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

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

#211
post #155
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That may be the case, you're not wrong about what the US has done in Latin America. That said, I've never in my life heard anyone from Latin America call themselves American. Now that's just my experience, so I'm open to being proven wrong. When I lived in Costa Rica for a time, I was only ever "Americano" and everyone from there were "ticos" or "costarricense." Though to be fair, Costa Rica has pretty much been spar…

Well I for one (born in Venezuela and moved to Italy) used to be mildly annoyed when italians used the term "americano" to refer people from USA, and used to tell them "I'm also american". In Venezuela I used "estadounidense" [1] and in italian it would be "statunintense" the proper form, but almost nobody uses it.

Now I'm used to it and don't mind it anymore and this is the first time I've heard of the term USAian and find it quite amousing but I don't think it will catch on.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/estadounidense

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

#212
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…

South American countries bend over backwards in order to not tax income, so consumption gets taxed to ridiculous levels and these absurd situations arise. And a foreign reserves crisis doesn't help either.

In Argentina thats not true. In fact you need $44.000 for a family to dont be considered poor. But if you earn more than $50.000 you start paying income taxes.

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

#213
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be the case, you're not wrong about what the US has done in Latin America. That said, I've never in my life heard anyone from Latin America call themselves American. Now that's just my experience, so I'm open to being proven wrong. When I lived in Costa Rica for a time, I was only ever "Americano" and everyone from there were "ticos" or "costarricense." Though to be fair, Costa Rica has pretty much been spar…

Well I for one (born in Venezuela and moved to Italy) used to be mildly annoyed when italians used the term "americano" to refer people from USA, and used to tell them "I'm also american". In Venezuela I used "estadounidense" [1] and in italian it would be "statunintense" the proper form, but almost nobody uses it. Now I'm used to it and don't mind it anymore and this is the first time I've heard of the term USAian a…

But wouldn't you be sudamericano?

America isn't a continent. We have North America and South America. We typically refer to the grouping of those two continents as 'The Americas', but not America. At least not that I've ever seen.

On a side note - maybe it depends on if you are taught a different number of continents? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent)

In the U.S. we do 7. Maybe in Venezuela or Brasil they do 5?

I guess that's one of the things that confuses me here. If you're from Europe you can be European because that's the continent you're from. If you're from Canada you can be Canadian or North American, but you can't be American because that's not a continent. I mean I guess you technically can, but it's a bit of a lossy term to use. It isn't specific enough. Do people from Bangladesh or Pakistan think of themselves as Asian, or Pakistani?

I guess as I see some of this discussion, it strikes me as very arbitrary and resentful, and also not very consistent.

> USAian and find it quite amousing but I don't think it will catch on.

Yea I saw it and had to do a double take because I thought it was USAsian. I think at least in English it won't catch on because it doesn't flow very well.

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

#214
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

NES is not 16 bit, and they don't make clones, they are licensed to make official consoles on behalf of the foreign company.

Sorry? You said "8-bit and 16-bit". And I'm not familiar with their entire product line.

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

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is there a reason for that other than just tradition/history? Probably not. Just like the Japanese number system (as distinct from counters for objects) where 1000/10000 are special units. Even in English, the counting was not consistent. Isn't billion supposed to be 1 million million in the UK ? Lots of the urban population in India is adopting US millions and billions in everyday language too, so I'm sure the glob…

I don’t know anyone in England that means million million when they say billion, especially people working in finance or tech. I wonder if there even are any places that still use billion = million million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion > American English adopted the short scale definition from the French.[3] The United Kingdom used the long scale billion until 1974, when the government officially switched to…

Germany. 10^9 is “Milliarde”, 10^12 is “Billion”.

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

#216
post #182
post #92

On a much smaller scale, this is achieved in the US by going to a no sales tax state like Oregon or Delaware. With the sales tax in Los Angeles at 10.25%, I’ve ended up queuing up large purchases together, buying a round trip ticket to Portland ($200-300) and hitting up the Apple Store, Target, Best Buy there. And get a free trip to Portland! I’ve read the Christiana Mall in Delaware is especially popular for people…

Don't you have a "use tax" that you're legally obligated to pay sales tax locally as per the rates in force in Los Angeles even if you buy something from another location? I recognize that legal requirements and common practice are different.

Yes and yes.

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

#217

I don’t understand the difference in the pricing between the base iPhone and iPhone pro. It’s 50000 Rupees which is about $700, although in the US it’s only $300.

Even $300 is a big premium for what you get. Basically just an extra camera and a LIDAR sensor that nobody knows what to do with yet. Oh, and a shiny stainless-steel band around the edge. I think what Apple has realized is that a certain subset of their customers will always want the best model , no matter how little sense the price makes compared to the regular model. For some people, it will always be a status symb…

I wonder if such LIDAR sensor can help with laser scanning a karting track.

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

#218
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…

> 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.

Just curious , What welfare are you referring to ?

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

#219
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…

Not to mention number of people with sufficient income and actually pay taxes is also minuscule. Ok couldn’t find a proper citation for this.

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

#220
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully your local civil services are not terribly affected by your dodging of taxes, in case you or someone you care about ever needs them.

Sorry but asking people to pay sales tax on something you bought out of state is just ridiculous to me. There was a transaction between me and state A, not state B. Just because I live in state B doesn’t mean they’re entitled to the sales tax. They were never a party to the transaction, they’re just of the belief that I _would have_ bought it in state B if I didn’t have the option of going to state A. This isn’t a mo…

To add to that:

In California it's gotten so ridiculous that almost every city has its own sales tax [0]. This leads to some mild arbitrage where if I live on the border of LA County, I can go over to any city in Orange/Ventura/San Bernardino County and immediately save 3% off the purchase price.

To expect every taxpayer to keep track of where they've purchased items and pay a use tax so that taxes are going to the right places should not be on the burden of the tax payer. I'm a happy taxpayer and willingly will do so to fund our civic services and public goods, but not when the sale never occurred in the area where I purchased the item. People will find and exploit loopholes the minute they are revealed.

California (and some other states) have already gotten around this by requiring new cars registered to pay a tax adjustment if it was previously registered from another state. I don't think the state government just has the time or resources to do that for all purchases.

[0]: https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/formspubs/cdtfa95.pdf

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