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To: pstuartb who wrote (242341)	3/26/2010 11:09:05 AM
From: ajtj99	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

pstuartb, about 90% of the people in China live a subsistence lifestyle. In other words, what they make every week is spent. The average income for a migrant worker in a factory is about $1,500/year. I believe the average household income is around $3,000/year in China. The average in rural areas is about 1/3 that in urban areas. There are several factors that make it possible for people to live on these low incomes. For example, the migrant workers sometimes live in on-site dormitories, which are often part of the employment package, so they can save on rent. If not, they bunk up in an apartment like college students. The basic staples of life like rice are subsidized, so it's not that expensive to eat basic meals. Vegetables and rice go a long ways towards stretching the diet. If you are eating a fairly low calorie diet, you can eat small pieces of meat that have lots of fat on them and not be affected too much. They drink tea, not soda, and tea is inexpensive. When you are working 6-days a week there is not a lot of time for leisure activity. Entertainment is often culled through pirated DVD's and other inexpensive conduits. You could get pretty much any DVD movie for a buck there. When you work at a factory, the taxes on your wages are pretty much taken care of by the employer. When someone earns $1,500/year it actually costs the employer more like $2,200/year due to taxes and social security and other things. These items would normally be in a gross paycheck in the US, but deducted. In China I'm pretty sure the worker gets just the net and is not even very aware of the taxes that have been paid by the employer. Hygiene standards and needs are also a bit different for the average person in China. A typical worker in China could have just a few pairs of pants and a few shirts, a few socks, and a few pairs of underwear. Maybe they have one pair of shoes. They hand wash the items in a sink and hang them to dry. Because over thousands of years the Chinese and some other Asians have somehow evolved so body odor is much less than people in other parts of the world, the need to bathe less due to odor and wash their clothes less because of the same. In the US our standard of what constitutes dirty clothes has evolved from "soiled" in the 1940's to "worn once" now, even it that means only for an hour or two. The standard for a Chinese worker is "very soiled". This means there is a lot less money spent on hygiene. Furthermore, there is a lot less money spent on household cleaning items, as the simple will suffice. Of course, traditional medicine is preferred over modern, so you don't have those pesky prescriptions to pay for. Most everyday items are still purchased in street markets, which offer great selection and low prices due to extremely low overhead. Many of these items are produced locally. Oh, transportation is pretty inexpensive as well. Buses and trains are pretty reasonable, and there is still a portion of the populace that still uses bikes, although it is getting to be a minority these days. Scooters are the way most local workers in the bigger cities get around, although some places are banning them due to congestion and pollution. Migrants can't afford these luxuries. When you don't have to pay rent, food is cheap, you don't have to worry about daily transportation, and you live like a monk, it's pretty easy to get by with very little income. Even with these low wages there is still about 10% unemployment in China, so while wages are rising to keep pace with inflation, the productivity rise is still putting more people out of work, making it hard to bring the unemployment down and keeping a lid on real wages for most folks. I hope this example helps. There are lots of different ways people in China live, but for the factory and migrant workers this example is pretty typical.