Economics

This post is dedicated to Dad, who is always interested in how much things cost

Living in Canada, I'm always sort of peripherally aware that it is a rich country, and that I am, in comparison to the rest of the world, very wealthy indeed. However, this is usually buried underneath the worries on how I'm going to pay my rent or tuition. I never really thought about how much my dollar can buy in the world. Most of (ok, all of) the traveling I've done has been in the USA, UK or Europe, where the dollar does not match up very well. I guess if I thought about it, I would have said that compared to the world, I was even poorer than I thought!

Then I came to Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, the Canadian dollar buys 110 Sri Lankan Rupees. I was reading the classified ads and want ads in the English language paper the other day (this is Dad's influence) and I took some pictures to give you a sense of how the economy works here. First up: a want ad. This is an ad for a housemaid working overseas. Many Sri Lankans take jobs like these, going out of the country for a few years so that the family at home can survive. As with all migrant workers, they are often abused. But look for the moment at the wage -that's monthly. To save you the math, that works out at the current exchange to about $190.07. Monthly.



"OK" you say "so they don't make very much- but the cost of living is pretty low as well, right?"

Well, that's partly true. You can live on that salary - It's about what most of the clergy here make. It's a wage that you could afford to live on, but just barely. What you couldn't afford are the things that Canadians take for granted. Take a look at this car ad:


Yep, ten million rupees. That works out to 90,484.34. I mean, sure it's a nice car, but not for that price!

This is how Sri Lanka works. The basic wage for the working person is low. Very very low. However, those that have money, tend to have a lot. The split between the rich and the poor is enormous here, and can be easily seen just by watching the road - who is driving a twenty year old motorcycle, and who is driving that Toyota?

And just in case you thought the Toyota was a lone example, here's another car ad: