But the idea is that you take a remote job based in (rich country), get paid like a (rich country) developer, but only have costs of a developer in (poor country).

And that idea is just that: an idea. It happens rarely enough that putting forward as normal requires some proof.

The company I work for uses remote workers from Ukraine and India. I know for a fact their salaries are less than 1/3 domestic salaries. This is in my experience what is actually normal. Pretty good for the cost of living, but they aren't saving as much as I am unless a good portion of their expenses are paid by someone else.

>I know for a fact their salaries are less than 1/3 domestic salaries.

What are absolute numbers?

The median domestic salary for the engineering positions the remote workers have is about $110k/year.

Yep, around 3k per month sounds about right for Ukraine:

https://dou.ua/lenta/articles/salary-report-dec-2016/?from=s...

Sure, but it means that guy should make 2x of what he gets at home just to keep up, and we are talking about same person with same skills, connections etc.

So the real rational decision would be to start company with access to VSs in US and hire developers in Ukraine. Which is exactly what is happening.