I know I’ve written about this topic before, but today I was able to compare between what people make at the local bank where I do my personal banking and what a taxi driver makes. Again, I was astonished.
I’ve made a friend at the bank who is open to discussing things with me about work. She told me that the monthly salary for a bank employee (e.g. a teller) is around $150 per month. This was confirmed by a guy who works at the money exchange center of the same bank.
Later in the day, I confirmed with a taxi driver (who said he didn’t own his own car but worked for someone else) that he can make between $300-$400 a month.
I wish I better understood the economics of local employment because it seems backward that a taxi driver who never attended university (another question I asked) is able to make twice as much per month as someone in charge of managing bank accounts. I am not trying to make a value judgement on the quality of these two people, but I am rather commenting on the fact that one person had to invest more time (and probably money) into an education without seeing a comparatively higher financial payback.
If I had to take a guess, there are so many people who have a “university education” (which I’m learning may not mean a whole lot), that salaries get pushed way down, whereas the flooding in of comparatively wealthy foreigners are driving up taxi demand and taxi fares.
Life in Myanmar 
I just saw a documentary on someone at the garment factories in Columbia. She makes $130 a month, and she would need to spend her year’s salary to buy what she made at a store. Not really related to the point here…but I just thought that markets are often not fair.