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Very true. Now, I want to ask a question. I am going to get slammed for this one. Why does our cost of living have to be so high? I don't want to live in a mud hut or whatever the Chinese live in so that they can survive on such low incomes, but why the disparity in pay? Why can they make it on 20 times less money/hour than we can?

I am not sure I understand the question, the market determines the price.

The actual $$ spent is irrelevant, what matters is what you get for those $$, standard of living. We have, by far, the highest standard of living in our history. Our labor productivity is still very high, not sure of the actual numbers, but I believe it is the highest in the world.

I know of a paper mill in Indonesia, they have 15,000 people working there, they pay them $2/day. Equivalent US companies have 400 people but pay them $20/hour. The US paper company is more profitable, however. A reason is that the Indonesian paper company has 6 months in inventory, so they are clueless about how to run a business, but have cheap labor. That's the way it works. If we are smarter and more efficient than they are, we win.