Rhetorical question, I suppose, but I 'lived' in Vietnam (backpacking) for about a month and spent less than ten dollars a day (significantly more than I would have if I lived there for say a year and cooked my own meals, and had rent instead of staying in guest houses). Probably around $3 a day for a middle class person would suffice, or $4,000 a year for a middle class family of four. Hard to compete with that!

Actually, it was an honest question. Even if the only expense was food, absent government help one person would have a hard time staving off malnutrition on that much money here in the US. That's living under a bridge and wearing trash bags to work.

I don't really understand why that's the case, either.

"Even if the only expense was food, absent government help one person would have a hard time staving off malnutrition on that much money here in the US. That's living under a bridge and wearing trash bags to work."

Exactly.

"I don't really understand why that's the case, either." I'm not sure I understand the question. If you mean, "Why do these other countries cost less to live in?" it is the case that some things cost the same in both 1st world and developing countries. Some of it goes back to Brenton Woods, and some of it goes back further. It's a really good question, but it seems that the more 'developed' a country the higher the wages, AND the higher the cost of living, which in a lot of areas leads to equillbirum, but certainly not in every area.

One example would be the family car, which might cost 20K new in the US, and about the same in Vietnam, so only very rich people in Vietnam can afford a new car. One of the reasons the U.S. got out ahead on this industry is because a lot of the inventors in the field were, and have been American, and because of trade deals, and tariffs that used to protect the industry.

It's still the case that people want their cars to come more highly trained workers than say their shoes (not life or death if they're junk). And those workers end up costing more to train and keep, thus the high price on this kind of good.

Well, I was thinking specifically about food. Food production in the US is highly automated and subsidized in a dozen different ways. So why is food in the US more expensive than food in Vietnam? Regulatory overhead? Distribution costs?

Those machines still cost money to make, and run...