Min wage, Taiwan vs USA? (Why are there no riots in USA?)

[onethousandknives]

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/nati ... m-wage.htm

So, for the hell of it, I decided to do some comparisons on working minimum wage here in USA and in Taiwan. I used my state's very high compared to federal min wage for comparison, of $8.75 per hour. In my state, the average studio apartment is at least $500 per month, generally not including very many if any utilities.

In Taiwan, I was looking at 591, and there's so many cheap apartments there. It's very easy to find an apartment in Taipei for under $200 per month. http://rent.591.com.tw/rent-detail-2823609.html That one there is $150. So I put $200 even though $200 is a potentially somewhat high figure.

So let's do 25 hours a week (as most min wage jobs are that in USA) working minimum wage in my state with already high min wage compared to federal, paying rent for your apartment. You'd make before taxes, $875 per month. $500 for rent leaves you $375 left at the end of the month for everything else. You've got 42% of your money leftover for whatever.

Now, the Taiwanese guy doing...whatever, I dunno, cook or waiter in a restaurant, let's say, he's making $3.93. He's got 49% of his money leftover. This isn't even counting higher living costs, likely not needing to drive to his job and spend maybe an hour worth of wages to get to and from work each day like most Americans do, cheaper food at restaurants, whatever.

So not that most Westerners would end up in a scenario working minimum wage in Taiwan, but even if you did, your life would probably be better than living in USA and overall require less struggling and less ridiculous amounts of fiscal responsibility? The average poor Taiwanese person has more disposable income left than the average poor American person?

I've not been there so I may be wrong, but if this is true, then living in America you're pretty f***ed if you're poor if Taiwanese (stereotyped as a fairly backward country) poor people have more money left at the end of the month than you. http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subc ... 7&cid=1701 Even household savings as a percentage. Taiwan feels like it's doing bad when their household savings rate is 20%. Meanwhile USA's is 2.6%!

So.... are we really f***ed?

[onethousandknives]

Let's compare college. In state tuition at a cheap 4 year college in my state with room and board is $20,000. To go to National Taipei University for 2 semesters with room and board it's 64,000NTD per semester, or $4196 per year. Now, again, let's make a hypothetical scenario of having a student work minimum wage to pay their college off. To pay your college off while living in USA, at my state's high min wage, you'd need to work 44 hours a week, not very realistic while being a college student. In Taiwan, at min wage, you'd only need to work 20. Fairly realistic.

[droid]

Yeah. I've commented before that if you're bound to make a low wage here in the states, then you might as well go somewhere else, where you at least can get a decent social life.

Unfortunately in America rents are exorbitant no matter how much you lower your standards, I used to pay $350 for a 12' x 10' "room" in Californiasylum many years ago. "Studios" can easily be $500 everywhere now.

Checkout numbeo.com, it's pretty informative:

http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/ci ... rrency=USD

[Ghost]

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[Cornfed]

It is strange that the West isn't burning, when everyone with even an amoeba's intelligence knows just how badly screwed the younger generation is. It is a combustible environment, but evil Western regimes seem adept at running around stamping out the sparks.

[Tezcatlipoca]