BY
What if you could move to a different country and live better than you are
now for $10,000 a year and even save more?
Let’s take a step or two back.
Average monthly pay in #Ukraine is under $300. The #1 difference in Ukraine
is that someone in almost every Ukrainian family owns their place of living
outright. In the United States, roughly 30% of home-owners own their homes and
have completely paid off their mortgage. The median outstanding debt on the 70%
balance of mortgages exceeds $100,000, while about 35-40% of Americans rent.
The guidelines for poverty in the United States run $11,770 for a single
person to $24,250 for a family of four. As of January, 2016, the average
monthly Social Security retirement benefit is fluctuating around $1,320.
Retirement pay for military personnel with 20 years of service runs 50% of
their base pay ($3,553 per month for a Sergeant E-6) – or $1775 monthly.
The inference and benefits should be obvious. Even if the idea is not for
everyone, with proper education and awareness, there are some who would be open
to moving and living abroad for any of a wide range of reasons.
If we are going to accept globalization as an inevitable process, something
like this has to happen. It is simply unsustainable for countries with
developed markets to continue exporting jobs to and letting people in from
under-developed markets. That builds up social-economic-political pressure as
more people become unemployed increasing competition for jobs driving down
wages, etc. and so forth.
Where the ultimate outcome of globalization will be that everything is
available everywhere for roughly the same cost, it is inherently concerned with
developing equilibrium via osmosis. Free trade facilitates immigration and
immigration facilitates free trade – we have the equations, we’re just applying
to one side of them.
Purchasing Power Parity can also be a huge part of that equation even if
the only thing we ever consider is the cost of healthcare. The average daily
cost of staying in a hospital in the United States runs $4,287. It wouldn’t be
much of a stretch to say that in Ukraine, you could rent the entire hospital
for that much. A similar disparity exists across almost the entire spectrum of
healthcare.
The following chart tries to get a comparative snapshot on the cost,
quality and effectiveness of healthcare for the top, median and lowest
standards.
In Ukraine there are public and private hospitals, where the former is
generally run “at cost”. My last visit to the public hospital involved two
blood tests, three xrays, an EKG, examination by two doctors and one surgeon,
and two short-term prescriptions (1 month). Total cost, for everything, was
less than $40. I’ve also used Into Sana, a private hospital, for a minor
surgery with a total cost of under $130 including two follow-up visits. And a
trip to the dentist for a filling ran less than $30. Average waiting time? Less
than 30 minutes.
One of my good friends is the Ukrainian equivalent of an RN and makes less
than $300 monthly.
There may be some conditions where you might want the state-of-the-art expertise possibly only available in the United States. But most of the health conditions that exist there also exist here – in a country still emerging from the suppressive clutches of the Soviet Union and Russia, where smoking is still common and men drink vodka in considerable quantities yet there is only an average 8 year disparity in life expectancy compared to the United States… and that for $8,700 less per person.
We’ll be back for more after this commercial break.
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