It costs pretty much the same to live in a tin shack with no running water or electricity and eat rice and beans for every meal everywhere. This whole "cost of living" thing is a rationalization to make westerners feel better.
No it doesn't. First of all, the price of land can vary wildly. One square meter in the middle of Amsterdam will be a bit more than a square meter in Bumfuck, Alabama. IF you can buy land at all, in some places you can only lease it (you could own a home, but not the ground it sits on). Then there's all kinds of taxes you'd have to pay, just for owning that piece of land.
A 19.5ft by 8ft parking spot in London was on the market a few years back for £350,000, and you won't even be allowed to build a shed on it, just park your car.
An empty lot without even a tin shack can cost more than a mansion, depending on location.
Yes, that was my point, they aren't the same thing at all. It's complete bullshit to say that it costs pretty much the same to live in a tin shack everywhere, as it clearly doesn't.
Your minimum is probably a well, septic tank, permits and so on, this is if you even get planning permission. It's almost certainly going to be cheaper to buy an old terraced house in a post industrial town.
Put it this way, India is a relatively wealthy nation and a large proportion of middle class Indians don't have flush toilets. How can you compare that to a middle class European with a straight face?
It's not that the cost of living is lower it's that standards of living are.
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