I think everything is stupid

$2/day and you can live like this

Every once in a while you’ll hear some harpie on the news going on about how some poor souls in some faraway Third-World country only earn $100 a month.  We’re supposed to feel sorry for these people, because poor people here in the US make a whopping $1,500 so we’re so much better off.

And oh, aren’t the US corporations so evil!  They make so much money by making their sneakers in Bangladesh or Manila or Bangkok, so you can buy them for $20 here.  They pay these poor sods $50 per month to glue the soles of your shoes together, so you can wear them to your $2,000 per month job.  Boy, they sure have it rough!

Yeah, well that’s bullshit.  It doesn’t make sense to compare US dollars to other currencies like this because in foreign countries you can buy so much more with the same amount of money.  If the pundits had some basic math skills and a rudimentary understanding of the world, they’d realize that earning $100/month in some countries is pretty damn good.  If you can buy a meal for 25 cents, $100 will stretch pretty damn far.  You can get a beer for 50 cents, hookers and coke for $10, and for $500/month you can take a treasure bath every night.  In the Philippines if you make $1,000 a month you can afford a personal chef, a chauffeur, and someone to wipe your pasty, decadent ass.  I’d make shoes until the cows came home if it meant I could live like that.

So news hags, please stop trying to tap into Americans’ need to feel 1) better off than everyone else and 2) guilty about being better off than everyone else.  Poor people in the US often have a worse standard of living than people making $500/mo in the Philippines – it turns out those big, evil US corporations actually pay decent wages most of the time even if — in absolute dollars — it’s less than US wages.

So shut up, and by the way, you’re stupid.