I mean... kinda? Switzerland has 9 million total people, and more millionaires than India and Pakistan combined.
But anyway this post is saying that Indians have the cheapest subscriptions, not taking purchasing power into account.
Well, based on official figures, perhaps. I am pretty sure, however, that India alone has more than 20 million dollar millionaires.
A large part of the Indian economy operates outside the tax net. Some of it is deliberate (income from farming is not taxed, even if you earn tens of millions of rupees from your acreage), the rest is due to garden variety tax fraud.
Basic apartments in the top 10 cities start at $200,000 (could be something like $500,000 in places like Mumbai). And plenty of people own 2-3-4 of these. You have to move to distant suburbs if you want cheaper housing.
Millions of Indian households hold large quantities of gold. Millions invest in the stock market.
An upper-middle-class life for a family of three in one of the major cities requires around $30,000 easy (double that if you are the splurging kind) which can buy you a LOT more than what the same sum can get you in LA/NY/London.
Once you add these up, my figure is completely within the realm of possibility.
India actually has about 320k USD millionaires, Pakistan 20k and Switzerland 370k, from a cursory Google search.
You forget the fact that most Indians don't live in the city in 1-2 Cr (roughly $120-250k) homes, and their gold jewelry usually amounts to $50k tops.
You only need about 5-10% of them to do so to start hitting the numbers from my claim.
> the number of Indians actually paying income tax alone is just around that number
The number of businessmen who avoid taxes is a significant minority.
> India actually has about 320k USD millionaires
Based on the number of people I know who own multiple properties (which makes them dollar millionaires even if you ignore everything else they own), I find it VERY difficult to believe this figure.
If 8% of the US population can be millionaires, I don't see why 1.5% of the Indian population cannot.
We may not agree upon a number, but I believe the figure is much, much larger than what the official figures state.
Dude, a bit more than 1% of Indians pay ANY form of income tax. Assuming that the number of corrupt politicians and people laundering black money is another 15 million (a very very far stretch), that's still 2% of the entire population.
> The number of businessmen who avoid taxes is a significant minority.
Thanks for proving my point.
> Based on the number of people I know who own multiple properties (which makes them dollar millionaires even if you ignore everything else they own), I find it VERY difficult to believe this figure.
Your anecdote means shit compared to statistical data that says otherwise.
> If 8% of the US population can be millionaires, I don't see why 1.5% of the Indian population cannot.
Because again, India is a highly unequal country, with very few opportunity for the brightest and most entrepreneurial. Why has India not manufactured even one hard tech startup yet? Why is it so hard to get even one manufacturing unit up without the blessings of some babus and Lalas? That's why India is poor and unequal. No surprise why people who move out of India tend to be more successful, especially those who migrate to the US.
> We may not agree upon a number, but I believe the figure is much, much larger than what the official figures state
By that respect, Switzerland would still have a lot more millionaires simply by virtue of the number of people parking their assets there. There are no official figures for that either.
In my claims, I do not. An asset is an asset.
> Dude, a bit more than 1% of Indians pay ANY form of income tax.
Wealth and income are not the same thing, though there may be some correlation. A person can have large parcels of land and still have income below the IT threshold ($30,000 pa for a couple according to the latest amendments).
Why do you think the IT department tracks random things like electricity bill payments over Rs. 100,000 pa? They want to know about people who have absurd spending power but who do not show corresponding income in their returns.
> without the blessings of some babus and Lalas
The bureaucracy and red tape is a problem and a huge drag on the GDP. We need serious bureaucratic reform. It is a wonder that so much wealth exists in spite of these problems.