Keep in mind that Yemen is very poor. There is only a tiny well-to-do minority. For most Yemenis, eating out would be a much more expensive undertaking than for you doing the same in the US.
Thank you. That makes our pay rates about the same, and our cost of living much higher. There must be other balancing factors, because some survey which is quoted annually listed Melbourne as one of the most livable cities in the world, using factors including cost of living. This is an intriguing thread.
In the Netherlands, with the Euro being currently so much higher then the US dollar,
1 USD = 70 eurocents = small candybar or a packet of gum. In Ikea, you get a hot dog for 75 eurocents, but that’s just to keep the customers on the premises. At Aldi, 75 cents will get you a litre (1/4 gallon) of milk.
5 USD = 3,5 euro = a Big Mac and some change, but not enough for a soft drink. Three and a half euro will buy you a packet of pens, or two loafs of prepackaged bread at the supermarket. Or a one-way trainride to the next town, 40 miles away. A bowl of tomatosoup in a truckstop restaurant.
10 USD= 7 euro = a fancy alcoholic drink in a downtown fancy bar; one gallon of gas (a gallon of gas costs 6,6 euro’s over here, but distances are much smaller then in the US and our cars are more economical); a light lunch (soup, bread and coffee) in a modest lunch bar.
While there is a General Question involved, this appears more of a “poll,” so let’s move to IMHO.
samclem General Questions Moderator
What I want to know is this:
I get the impression that, amongst English-speaking, Western, “rich” countries, you’ll find that “stuff”, on average, is noticeably cheaper in the United States, per average wage/hours worked/etc. I’d love to know if I’m just imagining this or if it’s real. I have been astounded many, many times on this board by how cheap things seem to be at retail in the US (ironically, often in the context of an American complaining about the price).
This isn’t a whiny question: 'merkins, if you can swing it, good luck to you, but I’m genuinely curious, and this thread hasn’t really addressed this.
I have noticed this too. My WAG is that voor the poorer Americans, really every dollar counts. far more then in socialist Europe, where hardly anyone will sink below a decent minimum.
So there is a market for dirt cheap stuff, as well as for extreme luxury, and for the whole range between those.
And the higher prices in those countries is probably mostly due to the added costs/taxes to support the social welfare system.
Let’s see, a dollar in Bulgaria is 1.36 leva, according to the Economist. (The lev is pegged to the Euro at a rate of 2:1, so to see what all of these prices would be in Euro, divide by two.) In Sofia, it would be more expensive, but in my town, for 1.36 leva, I could buy:
- two cups of herbal tea or coffee at the cafe.
or
- two packages of Borovetz wafers (my favorite snack!) with some stotinki left over.
or
- ALMOST two loaves of bread. In 2006, bread cost 40 stotinki a loaf, now it’s up to 70. In some places it’s up to a lev, which is a major news story.
Other stuff:
I like the little personal pizzas that a restaurant in my town makes. A veggie pizza + a Coke = 3.50 leva.
A bus ride to the next town over, where a lot of people work (22 km), is 3.50 leva, up from 2 leva in 2006.
The rent on my (total shithole of an) apartment was 100 leva/month.
A winter’s worth of wood is ~50 leva.
Electricity ranges from about 40 leva/month in the summer to 200 leva/month in the winter. (I actually had a 400 leva electric bill in February 2007, which was equal to my monthly salary. Yes, I had to make some lifestyle changes!)
All this may sound cheap, but keep in mind per capita GDP is $11,300. For context, that’s slightly higher than Kazakhstan and Mauritius, and slightly lower than Libya and Mexico (a country I often compared Bulgaria in terms of development, because most Americans are at least somewhat familiar with it). My host mom receives a pension of 100 leva a month - her utilities alone take up about a third of that. Spent her entire working life under the communist system, thinking that it would take care of her in her old age, and this is what she gets. No wonder so many Eastern Europeans are less than enamored with democracy and capitalism. And prices have really shot up since Bulgaria joined the EU, although I’m not really clear on why.
I’ll go ahead and post Canadian answers because even though the dollars are about the same, the buying power in Canada is probably less.
$1=$1 - A newspaper usually, a can of pop out of a machine
$5-$5 - I THINK this is about how much a Big Mac is here - I don’t eat at McDs much but I remember being shocked that anyone would pay that much money for McDonalds. That’s with no fries or drink.
At least around here you couldn’t get a sandwich for that at a regular cafe.
It’s a Vente Starbucks drink or a trip to and from work on the bus.
$10-$10 - A crappy six pack of beer. A decent sandwich and drink (like pop or milk) at a regular cafe. Or a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs and a pound of butter.
One factor is that US sticker prices don’t include sales tax, which I understand can be around 8%.
But I tend to trust recognised purchasing power parity comparisons more than anecdotal data. They certainly show that official exchange rates significantly overvalue the British pound and the Euro when it comes to consumer goods.
Some things are more expensive in the US, though. Bread, for instance, seemed pricy to me last time I was in a US supermarket. Here’s what looks like an ordinary store brand loaf of sliced bread, a little smaller than the standard size here. It costs nearly twice as much as Tesco’s sliced bread (not their value brand, the nicer stuff). Or maybe Albertson’s is a really upmarket store?
From a Canadian point of view, on the whole I would say this is true, relative to Canada, anyway. It’s funny, though, because certain categories of merchandise could be noticeably cheaper in Canada. A few years ago, the Canadian/US dollar exchange was much less favourable for Canadians. I recall being in the US, and noticing that many toiletry products were more expensive in US dollars than in Canadian, and that was before you added the unfavourable effect of the exchange rate. So, for example, product X that was $2 Cdn at home, was $3 US in the States. I have no idea why.
Are you sure? What’s the average cost of rent in Melbourne? While you may be correct in general, I suspect that the comparison with San Francisco specifically may be wrong, just because San Francisco has extremely high housing costs. According to this website, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,355/month. (I tried searching for rankings, but I have no idea how they’re compiled - one of them listed Ann Arbor, where I live, as the fifth most expensive place to live in the US, and didn’t list San Francisco at all, and that’s just crazy - I pay less than half of that for a two-bedroom apartment.)
Correct, yes. An example is gas, where the largest part of the price is taxes.
But then again, some of our basic consumer products are subsidized to be cheaper, like fresh agricultural produce and dairy. The aim there isn’t so much to subsidize the food, which after all is bought by all income groups, but to subsidize farmers so they can invest in more efficient food production.
Holland is the size of massachusets, but has the worlds third largest export of agraric produce, behind the US and France. Wiki gives more detail: Netherlands - Wikipedia
The downside of this is our ruthlessly industrialized animal farming. A chicken is kept its entire life on an A4 sheet of paper. We are Europe’s biggest exporter of fur. From an animal wellfare point, circumstances are sickening, and that is one of the reasons why the Animal Rights party has been elected into Parliament.
But I digress.
Still more…
Mauritius (Rupee)
$1 = 29 MUR: 3 500ml bottles of local water or 30 minutes of internet access.
$5 = 145 MUR: 90 minutes of bus travel for 2 (round trip, thus 4 tickets).
$10 = 290 MUR: Simple meal for two in a non-western lunch-type place.
Laos (Kip)
$1 = 8750 LAK: A soda and simple snack from a street vendor.
$10 = 87500 LAK: Nice meal for 2 with non-alcoholic in a ex-pat restaurant in the capital.
$70 = 612500 LAK: 2 page fax to USA from a small town in the northern countryside. :eek:
Democratic Republic of Congo (Franc)
$1.30 = 650 CDF: Two 300ml Cokes and a steaming hot 2-foot-long baguette.
As this is a very unstable place, we didn’t stick around to collect a wide range of prices.
Yes, bread seems too expensive to me. You can get el cheapo for probably $1.39, but average sandwich bread is probably $2.59.
And most food isn’t taxed, unless it’s prepared for you, but you’re right - tax is almost never factored into the displayed price of anything. That car isn’t $25,000, it’s really $27,000, not to mention registration and title fees…
Joe
Not just in San Francisco, rents are rising all over the US. But yes, rent is mind-boggling. We live in a nice, small one-bedroom apartment. VERY small bathroom, average kitchen, small living and bedroom, and it’s $1500 per month. That’s a lot. The mortgage on our house, when we lived in a very small town in Central California, was almost exactly half that, on a nice house with an acre of land.
Joe
I’m not sure of anything. I am only going by claims of being in the world’s second most livable city, and yet our daily costs seem a lot higher than in America.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World’s_Most_Livable_Cities
When I was in America last year, general daily purchases did seem to be much cheaper than here. So I am wondering how we get to be so high on an economist’s list.
I have no knowledge of renting. We own our own home. Here are rentals from the University of Melbourne website. Parkville is a very good suburb right in the middle of the city, so these are inner city rentals. Out of the inner city would be cheaper. Rents here are quoted weekly:
Student apartment (furnished) close to Parkville Campus
1-bedroom single occupancy - $256
1-bedroom twin share - $299
2-bedroom - $368
Vacant property (unfurnished)
1-bedroom apartment
Close to Parkville Campus - $242
Within 6km of Parkville Campus - $188
Regional area - $112
2-bedroom apartment
Close to Parkville Campus - $335
Within 6km of Parkville Campus - $325
Regional area - $168
In Indonesia, US dollar is worth about 9,500 rupiahs, give or take, and what you can buy with it depends a lot on where you are in Indonesia, where you shop, how hard you bargain, and whether you are a foreigner or not. (No matter how good your language and bargaining skills, if you are foreign you will always pay a premium. We call it the “pajak kulit,” or “skin tax.”)
The local McDonald’s sells a large coffee for nearly $2.00, which is absurd.
However, if I were a smart and thrifty local, I could buy a day’s worth of food for 1 or 2 people for $1.00. It would consist primarily of rice, condiments, and vegetables, but there might also be some protein in the form of egg or soybean.
The government has set a minimum wage that varies by locality. It is supposed to be a fair salary - of course, advocates for the poor claim it is inadequate, while businesses say it is far too much. In Jakarta (an expensive place) the minimum wage is about Rp 1 million/month, or $108.