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by dyauspitr6 hours ago |
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upvoteby bananaflag6 hours ago|
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For a TCS assistant professor in Eastern Europe, $200/month would be 20% of their salary.

And the situation is better, ten years ago it would have been 80%.

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upvoteby iammrpayments6 hours ago|
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Average European salary is around $4000/month, in eastern Europe is half of that. Median is probably lower than that. Makes me want to quit visiting places like reddit where everybody claims to be making 100k+/year
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upvoteby goobatrooba5 hours ago|
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All salary discussions need a cost of living context. Yes in Europe you earn a bit less but the public services are much better than in the US and one emergency (r.g. healthcare) won't ruin you as it's mostly a public system.

I'll take a Euro salary and qualify life over a FIRE-typs salary and daily fear of falling into the abyss any day.

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upvoteby revolvingthrow5 hours ago|
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Given the topic and the fact llm providers charge global rates, the absolute take-home money is much more relevant. Even if you live like a king on $1000/mo, 5.5 pro is still $200.
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upvoteby fakedang5 hours ago|
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Their loss if they don't move to regional pricing. AI will continue to remain an upper-management luxury then, and won't reach the mass adoption required to justify their outsized valuations.
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upvoteby revolvingthrow5 hours ago|
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Regional pricing makes sense for products that don’t have ongoing costs or where most of the input cost can be offset by local labor. You’re not buying server racks nor electricity at 1/3 of the price to serve poorer markets
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upvoteby teiferer4 hours ago|
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AI pricing is not mainly about cost, it's about market realities, i.e., charging exactly the sweet spot to maximize profit.
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upvoteby xanrah6 hours ago|
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Lots of people in the west can’t afford 200 a month. How rich are you?
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upvoteby dyauspitr6 hours ago|
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That’s what most people spend on their phone and Internet connections per month in the US. That’s what the average American family spends on just five days of food.
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upvoteby sevg6 hours ago|
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You can afford five days of food, so that must mean you can also afford a Claude Max plan? What kind of logic is this?
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upvoteby skrebbel6 hours ago|
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Fwiw your comments here read to me as “I’m super rich and everyone I know is super rich too, and I can’t imagine that anyone isn’t”.
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upvoteby dyauspitr5 hours ago|
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People spend much more than that on just commuting to work if you can spend $200 a month to supercharge what you do at work and 1000x your productivity it’s a no-brainer.
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upvoteby skrebbel5 hours ago|
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From what money? Just pause the health insurance for a while? Stop paying the rent? No diapers for the kid?

Your entire story only makes sense if you have many hundreds of dollars/euros of entirely disposable income every month left, after all unavoidable expenses have been paid for. I understand that this holds for you and everyone you know but I’d like you to appreciate that for very many people it doesn’t.

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upvoteby fuzzy26 hours ago|
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Yes and? That's money that is already allocated. It cannot be spent on something else.
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upvoteby xmprt5 hours ago|
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No you don't get it. If the family just starved for 5 days then they could increase revenue for these AI companies.
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upvoteby xanrah6 hours ago|
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37% of Americans would be unable to cover a 400 usd unexpected expense* without using one or more credit cards. 13% would flat out be unable to cover it. [1]

Are you honestly saying most families would be able to justify 200 usd a month for ChatGPT?

https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2025-economic-we...

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upvoteby NotOscarWilde6 hours ago|
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There is a significant gap between what academics are paid across European countries, and since most top universities here are public institutions, you are right -- Eastern European government employees tend to be on the poorer side.

There are several other philosophical arguments against what you propose but I do not wish to go down that route.

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upvoteby skullone6 hours ago|
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Bruh, $200/m for most people in the US is also a hard "no!". That's a lot of money. Plus Anthropic isn't doing good deals with orgs that spend less than 250k a month. It's ridiculous.
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upvoteby jdw646 hours ago|
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[dead]
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