Cost-of-Living Arbitrage

Union Bank of Switzerland has an excellent, unfortunately only tri-ennial, survey of wages and living costs around the world.

Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) 2003. Prices and Earnings: A Comparison of purchasing power around the globe.

The fact that they (ie.) are not doing so suggests to me that they do not perceive that the cost of living here is really five times the cost of living in India.
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Huh???

Hello, earth to Arnold?

They are moving back, along with many western nationals, and in RECORD numbers.

see: http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=51586
For this excerpt:

India Shines For Job Seeking Foreigners, too

India is becoming a major hub for not only outsourcing, but also for foreigners in search of employment—and even at Indian salaries

RAJKUMAR LEISHEMBA, SAIKAT NEOGI & SULEKHA NAIR
Ethel Graff, 29, born in Brussels and holding both Belgian and German nationalities, joined the India office of ebookers in May 2003. ebookers is Europe’s leading online travel agency. Today she works as the project manager for France, Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland with Tecnovate eSolutions Pvt Ltd, which is a subsidiary of ebookers, at Okhla Industrial Estate, New Delhi.

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Charlie is right... a large number of Indian nationals who came to the US under H1B visas started going back after the tech bubble burst, oftentimes to start their own companies with the seed money they saved up while working here. In fact, when I visited the campus of one of the big dogs of Indian IT, I was surprised to see a decent number of caucasians working there, and not only in management -- a number as regular old programmers.

As for 5:1 being a good ratio for comparing costs between the US and India, that holds pretty well. I traveled in India for quite a while, and found that the rule held in general. For labor-intensive goods/services, the costs were lower than that average, and for capital-intensive goods/services it was higher. But it's a pretty decent average.

The person who emailed you was right... while life may be pretty hard in the US on $20k/yr, that goes really, really far in India. If i was a programmer I'd definitely give some serious consideration to a job in India, even at $20k/yr, particularly if I was an unemployed/underemployed programmer.

I can only add personal experience as someone who works with a large number of Indian ex-pats. Every one (I mean that literally, and, of course, I'm only talking about the subset of people with whom I've worked) intends to move back to India after 5 or so years in the States. The US experience will give them a leg up on the domestic competition, and they can save a lot more money from their US salaries. And they all reiterate that prices are WAY lower in India.

FWIW, I also work with a group of Filipinos. None of them intend to move back to the Phillipines, even though prices are also much lower there. I haven't tried to find out why.

I want to know the cost of a condo in the Phillipines (Manilla) plus the cost of living. Would ownership of a Manilla condo plus $440 a month from Social Security be enough to live on? My email is chart99@juno.com and name is Charles Hart

im doing a research project on India and I'm having the hardest time finding the wage rates, cultural norms and values , and living standards. if someone could help me out that would be awesome. thank you very much