We want LI to be one of the friendliest places on the internet, where lawyers and law students help each other with their career related queries and occasionally discuss other stuff that might affect their lives too. In other words:
1. Be kind, respectful and helpful to each other.
2. Be bona fide, truthful, genuine and curious.
3. Assume the best intention of others.
Therefore, in using the site, you must agree to do your best to uphold these community guidelines.
Note that what you find here is written and moderated by anonymous people on the internet.
Therefore everything you read here is very likely unverified, rumour, speculation and/or downright false.
In continuing to read anything here, you must therefore agree not to take anything you read here as factual and that you will exercise due caution, diligence and common sense before acting on any information you may come across here.
You also agree to report any inaccurate or malicious comments with the buttons. Moderators take action within 24 hours, as required and appropriate under law.
Our full terms and conditions apply too.
Do you solemnly agree to all of the above?
Now compare who leads a better Lifestyle. PPP is a shit metric and it has been debunked a lot of times.
Or are the commenters here older and the downvoters Gen Z?
I have recently purchased a house in London in an apartment complex (I have been living in that city for over five years now). Without giving too many identifying details, this is the sort of place that costs north of £650,000, and the complex is the kind of place that "feels posh" right from the entry steps. The sort of place whose equivalent in Mumbai would be lived in by the most affluent of the society only. Of course, some flats on the lower floors of this London apartment complex are what are known as "affordable housing units", and some are bought on mortgages. Some of the flats have, of course, been rented out, and those rents are not cheap either. I have been looking for a cleaner recently, and have been recommended to a resident of one of the other flats who is a cleaner. Not some type of UK version of a live-in domestic worker, but a resident of this kind of flat whose job is to be a cleaning lady. I don't know whether or not she owns or rents the flat she lives in. Regardless, can you ever think of a person in our country who does a job like that whose own home is among that of the richest of the society?
Sure, the UK has more than enough problems with cost of living, globally among the highest taxation rates and so on - not skating over those. But you cannot deny that workers in this kind of a society get things that workers in our kinds of societies just don't get. Attempting to make such an argument would be, simply, unpatriotic, as it would get us to believe that our country is okay, when it just isn't.
I do acknowledge the difference tho - yahaan ek mahine ki salary ke L lagenge, India mai puri saal ki saving ki band bajegi.
Hell No, the purchasing power of a guy in US is exponentially more than a guy in India in terms of Electronics, Furnitures, Cars and House. In fact US is Equal or cheaper than Indian Items on absolute terms.
Don't forget Dollar arbitrage, A Lawyer making 40L in India Cant afford to have a comfortable 10 day trip to switzerland while a US Lawyer making 200K USD can easily do that in any part of the world without breaking sweat.
Don't ever get fooled by PPP shit and don't forget "quality of life"
How much do these A0s work? Let's be even more generous and assume 9 hours a day, which is unachievable btw. It comes to 45 hours if we assume a 5-day work week, which is also a fugazi.
But because we have made these low-ball assumptions, we can forget worrying about non-weekend holidays. 4 weeks in a month, so that gives us 180 hours a month. 1,50,000 INR for 180 hours comes to 833.33 INR/hour.
If you, as a normal person, were to buy dollars from a bank, a good deal would be around 100 INR for a dollar. So you're making well under $9/hour.
The federal US minimum wage is $7.25/hour, and about 30 of the 50 total states have set a wage higher than that. This is minimum wage - all except immigrant agricultural workers make that. Think janitors, cleaning staff - anyone with two hands, two eyes, and two legs.
American A0s who work at the same level as Indian Big5 T1 law firms are paid $225,000 a year. They work just as hard as you do, all the crazy hours. Even the small firms shell out north of $150,000 a year. You can multiply by 100 pretty easily - these are 1.5 to 2.25 crore INR a year, as the first salary. Most newly minted salaried partners at 10-11 years PQE in India are not making that much.
With this context and perspective, there should be no doubt whatsoever in your mind that an American clerk or taxi driver no doubt make more than a CAM associate or even SA, at nearly any PQE range. Median pay for these professions can be reasonably determined to be north of $45,000 a year, and usually it's better than that. This is, you guessed it, 45+ LPA INR.
Yes, there is PPP. Yes, there is very heavy student debt in the US. Yes, there are high taxes and stagnating opportunities in the EU. That's some part of the reason the prices are so different.
For PPP in particular, note that it is a relevant cope only for domestic goods. Markets for services and commodities are becoming global at a rapid pace. Food, housing, and other such things are domestic markets. Food in particular is extremely cheap in India compared to the West. But fuel, luxury automobiles, flights (especially abroad), concert or stadium tickets, watches, computers, phones, videogames, streaming services, TVs, washing machines, speakers - all your big-ticket expenses linked to living "the good life" are entirely global markets with global prices. Surely, you are not slogging sleepless hours to buy rice and lentils? One could buy rice and lentils with much less!
Thus, there is no doubt whatsoever that in nominal and in PPP adjusted terms, the in-hand pay of the poorest 10% in the USA and western Europe exceeds your in-hand pay as someone working in an Indian law firm. And it will stay so until the legal services industry becomes a global market. Just like the deeply indebted farmer must sell at razor-thin margins to the wholesaler as he has no option to export, so too you slave for the Indian firm for peanuts as you have no reasonable choice of a more prosperous source of demand.
https://www.ndtv.com/business-news/indian-economy-income-inequality-living-standard-rich-countries-world-bank-12171665