It's really hard to relate incomes between even industrialised countries. I live in the UK, but am from the US. Relating my UK income into American terms just doesn't work. Housing is much more expensive (I live in a little terrace house which cost the same as a medium/large detached house in much of America). Food shopping is often more expensive in America. Luxuries are much cheaper in America.
So, £4.50 probably gets some sort of bed and some sort of standard of living, but you can be sure they don't have more televisions than people in the house, no fibre-optic internet, no expensive hobbies they can subsidise with their wages. We always run the risk of either romanticising the simplicity of poverty, or else romanticising the benefits of wealth. I don't have a great deal of experience of living in other countries, but I do have some sense of how complicated it is to understand from my one long-term experience.
The ethics of globalism are tricky. Just what sort of life do the people who built my Kala deserve? I think I spend much of my life not answering that question, because I suspect that for me the answer is "should have bought a KoAloha."
Dunno. Can o' worms opened and smelling wormlike.
