I’m a 30-year-old salary woman, living in a so-called metropolitan city of a tropical country that is planning to move its capital. Have you ever lived in a city that might stop being the capital while you’re still alive? Maybe I will.
Anyway, I need to manage my money after spending $140 on rent each month. They said my rent is standard, not too expensive nor too cheap. But do you think it is okay to pay that much rent for my salary? Though I can get a one-meal deal for a dollar, I should at least be ready to spend $10-$30 for a dine-in meal per outing whenever my friends ask me out. I’m not here to rant about how much I earned, yet it’s about the messed-up economics. These days, the economic gap is widening. I can say I didn’t earn enough to live in this capital city, but you know what? A LOT of people here barely earn $300 a month. I really don’t know how they manage their daily necessities. It’s not that they’re lazy or not striving enough. Most people even go to work before sunrise, and they get home once the moon is high in the sky. Yes, they work so much to earn so little.
When people say you need to work harder to earn more, reality does not reflect that. Those I mentioned, the underpaid majority, should have earned more than most 9-to-5 office workers. On the other hand, senior office workers who devote their lives to the company, though they couldn’t manage a simple administrative task, spent $300 in one tap on a trendy T-shirt they would only wear once or twice. Yeah, maybe it is because they sold their lives to the company, so they are “worth” being paid 100x more than the underpaid majority.
It’s not that I’m taking sides. Neither the exhausted workers nor the comfortable executives created this gap alone. It’s not a matter of individual blame, but a big systemic one. For now, I am grateful. $540 is still a privilege here. But gratitude should not silence questions. How much is enough to live with dignity in a city like this? How are you doing on the other side of the earth? How much do you think the minimum wage should be to live there?
