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Comment by jackityquack | Hacker News Reader

I think wealthy Indians are better than empowered Indians.

There are many wealthy Indians in India already - what India needs is a middle-class - i.e. people that have a roof over their head, with their basic needs taken care of and that are empowered to create their own wealth.

I think the OP meant to suggest that increase wealth of poor people and make them middle class. You can definitely not create wealth by selling 25 cents napkins.

You can definitely not create wealth by selling 25 cents napkins.

Are you sure about that?

If every (menstruating) woman in your village purchases their sanitary napkins from you every month because you've got the one machine within 25 miles, you may have a compelling small business, especially when adjusted for cost of living and ease of labor.

Now that I re-read that sentence, it's not well written. When replying to the parent comment, I wanted to clarify that these napkins will create wealth and help poor people move to middle class. I meant to say that you can not become filthy rich selling 25 cents napkins.

Filthy-rich has different thresholds in different parts of the world. $50k may be a middle class income in Arkansas in the US, but it would be a ridiculously huge amount in small-town India.

To the poster below me: he is selling $2500 machines. The people he sells the machines to sell the $.25 napkins but the machine can make 1000 napkins a day. One machine properly worked could turn a gross profit of $91,250/year. He has sold 600 machines so far so that is $1.5 million that the inventor has grossed.

Maybe they aren't super rich but I am sure the napkin makers and the inventor are both doing better then they would otherwise and more importantly they are keeping the money in India.

You need to divide $91,250 by 8 (=$11,406.25), because the napkins are typically sold for $0.25 for 8 of them. Then, subtract out the costs of energy and raw materials and divide the result by 4 (the number of people it takes to work the machine), and each operator makes perhaps $2000. Based on some of the comments in this thread, that's still not bad for rural India, but it's not nearly the numbers you report.

I think healthy Indians will be both wealthier and more empowered.

It's a case of one wealthy indian vs many empowered indians. And from the financial model of this guy (selling his machines through rural women) he obviously prefers latter.

Why downvotes? Why not provide a counter-argument?

So India can be like Brazil with its massive income inequality?

It would be wonderful if India achieved the same wealth distribution as Brazil. Some people would become richer and no one would become poorer.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t...

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