Mutt my friend you miss the point. I know a mate from say Bangladesh earning $200/month in Dubai is well off in his terms.
The point is that most of, say, BA's flights either originate from or go to places with high labour costs. In Dubai, labour is cheap and more than half of EK's flights originate from there so even on a seemingly trivial item like aircraft cleaning they save money.
It would be interesting to look at the labour costs of the employees at say BA against the costs incurred by EK. EK's cost of ownership of their cabin crew is much lower at the outset than most other airlines. The crew tend to stay for shorter periods of time and as we all know junior crew are cheaper than their more experienced breatheren. Not that I want to buy one .....
Ghost