ht711 said:
According to World Bank report of 2010 [see http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/country/IND] an estimated 400 million people in India lived on less than $1.25 per day, that's less than $37.50 to live for during a month. Now, these are "officially poor" people. How many are earning $1.30 a day, or $2.00 a day or $3.00 a day and are not counted as "officially poor" , because they are above the $1.25 a day benchmark number? It's rhetoric question.
The buildings, cars, Google and Facebook are not the measure of how well country does. There are a number of developing world countries that have more and taller skyscrapers than New York does, that have longer bridges than San Francisco does , and greater proportion of German made luxury cars than any city in North America can boast of. Does it somehow put them on par with Western countries?
I bet it doesn't. There is too much that is hidden behind perfect facades in those places, and I know it for a fact since I come from one of the countries that has become a tourist Mecca lately.
Keep in mind, where I come from the official poverty rate (according to the same World bank report @ $1.25 per day benchmark) is 100 times less than in India, and GNI per capita is 5 times greater, so I can only imagine how much harder it is to live in India.
Appearances can fool tourists, but those who know better know better.
As to corruption, there is more of it today than there was a generation ago. That's a global evil, a new 'fashionable' trend if you will , and if Western countries started to get corrupted relatively recently, the Third World countries are progressing at high speed towards ever more corruption where the starting point was rampantly corrupt to begin with. They are practicing corruption with impunity. You are expected to pay a cop or a judge or prosecutor a bribe to get away with small crimes and it's a matter of common knowledge, not a "hush hush" hidden reality that few if anyone you know individually have witnessed in person.
As to falling wages and living standards in Canada or US, we, or our countries of origin , are at least partially responsible for it.
Because countries we originate from have perennially abused and kept in worst imaginable conditions their own population, there is an enormous surplus of labor force there which is eager and desperate to do any amount of work for wages that you couldn't compare to Western.
As a result, lots of Western companies moved their operations overseas. Why pay a laborer in Michigan $30 to $40 per hour when you can pay the same to Chinese for a week and have him assemble a car for you? Why pay customer service representative in Salt Lake City $13 hour when someone in India will work 20 hours for the same?
Even engineers and highly qualified workers , if local Citizens, get 10 times less than any Western, American or Canadian workers get if they are hired to do the same job. Just ask any person who works in Oil rigs overseas, they will tell you that if Irish or Scottish engineer hired by BP earns $6000-$10000 per month to do highly specialized work, the local personnel hired to replace the same will receive only $500-$600 per month and be extremely happy with it.
BTW, whatever reduction in poverty you see in developing world in the past 30-40 years is a direct result of Western companies moving their operations overseas and hiring locals to do the work. Even paying fraction of what they would have to pay a Western workers, they still end up significantly improving the living standards and lowering poverty in those parts of the world. Again, what does it tell us about how the developing world treats its' own citizens?
And when immigrants from those countries escape their country of origin, the same pattern continues: many are willing to beat the local worker and take the lowest bid to do the work, any survival job.
Do I blame and judge the individual who is hard pressed to accept those conditions and work next to nothing, here or overseas? Not really, because I understand the problem is systemic and real cause is corruption, economic chaos and disorganized way the states are ran in the third world/developing countries. But I can't ignore the issues over there, which are origin of many of the plagues that follow immigrants even thousands of miles away from where they come from.
I have zero loyalty or inclination to deflect a criticism to a country of my own origin that creates inherently abusive living conditions and treats its' own native citizens in such a way that they are forced to spread all around the world in search of better life.
And I think if you give it a hard thought you will come to conclusion that your country also shares large portion of the blame for what is happening to many Indians you know of, who are like rahulk9 are desperate and looking to go to any place, away from India, in hopes of finding a better life for themselves and their children.
Nobody argues Canada or US in 2014 are the same as they were 15 years ago, obviously they are not (and, as I mentioned above, our countries of origin are at least partially responsible for over supply of cheap labor, overseas and here as well, and resulting fall of living standards and wages in the Western world).
But it would be an inaccurate and erroneous representation of the picture to state that , even today, our countries of origin are anywhere near the Western world, in terms of quality of life and protection of rights and liberties of its' own population. The fact is they are not.
With all the best wishes to everyone.
