they certainly make more than I do for less work. http://www.worldsalaries.org/usa.shtml

Income level doesn't have much to do with the risk level of a given loan.

Sure — I agree with you... Actual income and the amount of savings are just parts of the picture — banks have spent decades figuring out their formulas. They already want to give mortgages, because it is profitable (in a Capitalist society anyway), so the bank, that overestimates the risk (and thus turns away some good customers) loses to competitors. In a free society, though anyone ought to be able to set their own standards and thresholds...

What the article was talking about was that lowering the requirements: ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''

See, "many borrowers" are "a notch below", our standards, so let's lower our standards. This was not done to make money (a properly Capitalist mind would've rejected it in a heartbeat), but to "help people"... And, hey, it worked against soo well, one may suspect Clinton and the rest of the people pushing this in 1999 to have done this on purpose. Oh, and then — the masterminding brilliance of hanging this catastrophe around McCain and Republicans! Evil anti-Capitalist geniuses...

Someone making $100k might be a poor candidate for $300,000 30 year mortgage.

$100k per annum is not poor. Average salary in the US was just over $42k (gross) in 2005. Your using this number suggests, you don't really have a grasp of facts...

there's no indication there was any public pressure to ignore credit scores

Of course, there was, even if nobody said so outright. You don't need to explicitly demand lowering standards — it is much easier to simply accuse the lender of racism... Since the CRA's inception in 1977, it is estimated, the banks have given at least $10bln to the non-profit groups (such as ACORN) — to keep the pressure at tolerable levels. But $10bln is nothing — just "the cost of doing business", passed onto the rest of us.

The banks were paying these assholes off, resisted suicidal changes to their risk-assessment and remained profitable. Until 1999, when it became possible to off-load crappier mortgages to the Fannie Mae. When this happened, the banks caved in, because their risk went down dramatically — they no longer had to keep the crappy mortgage, which they wouldn't have given without undue pressure in the first place, on their own books...

And thus the bubble began to inflate. There were suddenly fewer homes, than people able to buy them, which increased the prices. Our efficient Capitalist economy responded immediately with feverish construction activity. There were some early warning signs, but they were ignored. People unable to keep up with payments could refinance for a while (because the market values of their homes kept increasing), but that's not indefinite either. Banks' attempts to foreclose were met with the same resistance from the same non-profits — including the brilliant idea of littering the lawns of bank-executives with plastic sharks, and more of the same race-

> As long as scientific results and techniques are hidden in very expensive privately-run journals and conference proceedings, it cannot in any sense be considered open in the same sense as open-source or "fsf-free" software.

I totally agree.

> And this problem doesn't apply only to me, but to countless fully qualified scientists whose institutions cannot afford the knowledge.

There are plenty of countries, where a teacher or a professor earns only $300 per month. Cashing out $30 per paper for 24-hour access is absolutely unacceptable for such a person. Meanwhile most institutions in those countries just cannot afford an institutional subscription.

I've been wondering exactly the same thing as yourself, and here are some of the conclusions I've come to.

First of all, language. I would guess that the other employees at almost any job you would want would speak English, so that's not a problem. However, it would be nice to speak with the locals, too. Here's a measure of English ability. The summary is that the best English speaking countries are UK, Ireland, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden. I'll add Germany to the list because I've known several people who've gone there and said they had no problems. English is ok in tourist destinations anywhere. For example, you don't need to know French to live in Paris, but the rest of France would be tough. Of course, being an American, learning Spanish would be very helpful, so you might want to put Spain on your list, just to force yourself to improve, but English/non-Spanish speakers I know said Spain was difficult.

Second, actually getting a job can be difficult. I have been looking around to see if I could maybe get a job somewhere like Sweden (where most of my ancestors were from), but it looks like the Northern European countries have very strict labor laws for other Europeans, and so it's even harder for a non-European to get a job and a visa. It's much easier for them to come here, than us to go there, unfortunately, even though a skilled worker can make more here. However, as I understand, most countries are quite open to educational opportunities. There are probably quite a few programs that are affiliated with your school. For example, studying abroad and postdocs are probably the most common. You might consider Fulbright scholarships. Here's a list of contacts that someone at my school told me about:

***

BUNAC (British Universities North American Club) up to 6 months work visa in the UK, and varying times for work in Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland http://www.bunac.com/ Note that the 4 month Irish work visa and 6 month UK work visa can be combined for 10 months split between the two countries.

CIEE (Center for International Educational Exchange) a number of countries and length of work visa varies: http://www.ciee.org/

Alliance Abroad has a number of internship, teaching and volunteer opportunities abroad http://www.allianceabroad.com/

Spend a Year In New Zealand http://www.immigration.govt.nz/ or go to http://www.immigration.govt.nz/migrant/stream/work/workingholiday/workopportunities/ for working holiday information.

For summer up to year long technical placements IAESTE is the best (and I believe the only) group that arranges such opportunities for students or graduating seniors. Go to http://www.iaeste.org/

***

As far as getting a job goes, think about who you might work for. If it's a multinational company (the most likely people to hire you), ask yourself why they'd hire you to work in a more expensive country, with more labor restrictions, when they can hire a local with probably roughly equivalent skills. Some of the things I've been reading say that this route can be done, but to do it, you'd join a multinational company here in the US, and after a couple years request a transfer. One obvious possibility, as an American, is to go as an employee of the Government (e.g. the Foreign Service).

You might also consider broadening your scope a bit to include other English speaking countries -- you'd probably do ok in most Commonwealth countries (e.g. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa)... I've seen lots of ads about working in New Zealand.

In summary.... it's really hard, unless you can do it via academia

I agree with you.

But let us just do a little comparison here.

Let's say a guy with a decent job in America (the US) is downloading movies using BitTorrent software. The thing is that this way he gets the movie for free, he only pays for internet connection, which he would pay already. A recent movie release in the US is something between $10 and $40 (I'm not a US citizen, so I looked at WalMart's prices). What is the average monthly sallary for an average guy? $2500 to $5000? http://www.worldsalaries.org/usa.shtml In all cases is more than $1000 a month. For a quick calculation let us assume the salary is $3000. From this amount of money he could get 120 DVD releases, calculating with an average $25 per DVD.

Let's take a look at a Romanian (I'm from here) guy with decent job and salary. The average monthly salary is somewhere around $300. The average price for a DVD release (which is quite old compared to the new releases in the US, because here, the new releases come after 5-6 months) is $20. Now it's easy math, the Romanian guy could buy 15 DVD releases, which aren't even the newest ones.

I know these calculations are vague, to say the least, because one doesn't spend his whole salary to buy DVDs, but also think that stuff like clothes, consumer electronics, etc. cost more than in the US. Only food is a little bit cheaper or at the same price as in the US.

Also think of that the internet has "opened the eyes" of people living in poor countries for what they "could" buy, what is available on the international market, and those people are willing to have those stuff too, but their financial status doesn't allow them.

My point is that the market isn't fair, why (and how) should a poor country's citizen pay almost the same price for a product as a rich country's citizen for the product which is not even the newest.