Median wage for office workers is quite a bit higher, but yeah, nobody’s getting rich.
It’s not. The median is like 1 million so the difference between average and median isn’t great.
But whatever. If you want to believe that salary was the same in 1980, when the minimum wage was 3.3k NTD, as it is now, be my guest. People only believe in what they want to believe. In this case, people just want to believe that Taiwanese people are the poorest people in the world. Try living in London or Paris with their median wages. Or Hong Kong, where you can maybe rent a balcony in the city with the median wage (15k HKD, less than 60k TWD).
So we are comparing misfortunes now? This kind of sensationalist reporting is absolutely pathetic.
In 1980 a coke would cost 3 NT$ or something. So yes wages are relative the same.
Those wages are pretty crap across the board, I know HK is worse. Not saying its limited to TW or Asia.
I don’t think this is right , California is still doing very well, but of course it has become very expensive, related to its economic prosperity .
Real Estate prices in Los Angeles/ San Diego County continue to climb, this is due to Mainland Chinese Immigrants buying property and starting small businesses since 2008.
Silicone Valley/Bay area is its own seperate pocket of money.
However having said the above, the overall trend in CA is a Net migration away from CA with a majority to Texas. Also the State funds are horribly mismanaged and Bankrupt for many years now. Huston/Dallas/Austin Texas economy is seeing some of the strongest sustained growth in the US the past several years and for the projected future.
Texas is seen within the US as the place to go for business and homes now. I do a lot of research into real estate since I want to buy a second property and Texas specifically Huston/Dallas is where its at. Austin TX has already become too expensive. CA is no longer where business want to migrate to and hasnt for nearly a decade outside of the Silicone Valley enclave.
Speaking of horrendous State fund mismanagement in CA …Have you heard of Calpers?
I thought “Silicone Valley” was in L.A. 
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Not outside Taipei it isn’t. When I lived in Taichung most of the blue collar and white collars were probably getting 25k to maybe 35k if lucky.
Blue collar with some skills and overtime can get more of course . But they really need to work for that extra bit.
There are definitely breast enlargement billboards all around LA, never seen that anywhere else 
Yes, I should have specified. I’m a Sky Dragon.
I’ve actually heard Silicone Valley used as a nickname for the San Fernando Valley, home of the porn industry.
Ahh I hardly ever make it out there to the Valley, its about an hrs drive on the other side of Downtown LA from my area the Boba Valley (San Gabriel Valley) where all the Asians live.
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Ha. You should try to make that a thing.
Haha theres a song for SGV(San Gabriel Valley) 626 area code
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B rated stands for better tastin, lol.
One thing I’m quite curious about the big Asian communities in the US…Are they still growing with new immigrants? Maybe this is the golden era of Asian immigration there.
For the Irish immigration to the US has almost stopped due to the visa difficulties and increasing restrictions on illegals. Just not worth it for most…It’s a bit sad cos we have had a long connection with the US but getting more distant.
I lived in Taiwan in the former half the 1980s as a child. There weren’t that many cars on the street during that time, and when I moved to America, I saw cheap toys manufactured in Taiwan all over.
The economy was booming at 5%+ growth all through the 1990s. Then the Asian financial crisis hit, but as soon as Taiwan recovered it grew 10%.
Taiwan started stagnating pretty much after I arrived, so 2001 or so. That’s when a massive amount of factories and investment went to China.
What I noticed after actually looking into this in detail was that Taiwans wages stagnated in the 2000s when other countries were booming and increasing rapidly.
So when the financial crisis hit.Taiwans relative wage levels were already weak.
You’re talking about the 2008 one. That one sent Taiwan into a 5% contraction.
Taiwan stagnated between 2000 to 2008 when other countries wages were going up.
So when Taiwans wages dropped after 2007 financial crisis it was even worse for Taiwan (many countries had wage drops after 2008).
Factories moving to China is a good thing. These are economic growth rate numbers from the government website. I remember Taiwan caught the Asian flu kinda late in 2001. But after the rebound, it was still growing robustly until 2008. Since then, the anemic growth has never recovered.
1991 8.36
1992 8.29
1993 6.80
1994 7.49
1995 6.50
1996 6.18
1997 6.11
1998 4.21
1999 6.72
2000 6.42
2001 -1.26
2002 5.57
2003 4.12
2004 6.51
2005 5.42
2006 5.62
2007 6.52
2008 0.70
2009 -1.57
2010 10.63
2011 3.80
2012 2.06
2013 2.20
2014 4.02
2015 0.81
2016 1.41
2017(r) 2.89
2018(f) 2.60