Why do the Chinese have $200 PCs and $0.50/mo broadband?

[Deja Q]

Been cruisin' through zdnet and, shit, all these other countries get all the luck.

If corporamerica wants to offshore everything because we're too expensive, how come the prices for the goods aren't matching up with the wages they want to pay us here?

[BlueCollar]

1. because they only earn $25.00 a month?

just a thought...

[Deja Q]

2. Which is still a goldmine to them, when it comes to cost of living.

Average American makes - what - $1600? (full time jobn at $10/hr) After taxes, cost of living (rent, food, water, garbage), medical and car insurance, gas... it's about $400, give or take? Let's say $800 for a couple, which if they were dumb enough to make children that figure easily goes down to $500, but I wouldn't know for sure.

Broadband in America is $50/mo.

Any PC worth having is $1000. And not a Dell.

[OwnedByFerrets]

4. It all works together

If we still made $2.50 an hour, we would have those prices.
The one big problem we have with the average american salary nowadays is that those wages leave the poor out in the cold. I cannot, for the life of me, understand how a person living on minimum wage (or even 7 hour) makes it in todays economy.
Gas, food, shelter....its all gone up so much in the last few years. The government can spout out any lying convoluted numbers they want to....I know what I pay when I buy these things. They have gone up astronomically.
Add in children, and it gets even worse. I just don't know how the poor do it.

[Toots]

5. They are forced into illegal activity

Drugs or sex or whatever but people have to live and the deck is so obviously stacked against them..

[liberal N proud]

3. $200 PC is still a great deal of money to the average Chinese

And the broadband they have is very restrictive to content.

[ThomWV]

10. And He Will Use It To Make A Fortune While We Fiddlefuck Around

With ours at 10X the price.

[Zynx]

6. You want Chinese per-capita income in this country?

Because that's why Chinese prices are what they are.

[whistle]

7. For the same reason why dogs lick their balls, because they can

[lpbk2713]

8. I wouldn't want a computer with WWW access if I lived in China.

Because then I would have to worry about someone in uniform appearing at my door asking a lot of questions about why I went to this website or that one. Or what I had to say on this message board or that one. Or why I spend so much time on the internet. And then they would want to take the hard drive with them. And then I would have to worry about them coming back to take me with them. It just wouldn't be worth it to me in terms of high blood pressure or stomach ulcers.

[lindisfarne]

9. It's pretty easy to find a $300 PC in the US. Subtract the profit the US

sellers add on to the PC made in China and you have a PC under $200.

[TahitiNut]

11. Conversion of the Chinese yuan to foreign currencies

... is fraught with problems. The "official" exchange rate ($1 = ¥8) set by the PRC government bank is predatory, and does not really reflect equivalent "fair market" purchasing power. (Virtually everyone agrees the yuan is significantly undervalued. The argument is how much.) One conservative estimate of a couple of years ago estimated the equivalent purchasing power of the yuan at nearly $0.50. There are many quality of life issues and unmonetarized Chinese entitlements that further obfuscate such denominated prices/wages.

So, when I see someone say "$200 PC," I mentally multiply by four and say "no big deal."

[SoCalDem]

12. Because "the internets" they have access to is only worth 50 cents?

They are heavily censored, and $200 os a TON o MONEY to the average Chinese person.. The ones in Hong Kong and their version of the yuppie, can easily afford $200.. Perhaps they are not all that eager for the masses to get with the computer program:)

[NNN0LHI]

13. Average yearly income of production & transportation workers is about $1500

That is the reason.

Don