However, if you’re thinking about consumption rather than income (as you should), there is a difference which does make the comparison to “$1.25 living in the US” misleading: in the US you just can’t buy the sort of low-quality goods that you can in developing countries.
Can you give some examples for what these low quality goods are?
(I notice this is an old post, but I read it for the first time today.)
It’s things like a house in a slum made from corrugated iron or mud, with no electricity and a shared latrine pit instead of plumbing, which gets periodically flooded. The rent for something like this in the US would be very cheap, but this option doesn’t exist since there’s so few people who are poor enough to pay for it (and it’s illegal too).
Likewise cheaper foods like cassava dough that you couldn’t find in stores in the US, dentistry from a random person without training, water that isn’t clean etc.
Can you give some examples for what these low quality goods are?
(I notice this is an old post, but I read it for the first time today.)
It’s things like a house in a slum made from corrugated iron or mud, with no electricity and a shared latrine pit instead of plumbing, which gets periodically flooded. The rent for something like this in the US would be very cheap, but this option doesn’t exist since there’s so few people who are poor enough to pay for it (and it’s illegal too).
Likewise cheaper foods like cassava dough that you couldn’t find in stores in the US, dentistry from a random person without training, water that isn’t clean etc.