21–30 of 54 posts
One of the ways this is very evident is when you look at entry level software dev salaries at the giant IT sweatshops (Infosys, TCS, Wipro etc). 2010: ₹325k a year (equivalent to then $7000 per year) 2025: ₹350k a year (equivalent to now $4000 per year) Even disregarding the global earning parity, that's only a rise of 10% over 15 years when inflation has risen by 100% in the same period. This is even more egregious…
One of the ways this is very evident is when you look at entry level software dev salaries at the giant IT sweatshops (Infosys, TCS, Wipro etc). 2010: ₹325k a year (equivalent to then $7000 per year) 2025: ₹350k a year (equivalent to now $4000 per year) Even disregarding the global earning parity, that's only a rise of 10% over 15 years when inflation has risen by 100% in the same period. This is even more egregious…
With such low pay to compete with, it's ideal for startups.
> In fact, this has been a long-term structural trend that began even before the pandemic. India has been getting increasingly more unequal, with the top 10% of Indians now holding 57.7% of national income compared with 34% in 1990. The bottom half have seen their share of national income fall from 22.2% to 15%. Yikes, and it’s not like there’s some magic in the free market that “helps” those folks… if anything they’…
I suppose theoretically, as wealth grows, the competition for labor to create that wealth will elevate those at the bottom.
Over the past 11 years since the current government took charge people in India have been demanding a ton of changes :D. Before 2014 the Congress party ran the show for decades and I firmly believe they trashed our culture values and economy with their clueless vision for the future. But in the last 11 years Ive seen real progress with my own eyes better roads upgraded railways digitization fewer terror attacks stronger borders and growing military exports. These arent just promises they're visible results. Sure people have gotten louder and more demanding lately but they conveniently forget how messy things were pre 2014.
Im from India and I can tell you things are getting better here (not 100% I admit that). Yet Western media like the BBC love to zoom in on the negatives (many times I saw this when we landed on the moon and when our satellite reached mars). I personally believe India has transformed dramatically in these 11 years. Yes some people are leaving the country and thats true enough. But at the same time this government is putting India on the global map. The old regimes lack of foresight probably drove people away in the first place.
Also the new tax changes in India are actually helping regular salaried folks compared to 2014. That's boosting peoples spending power which is a solid win. Criticism is fair enough but building a nation isnt instant it takes at least 20 years of planning and patience. Its like planting a tree you don't get fruit the next day.
I am reposting this comment, which was inexplicably marked [dead] within seconds of being posted, even though it is a brand new account with no comment or submission history at all. burnermore 2 minutes ago [dead] | parent | context | unvouch | favorite | on: India: A billion people have no real money to spen... Indians who have huge spending potential are in huge numbers. They are just leaving India. High skilled In…
The working majority is burdened with such taxes so that the rich and corporations can get tax breaks. All these taxes, even including the sales taxes are means to dump the tax burden on the majority and give tax cuts to the rich.
I am reposting this comment, which was inexplicably marked [dead] within seconds of being posted, even though it is a brand new account with no comment or submission history at all. burnermore 2 minutes ago [dead] | parent | context | unvouch | favorite | on: India: A billion people have no real money to spen... Indians who have huge spending potential are in huge numbers. They are just leaving India. High skilled In…
This reminds me of a documentary I just watched, in a village in Peru, mangoes couldn't be sold and could only rot in the fields, "They can transport tens of thousands of tons of drugs, but can't even get a pound of ripe mangoes out."
One of the ways this is very evident is when you look at entry level software dev salaries at the giant IT sweatshops (Infosys, TCS, Wipro etc). 2010: ₹325k a year (equivalent to then $7000 per year) 2025: ₹350k a year (equivalent to now $4000 per year) Even disregarding the global earning parity, that's only a rise of 10% over 15 years when inflation has risen by 100% in the same period. This is even more egregious…
With such low pay to compete with, it's ideal for startups.
I am reposting this comment, which was inexplicably marked [dead] within seconds of being posted, even though it is a brand new account with no comment or submission history at all. burnermore 2 minutes ago [dead] | parent | context | unvouch | favorite | on: India: A billion people have no real money to spen... Indians who have huge spending potential are in huge numbers. They are just leaving India. High skilled In…
> We pay tax like first world countries but get services like poorest of the poor countries. I asked chatgpt to give a comparison, and I am not sure which country you're comparing against, but it seems people in India pay significantly less than in EU for example. (20% vs 40%, etc...) EDIT: as cliché as it might sound, how about blaming it on the really high level of corruption spread across all layers? Corruption is…
The only "advantage" these countries have, is that labor is cheaper, so some kinds of labor-intensive activities could in theory be as good as, or even better, than first-world ones (other than climate-related activities such as farming, which naturally benefit from better sun/weather). But the overhead leads to overall worse outcomes.
Corruption does make it worse, but even in a corruption-less environment, the other inefficiencies might still lead to a scenario similar to "pay tax like first world countries but get services like poorest of the poor countries".
Of course, if only all of these privacy-destroying technologies and surveillance-state apparatus could be used to detect corruption, maybe one could have a technological corruption-less dystopia where every figure of power is tracked all the time, as is in a reality show? (In the worst case, we might see some privacy-restoring contraptions emerge from the dynamics of such systems.)