I Want The Input of Other Expats...

[globetrotter]

I have lived in China and Mexico and I have noticed something.

It is that the GDP PPP per capita that one sees in the CIA and WB and IMF charts on Wikipaedia and elsewhere, have little bearing upon the quality of life and the wealth one sees on a day to day basis.

Take the USA.

$50k or so currently. Maybe $55k.

Remove the 40% due to the USA living on credit. 40% reduction without funny money.
Remove 18% for the insane HC system.
Remove 5% or 10% for the legal system.

Other nations don't live on credit, they don't have the ridiculous medical costs the USA has, and they have almost NO legal overhead to take into account.
So we have $50k - 20k - 9k - 5k.
What we end up with is a PPP Per cap of $16k!!!

Now THAT is more like what the USA looks like to someone who isn't in the top 20%. Compare that figure to other nations and one can see how the USA is more like Russia, Argentina or Chile.

Mexico another good example. Like the USA the elites are corrupt so much of that $14k PPP per cap goes to the top 1%. The median lifestyle is lower than that figure would show.

I maintain that even PPP per capita is flawed because some nations are sane and others live on credit cards. I see China and look around and for $6k PPP they have a very good lifestyle in the rural cities. Bigger cities even better.

The USA has until about 2016 before China overtakes them. People in the USA need to wake up and get it together TODAY or they will be an also-ran nation within 5-10 years.

[FuzzX]

The US is already controlled by Israel, will China be next?

Hmmm I think that seems to be about right Globetrotter... 16k/ppp per mexican? That's pretty high.. I think its actually somewhere around 7k for the middle class and around 5k for the lower class. A large majority of Mexico also has significant credit card debt because a lot of the prices on items have a second smaller 'installment' price.I don't know if that exists in China?

Your assesment of the situation here at home is spot on though, people are credit card addicts and I would say 95% of the country is in debt up to their eyeballs. We even have a popular show here on SLICE called: Till Debt Do Us Part (My favorite show)... my parents hate it because it points out that fact.. people are spending and trying to maintain lifestyles way above what they make. The show has this lady Vaz Oxlade go into family's homes and make an assesment of everything they owe, usually the accumulated debt is somewhere around 50k.. She shows the family that their debt will expand into the upper six figures in only 20 or years and that the family will be broken up. Then Oxlade puts them on a 5 jar CASH spending system where they split their paychecks into 5 jars and the rest goes to debt repayment... The average family only ends up with something like 2 to 300 hundred dollars to spend per week. As you can imagine the LARGE majority of the families don't take well to this new system and you can see that the wives are shocked and blown away to find out that they makeup most of the problem. I would honestly like to see what goes on after the show concludes... divorce? Happier together? North Americans are just not used to living on what they make... and they are always surprised to find out that when you average it out over their expenses, it isn't much.

It all boils down to the North American mindset of making way more money than what is acttually on their paycheck and thinking that a credit card is somehow an extension of income. Those little cards are pure evil and are contributing to the downfall of society. The words SAVE and BUDGET here are almost curse words. As a huge fan of the show I am always recommending it to people and get nothing but cold stares... apparently it is very rude to acknowledge one's own over-spending habits, there is a white elephant in the room and noone is allowed to talk about it.

Here is the show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pQJxGIFzdo

This couple spends $5000 per month in CREDIT... I won`t ruin the suprise but can you guess what they`ll owe in just 5 years? You`ll be absolutely blown away!

[Winston]

This video describes exactly what you're talking about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n3g5lUgkWk

[globetrotter]

Hmmm I think that seems to be about right Globetrotter... 16k/ppp per mexican? That's pretty high.. I think its actually somewhere around 7k for the middle class and around 5k for the lower class. A large majority of Mexico also has significant credit card debt because a lot of the prices on items have a second smaller 'installment' price.I don't know if that exists in China?

Look at the PPP figures here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... per_capita

45 Mexico 14,495
64 Mexico 13,200 2009 est.
60 Mexico 13,628

That's not poor, not even close. In fact that is 32% to 45 % HIGHER than the global Middle Class PPP of 10,500. It is 2.5X what PPP is in China. Mexicans think they are poor because they constantly compare themselves to the USA and Canada, AND they are next door so they see it up close. Mexico is, by international standards, A DEVELOPED COUNTRY NOW.

Shocking, I know. But it is.

Avg office salary in Hermosillo is about 10k a month. that is $10k USD per year. Many make more.

[globetrotter]

This video describes exactly what you're talking about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n3g5lUgkWk

No it doesn't. That video is about the dollar becoming devalued.

What I am talking about is that widely accepted PPP per capita figures for nations, the main method by which countries are gaged to be rich, developed, poor, or not, are not representative of the lifestyle that the people in a country live. You could price the PPP in Euros and the 3rd World countries would still appear poor when they are not.

I firmly believe that China will have a lifestyle comparable to the one in Europe or the USA & Canada, but will have a PPP per capita much MUCH lower than those regions. I see this already. The Chinese do things cheaper, with lower overhead, lower labour cost input and almost NO legal and healthcare overhead. Thus instead of comparing the USA at $55k to the PRC at $6k we should be comparing 16k:6k. Much closer.

Here is what China's PPP per capita is slated to be with just another 15 years of 12% growth. This assumes that the PRC is not lying too much.

2010 6500
2011 7280
2012 8154
2013 9132
2014 10228
2015 11455
2016 12830
2017 14369
2018 16094
2019 18025
2020 20188
2021 22611
2022 25324
2023 28363
2024 31766
2025 35578

3 years to meet the global median/mean. 7 years to become wealthy like Israel, Greece, Chile, Mexico. Because China is so huge with 4.5X USA population they can become a superpower at much lower income levels. Once a nation gets to 20k and above, that is where the wealthy nations are.

[momopi]

Both US and China are large countries with huge variety from city to city, town to town.

My friend moved 20 min outside of Austin, TX and bought a brand new house on large lot with subsidized USDA loan for under $120k. If you worked in Austin and made $50,000 USD year, you pay no state income tax and can comfortably afford that house. Although the property tax is higher, the low base value of the house makes up for it.

A comparable house here in Irvine, 3 bed 3 bath 1750 sq ft + 2 car garage, on a much smaller lot, would cost you $659,000 plus $200/month in HOA fees:
http://oakcreekrealestate.net/renestate ... rch_value=

The house in Irvine is like 6x more than San Antonio, but your income is not 50k x 6 = 300k. The median family income here is around $120k.

A similar comparison could be made from more rural areas of China to cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Or even rural towns in Taiwan to Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung. My ex-GF's bother-in-law was a government worker in Yilan, and they had so many empty/vacant apartments there, as part of his benefits he pays NT 600 ($20 USD) per month to rent a 3 bed apartment, and about $1 USD for simple buffet meal at the cafeteria (at his job in the local court).

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-c ... full.story
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/ ... state.html


For those who don't know where Yilan is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yilan_County,_Taiwan

[ladislav]

have lived in China and Mexico and I have noticed something.

It is that the GDP PPP per capita that one sees in the CIA and WB and IMF charts on Wikipaedia and elsewhere, have little bearing upon the quality of life and the wealth one sees on a day to day basis.

The creators of those charts obviously have never lived in China or Mexico.