iPhone 12 Pro so costly in India, you can fly to Dubai to buy it and save money • Hacker News Board

Re: iPhone 12 Pro so costly in India, you can fly to Dubai to buy it and save money

#141

Post by mijamo » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 3:41 PM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #114

ericmay wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is USAian?

It's a term people use to either be funny, or it's because they're somehow offended that people from USA use the demonym "American" even though there are other countries in the Americas, yet despite the fact that no one else in those countries seems to care because they have their own demonyms they use. The former are just having a laugh, and the latter are looking for things to be offended by. I don't know which cam…

I don't think you know many people from Latin America. A lot of them will absolutely not like American to refer to the USA only. Especially as the USA imperialism has done so much damage in many places there. It is not as strong as say the Macedonian debate but it is very real.

Re: iPhone 12 Pro so costly in India, you can fly to Dubai to buy it and save money

#142

Post by hangonhn » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 3:41 PM UTC

abalaji wrote: post #137

bryan0 wrote: post #135

I don't know how I never knew this before, but I was confused with the number "1,19,000" in the article and found this explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system Basically commas only separate 2 digits after the first group of three. TIL

Yep! That's why you might hear of Lakhs or Crores in Indian forex contexts. 1 Lakh: 10,00,000 1 Crore: 10,00,00,000

Is there a reason for that other than just tradition/history? Sometimes when things differ from our norms, there may be a reason or an advantage that we are unaware of. Just curious. Thanks in advance!

Re: iPhone 12 Pro so costly in India, you can fly to Dubai to buy it and save money

#143

Post by Okkef » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 3:42 PM UTC

bryan0 wrote: post #135

I don't know how I never knew this before, but I was confused with the number "1,19,000" in the article and found this explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system Basically commas only separate 2 digits after the first group of three. TIL

Only in India. Many european countries use , as a normal thousands separator.

Re: iPhone 12 Pro so costly in India, you can fly to Dubai to buy it and save money

#144

Post by newen » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 3:43 PM UTC

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #120

dry_soup wrote: post #6

Since the article lists prices in INR: The price of the iPhone 12 Pro in India in USD today is $1,615.22, and the price in Dubai is $1,140.15. So it must be possible to fly round-trip to Dubai for less than about $475, which seems plausible.

There are actually quite a few regularly scheduled flights to Dubai from India that can be acquired cheaply - a not-insignificant amount of the area’s migrant workers originate from India.

Not even like you have to go there yourself. Just get friends and family to do it when they’re visiting.

Re: iPhone 12 Pro so costly in India, you can fly to Dubai to buy it and save money

#145

Post by robotresearcher » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 3:50 PM UTC

rockyj wrote: post #131

A lot of people in here are saying - oh I had to do this is Germany or Denmark or USA as well. Which is fair, but what irks me is that in India which has pretty high taxation in all departments (see Petrol/Gasoline) the tax you pay gives you ZERO benefit. No healthcare, education or unemployment benefits etc. Also on top of this, due to the corrupt system, if you need anything from any govt. agency you will need to p…

> Under various articles of the Indian Constitution, free and compulsory education is provided as a fundamental right to children aged 6 to 14.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_India

Is this not working out in practice, in your view?

Re: iPhone 12 Pro so costly in India, you can fly to Dubai to buy it and save money

#146

Post by bigdollopenergy » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

ericol wrote: post #124

Dude. Hold my beer. In Argentina, pre pandemic there were people that actually went shopping to Miami, because getting anything Apple - be it an iPhone or a laptop - was cheaper that way. The iPhone 12 is not for sale here, but let's use the iPhone 11 as an example. In the only "official" store I could find it [0], the price is 184.299 pesos (yes, 184 thousand). If you check the "official" US dolar rate [1] it is aro…

Does this tax work actually work? Surely the amount of people who actually pay the tax is near 0 and they'd get far more tax revenue from a lower tax rate right? I'd actually bet that this tax in particular not only doesn't raise money, but is a net-negative tax-wise as you're forcing people to spend their incomes on flights/hotels out of the country they otherwise wouldn't and they probably buy other things on their trip too.

From living in Chicago these forms of taxes seem so counter-productive. The pattern seems to be that a budget needs to be balanced, so they come up with a new consumption tax that conveniently assumes that the level of consumption stays the same with the new tax in place, but it never ever does.

It's so frustrating because once a tax gets extreme enough that almost no one pays it, lowering/removing it would benefit everyone including the government. It's one of those rare things that can be fixed instantly at no effort/cost with only positive results, yet it won't get done.

Re: iPhone 12 Pro so costly in India, you can fly to Dubai to buy it and save money

#147

Post by anthropodie » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 3:55 PM UTC

hangonhn wrote: post #142

abalaji wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep! That's why you might hear of Lakhs or Crores in Indian forex contexts. 1 Lakh: 10,00,000 1 Crore: 10,00,00,000

Is there a reason for that other than just tradition/history? Sometimes when things differ from our norms, there may be a reason or an advantage that we are unaware of. Just curious. Thanks in advance!

Recently even YouTube switched to this numbering system. For some reason I prefer old one for view count but I cannot see myself counting money in millions/billions anytime soon.

Re: iPhone 12 Pro so costly in India, you can fly to Dubai to buy it and save money

#148

Post by wobbly_bush » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

hangonhn wrote: post #140

instagraham wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No healthcare, education or unemployment benefits India has a massive welfare state. Just because it doesn't benefit iPhone 12 buyers doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Is the welfare state 100% effective? No. But it's disingenuous to say welfare doesn't play a role for millions of families.

I wonder if the GP is complaining about the delivery of said welfare because at least on paper that welfare should be happening. Yet GP believes there are nearly zero benefits. Therefore, I wonder if there is a "disconnect" between what is suppose to happen and what actually happens on the ground.

This is exactly it. On paper the government schemes are all well thought out and cover a large percentage of problems. The issue isn't in coming up with schemes, it's the implementation which is extremely lacking. So most of the money that is supposed to go into these schemes, end up being illegally pocketed by those in power. This is in addition to "paying a bribe" which most anecdotes talk about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_India

Re: iPhone 12 Pro so costly in India, you can fly to Dubai to buy it and save money

#149

Post by vshade » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

hangonhn wrote: post #140

instagraham wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No healthcare, education or unemployment benefits India has a massive welfare state. Just because it doesn't benefit iPhone 12 buyers doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Is the welfare state 100% effective? No. But it's disingenuous to say welfare doesn't play a role for millions of families.

I wonder if the GP is complaining about the delivery of said welfare because at least on paper that welfare should be happening. Yet GP believes there are nearly zero benefits. Therefore, I wonder if there is a "disconnect" between what is suppose to happen and what actually happens on the ground.

India is country with lots of poor people, so sometimes that money is not enough to have decent services for upper middle class citizens not feel like paying a lot for poor services. It is one of the problems of my home country, corruption is problem as well, but sometimes you're just paying lots of money because lots of people are paying nothing or very little.

Re: iPhone 12 Pro so costly in India, you can fly to Dubai to buy it and save money

#150

Post by ratww » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 4:01 PM UTC

speeder wrote: post #90

crazygringo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. It's actually remarkable to me that the Brazilian government continues to add these taxes that, last I checked, were highest in the world. The original justification was that it would spur domestic manufacture of computers, consoles, laptops, etc. Obviously that hasn't happened. All it's done is make anything involving computing ridiculously expensive. I truly don't understand why there isn't democratic pressure…

Part of it has to do with corruption. There was a time when I was trying to run an actual journalistic quality blog about gamedev, and I interviewed a bunch of people, some of them almost slipped out stuff, and one talked to me off the record, basically he claimed a certain Brazillian company that has a license from a certain japanese company to manufacture some 8-bit and 16-bit consoles, lobbyed very hard for the ta…

I wonder if this is the NES-clone company you're mentioning is the same one that also lobbied for imported cell-phones to be taxed harder, and of course tried to prevent Apple from selling the iPhone in Brazil by registering its trademark.