To keep their jobs Americans have to be 3x as Productive as a Mexican

[jcslzr]

Something is very odd in International Trade. I live in Mexico and notice some weird things: 1. We manufacture a product and the price in Mexico is 3 times the Price in the USA (imagine McDonalds had delivery and they send food to your house for a third the price of the regular customer in the restaurant). 2. Peso keeps being depreciating even thought we ship 10 things and purchase 1 from the USA. I think all this is setup in a way to keep the dollar strong, but its not the natural way of working. And its going to end badly.

[gexla]

Much of the difference you have to pay compared to what someone in another country has to pay is due to taxes or subsidies. Expats in the Philippines get taxed so heavily on bringing their motorcycles from home they will often tear them apart and ship them to the Philippines in separate boxes and declare those boxes as parts. Electronics is also heavily taxed here. Blame the government.

We also get volatile currency fluctuations, though as a US citizen, it goes to my advantage. The USD is at an 8 year high against the local PHP. This is the work of markets. We probably don't know why prices go up and down, but the changes are being blamed on the new president here. People see the USD as a safe haven. Now the US has the possibility of Trump, so who knows what happens there.

> Forgot to add: my salary in a it field is 1/3 of the same guy in the USA, yesterday I heard Trump promise to bring the jobs back to USA, why someone would pay 3 times for (almost) the same thing? I would not. I may pay 10 or 20 for a commodity but 3 times is too much.

Software developers in SV make significantly more on average than developers in the middle of the country. This works because these people create X times their salary in value and hiring is hard. As people make more money, the demand for housing causes rent / buy prices to skyrocket. As living expenses rise, people need to make more money just to survive.

On the other end are businesses with razor thin margins with skill requirements being little more than showing up to work.

You don't need to live in SV to get a well paying job (but location does help). Make sure that you are operating in an industry in which you have some ability to call the shots on the money you are making.

[deepwave]

It's a race to the bottom. NAFTA and now TPP will continue to screw over the little guy. I'm with you. IT jobs are being driven overseas or foreign replacements being brought in. The politicians and corporate leaders are crooks who care nothing about anyone or anything save bottom line and their own paycheck. It's ridiculous that in 1960, the average CEO made a little over 3 times what the average employee makes. Now? CEOs make 2-300 times the average employee. That's skewed beyond defense.

I'm toying with the idea of getting out of IT because the writing is on the wall. I'm also almost 50, so the fact that I'm still in the trenches is against me. I don't want to be in management. I like pure IT, but what with the "cloud", hiring of foreign IT workers to save a little money, you name it, the system is against me.

[jcslzr]

Forgot to add: my salary in a it field is 1/3 of the same guy in the USA, yesterday I heard Trump promise to bring the jobs back to USA, why someone would pay 3 times for (almost) the same thing? I would not. I may pay 10 or 20 for a commodity but 3 times is too much.