system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why is my money worth different amounts in different places?
gpt
You could be talking about 2 things here; the exchange rate or the purchasing power parity. 

If you are talking about the exchange rate, the difference in worth has to do with political and economic history. The Indian Rupee (INR) was pegged to the dollar ($1=1INR) in the 1940. What that means the reserve bank on india controls the amount of money in circulation in the economy such that even with all the currency trading and trade going on the value remains fixed. But soon enough the government started running out of money. So they started printing money to meet expenses. So, now the currency started depreciating - because there was a lot of INR in the market and not enough demand for it. This was the pattern till 1991. In '91 India liberalized its economy. Now, a lot of foreign investors wanted to buy INR with dollar, so they could invest in India. So INR stablized to a certain degree (the government was still printing money, mind you). 

During the financial crisis INR appreciated a great deal too. This was mostly because lower demand for the dollar. Now the trend has reversed and the INR is going down again. Currently it is at around 55INR to 1$. 

Similarly after WW2, the Japanese economy was weakened a great deal. So the currency fell. After japan started rebuilding and exporting again, the currency steadily rose against the dollar;  But it still in the 80:1 range. It is considered strong because of its trend of gaining in value against the dollar. 


Purchasing power parity is the difference in actual cost of a commodity or labor in a different country. This depends on the availability of that commodity in the country. In India there are lots of people. Hence labor is cheap. Indians cannot freely travel to a country were the wage is higher. So if an Indian wants to buy an Ipod made in China, he has to make something of value for the Chinese inside India and export it to them. If he was free to travel to china, he could have gone to china, worked there and eared enough to buy an ipod.