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%.

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

Lots of people in the west can’t afford 200 a month. How rich are you?

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.

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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