Your equation leaves out the technological contribution to making the jobs possible in the first place; the innovation, the science / R&D, etc.

The rent is not 90k in that case. The rent is negative, in favor of the US; the US economy has benefited most other countries far more than those countries have benefited it. Most of the world gets a vast free rider benefit from what the US economy accomplished in the last ~140 years.

It's far from clear that the rent would be negative. It's not as if Danielle costs 10x what Deepika costs simply due to the fact that Danielle pays a few hundred rs/month to fund the NSF/NIH/DOD science orgs. Could you justify this claim?

The fact that the US benefits most other countries a lot (primarily due to trade) doesn't mean that anyone collects a rent.

>The rent captured by us workers is the price delta between a competitive market and one with barriers to trade.

Oh really. What is the price delta between a logically-impossible perfectly competitive market and the current labor market?

>Only part of their wage is rent - if deepika earns 10k rs/month and Danielle earns 100k rs, the rent is 90k.

Assuming deepika and Danielle are the same person.

You are correct that all models are imperfect, and you can compute second order corrections to my sketch of rents (e.g. subtract overhead for offshore operation).

None of this changes the conclusion that Deepika (a real person and a friend of mine, albeit not named deepika) has escaped poverty thanks to her job at a call center. Based on our previous conversations I know you dont consider her as valuable as a hypothetical american (ugh, dirty foreigners with animal gods and spicy foods), but that's simply a normative difference.