I am going to play Devil's Advocate here and voice some unpopular views. Disclaimer: I benefit from both currency and geography arbitrage. 1. Geography-independent salaries will decimate the Indian software industry as it stands now. In fact, there would be not be such an extensive Indian software industry if not for the salary arbitrage. And instead of the lakhs of people who have benefited from the industry, the benefits will accrue only to the confident, english-speaking few who have connections to get remote jobs. 2. The only people indignant about discrimination by geography are the ones who are already enjoying some of its benefits (like people on RI) but want more. 😉 Ask anybody outside this teensy group (0.0001%?) and they'd be happy with Indian software industry salaries because it affords them above-average lifestyles in India. e.g. Talk to mechanical engineers, Civil engineers, accountants, teachers, etc. 3. US/EU companies don't owe "equal salaries" for all. Expecting that reflects some sense of entitlement, IMO. Would you have the same expectations from an Indian company? 4. The income disparity in India is already stark between software and everyone else. This already causes friction. 5. We're just lucky to be at the right side of technology trends. Nothing more, nothing less. We don't have any extraordinary skills that entitles us to 3-4 times the salary that a top notch mechanical engineer or teacher deserves. Would you also agree to a much higher tax rate so the less fortunate can benefit from a better social net? US/EU countries gladly accept higher taxes as a part of building society. e.g. Finland has proportional fines: you get fined proportional to the money you make so that it hurts everyone equally. So if a traffic violation is 2 day fines, for a teacher that might be 200 euros, but an exec might pay 20000 euros for the same violation since 200 would not hurt them much. My point, after all this rambling is that there is a flip side to this social experiment of equal pay, universal basic income, etc. and we don't yet know where it'll lead us. 🕊️

@helpful-gigabyte-47939 Consider removing "I am going to play Devil's Advocate here" -- anything that comes after that line either trolling or garbage. I don't think you intend either and you intend to contribute fairly to the discussion.

@victorious-energy-56764 Actually, the reason I have kept that line is not out of some sense of moral superiority but a certain sense of "imposter syndrome" or even shame? IOW, I want the currency and geography arbitrage. But I'm starting to see that it actually creates a more unfair society: we want all the benefits but none of the responsibilities of a high-GDP society.

Kinda agree with the points here, but they seem to aiming at a large change at a global scale. My intentions behind posting here were a bit specific: 1. Only applies to remote positions dealing in highly specific work/skill. (It's stupid to expect a US daily vage for someone to flip burgers in India). 2. The post intended towards people who work remotely and jobs/industries that can function remotely. Dont understand it's correlation with doctors, teachers and astronauts. 3. Yes, I will have the same expectations from an Indian company (they should hire what best they can in their budget, it will increase their talent pool by a large margin) 4. Again, irrelevant. When did the goal became to have same salaries for everyone? There is a value in working hard, smart, taking right decisions and burning oil at right time. Even with all that, there is a multiplier of luck. 5. I'd say that's an opportunity actualised. No point comparing professions here, there are extreme cases in all. UBC, Income based taxes etc are different, not talking about equal pay as well. Just saying that, for putting out an output for an organisation, your income should not be different from someone who is putting out same but lives in a 10x costly location.