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Whats Cheap is Cheap? Salary vs Price

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Mechatrommer:
i've been wondering... people are talking about cheap item there, cheap item here, expensive there, expensive here etc, here some of scenarios:

1) new digital slr line is coming out!... under $1K price tag!
2) the rigol is cheap value for money! just $400!
3) that or this dev board is expensive $500
4) etc etc, its cheap! just $100! the DMM! or whatever!

what i'm talking about is the price compared to your monthly/or daily income or... our local buying power. you see, here in our country, our standard or normal income for a postgraduate (Bsc) job is around MYR 1800-2500 (malaysian ringgit/dollar) for the beginning, when you got more experience, it can go up to something like MYR 3K++ to 10K++ (again our currency) depending on what type of company you are in. so for a beginner's salary at MYR 2000, buying a low end DSLR ($1K = MYR 3500) is a 1 month and a half worth of salary!

this thing come back into my mind when i'm ordering some PCB soldering equipments days ago (flux, remover, low melt solder etc) from Zephyrtronics http://www.zeph.com. the total quote is USD190++. maybe for you, it is not much. well, if its in our currency, the 190 is not really much. but it is actually a MYR 665 in our currency (including shipping), quite expensive for me... for just several bottles of flux with accessories! attached picture is the items i'm ordering.

so here i'm asking friends from around the globe to show whats the buying power in your country. i'm going to start with the "normal" monthly salary and the price of several items in our country... in our currency. "normal" i mean is the usually or mostly given salary for a normal Bsc job based on your preferences. please indicate the price for those items in your own currency, dont convert it to other country's currency, esp USD as usually people quoting at. here is the list for our country.

1) "Normal" Engineer's Salary = MYR 1800-4000 (beginning to intermediate experienced engineers)
2) Rigol DS1052E = MYR 1300
3) Fluke 87-V DMM = MYR 1900
4) Canon EOS 5D Mark II Body = MYR 7200
5) PIC16F690 mcu (1 unit) = MYR 12
6) atTiny13a mcu (1 unit) = MYR 1-2
7) a tin of 325ml coca cola = MYR 1.50

so i hope you frens can give me/us some clue about your country's prices and buying power, thanks.

Sincerely,
Shafri, Malaysia.

joelby:
I won't comment on the buying power, but that order seems expensive because of the massive shipping cost! If you don't need things very urgently and if the company doesn't give you any cheaper options than international next day gorillagram, you can save a lot of money by using a US mail forwarding company that routes mail via Sweden, or some other shenanigans.

Mechatrommer:

--- Quote from: joelby on July 27, 2010, 06:36:14 am ---...seems expensive because of the massive shipping cost!

--- End quote ---
thats the truth for our country, but i wont considering any cheaper courier service if the safety is not guaranteed or proven. and can ship within weeks, not months. and... zephyr not providing the option for the gorillagram.
but if quoted without the shipping, its $111.5 = MYR 390. still quite a price for me, for just several bottles...
and yet... thats $79.79 USPS service, is the cheapest that i can get in zephyr.

EEVblog:
You get Big Mac's cheap:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index
But we here in Australia work a bit less to pay for it.

The average electronics engineering job in Australia might pay say AU$80K/year (230,000 MYR), with a beginner starting out on say AU$50K (143K MYR)

Gear in Australia is pretty expensive compared to the US or China though.

Dave.

Mechatrommer:
yup. indicating the salary alone is enuf to show the buying power... i think the item price will not differ too much, unless goverment gives some crazy taxes to it. so australian EE's have around 5x or more buying power than us.
and.... for a big mac... its a MYR 10 in our country, more or less.. :)

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