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Comment by barbacoa | Hacker News Reader

How affordable is $50 in rural Thailand compared to the USA?

The US has around ~10-12 times the disposable median income of Thailand (2019 figures), and ~10 times the GDP per capita of Thailand (2022 IMF estimates).

It's like a typical consumer in the US spending $500+ per month for broadband. Even worse if you consider the rural income factor. Absolutely insane.

For a fraction of that you can get 1gbps from Comcast and you'll never utilize most of it in 99% of consumer situations.

I'm in a small quasi rural 'city' in the US, hours away from any consequential city, and I can get 1.2gbps from Comcast for 15-20% of the income adjusted rate in question referenced for Thailand.

It seems common to forget how astoundingly high US median income, disposable income, and GDP per capita figures are compared to the rest of the world. The latest 2022 estimates are pegging US GDP per capita at nearly double that of France and Japan. To match up on median disposable income figures, you have to use hyper affluent countries like Australia, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway as references. Then people come on HN and proclaim how they're paying only $20 per month for Internet access, in a country with 1/10-1/5 the median disposable income of the US. The US is more expensive than it should be for Internet access (better telecom competition would go a long ways toward fixing that), however the reality is US income figures are also a lot higher than most of the developed world.

I’m just wondering how good of a measure it is comparing the median incomes of different countries. If a there is a country A with 10x median income of some other country B , then the people of country A are really 10x more affluent than that of country B? especially if they pay 10x for everything?

That’s not a reasonable comparison for Thailand food prices as food isn’t disposable income. World bank says GDP per capita PPP was 18,232$ in 2020 down from 19,233$ in 2019. Of course that’s not evenly distributed, but rural vs urban incomes mean costs are higher in cities than median income suggests. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...

Where your number comes into play is for people pricing Netflix subscriptions.

GDP PPP per capita is an extraordinarily low quality metric.

You end up with absurd examples where Botswana is comparable to China; Russia is comparable to Greece; Puerto Rico is comparable to Spain, ahead of Portugal, and just a bit lower than Japan; Kazakhstan is just a bit behind Latvia and Slovakia; Taiwan is far ahead of Finland, France, UK, New Zealand.

It’s just a question of what you’re trying to use these numbers for.

Imputed rent for example is one of those things that’s kind of silly on the face of it but makes various comparisons more reasonable. On the other hand it can also imply a great deal of economic activity that isn’t actually happening.

PPP is the same sort of calculation. If rents crash because a great deal of housing was built it can make GDP comparisons kind of meaningless. The country has more tangible wealth, people are better off, yet GDP falls. That’s not what you want the number to represent.

Both Nominal and PPP are out of whack if you are looking to learn about conditions on the ground. GDP measures the production of a certain country (and it's a very bad metric at that). Some countries are wealthy because its people make money from foreign sources. This is usually displayed by a high and chronic trade deficit.

That means you can have two countries with comparable GDP per-capita, where one of them have a more affluent population and able to pay higher prices.

In my home in downtown Chicago I have two wired options. 1.5Mbps for $60/month from AT&T, or $71,000 install plus $800 a month for 2Gbps from Comcast.

I went with 5G from T-Mobile for $50 a month.

$50 is about 1 week of 3 meals consumption per day (lower middle class)

So a bit under $2.50/meal. That’s very comparable to lower/lower-middle in the USA.

In capital city, I'd say it's about $4-5/meal (including drink) in daily basis. For those who eat lots of things, $7/meal makes them full.

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footnote here: official income record of thai people/businesses does not really reflect reality. Lots of entities are kind of off-system.

Where do you spend 120 baht a meal? That's a restaurant meal, not the average meal. I don't spend more than 60 baht in Bangkok. At $7 (250 baht) you're talking about a night out (maybe except alcohol), way off of the "average meal".

(including drink) .. if you eat rice something with water everyday, it's quite a tight lifestyle.

I love the tightest lifestyle eating rice and 1-2 side dishes from street vendors who deserve the money rather than foreign investors to extract money from the economy like leeches.

I worked in BKK since 2016 and office staff usually goes to the cheapo restaurants (which I frequented too), so 40-80 baht is completely common also for white collar workers. But meat, vegetable and oil quality is really shady in that price range.

I prefer to order grab of around 120-200 baht from a "healthy" place or going for restaurants within Central 200-400 baht per meal.

Where did you get that number?

A decade of data set from my experience and network. Not from govt.

$2.50/meal prepared outside, not from ingredients like in the US. You can easily get a meal for 40 baht across Thailand ($1.20)

The funny thing about rice with something, most of the time you want to add an fried egg too (more likely like + 10 bath charge). Crispy Pork is about 10 bath more expensive than the other. I think 40 bath is like 5 years ago pricing. You can still get it somewhere. 50-60 bath is more standard now.

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