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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

"Middle class" in India does not mean what you seem to think. The vast majority of middle class Indians are poorer than most Americans living in poverty.

Read my link - 95% of Indians are poorer than the bottom 5% of Americans. Unless the author defines "middle class" as "top 2%", the fact that he grew up "middle class" is meaningless when comparing his lifestyle to an American one.

A stat to illustrate the point - 1.8% of India (circa 2009) owns a car, likely one that would be too dangerous to sell in the US. For comparison, 25% of American households below the poverty line own 2 cars and 75% own one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_p...

http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf

The bottom 50% of America you described, or even the bottom 5%, also does not go to bed hungry.

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"Poorer" doesn't mean much. First of all, you should factor in purchasing power; second, constant expenses which are the killer.

In most countries, especially poorer ones, you don't have to own a car to be in the middle class. Neither you have to pay for gas, car itself and parking/garage. You can realistically move by foot and/or mass transit.

Disclaimer: I think I'm in top 5% in my country, probably earn more than USA median and I never had a car.

Clearly you still haven't read the link I provided, which provides numbers after adjusting for purchasing power.

I'd provide you with more statistics showing how wealthy poor Americans are (http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf), but clearly you aren't going to read any numbers.

So instead, go watch about 4 minutes of Delhi Belly (good movie, BTW, vastly better than typical Bollywood crap) which always confuses first world types:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrJS6R-FT-o

(Sorry, couldn't find the whole scene in one video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3dkCVXcAVg

That's life for middle class professionals. (Admittedly, a group of non-misfits would have filled the buckets.)

What's so terribly wrong about those scenes? After applying cinema discount.

They don't drink your juice in the USA?

I will pick middle-class Indian over poor American every day, because: you won't get shot, you won't land in prison, you won't have to work three jobs for funny money, you'll have a real family and your children won't do drugs.

Instead you'll be raking in some respect.

I live in Iowa; those things you mention are the comic-book version of America. Nobody is shooting anybody around here; only college students end up in jail, overnight, when they leave the bars at 2AM and wander in the streets and might hurt themselves.

Comic book or statistics?

I guess that mainland states' countryside is one thing and urban poverty in large cities is another thing. One more reason to take income rankings with a grain of salt. As a preedictor of lifestyle.

Oh, and a guy got arrested yesterday when he waved a gun around trying to steal a pair of gloves from a local farm store. Since its -14 degrees F this morning, I have some sympathy for the poor guy.

I lived in rural Iowa for 4 years and currently live in inner-city southside Chicago. The contrast could not be more dramatic. It's not "comic-book" to describe certain neighborhoods like this. However, Iowans (and other midwesterners) are extremely sheltered from the lethal combination of drugs, no family structure, poor schools, etc.

Sheltered = have a stable community and a strong work ethic? To say we're 'sheltered' is similar to, say, the way a lighthouse is 'sheltered' by being built of the right stuff and having a strong foundation.

What's so terribly wrong about those scenes?

3 middle class professionals (2 in that scene) all sharing a single grungy studio apartment. One of them is unable to wash his butt because none of them remembered to fill buckets of water during the 2-3 hours/day when the water worked.

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about when you suggest the poor American works 3 jobs. He probably works 0 (http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2011.pdf), unlike the Indian who is typically working mon-sat (mon-fri at a good IT company). Crime is a huge problem - just ask any woman of reasonable attractiveness.

As for having a "real family", the poor American can choose to marry a woman of good character before having children. He typically chooses not to.

Look, you can complain about "I can't afford a new iPhone poverty" and "omfg someone with a job makes 8x more than my welfare poverty" within the first world all you want. But don't project these intuitions onto India and other nations suffering from real poverty. It leads you to conclusions that are utterly ridiculous to anyone who knows what they are talking about.

You are conflating possessions with a predictable stream of income, and you shouldn't really be doing this.

The purpose of income is to buy goods and services. The world bank data I cite gives you data on income, the data on goods illustrates the resulting difference in goods.

If you have any data at all suggesting the Indian middle class is remotely as wealthy as even poor Americans, feel free to cite it.

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