No-name, no-octane gas is $1.75 per gallon.
Milk is about $3.25 per gallon, depending on brand and fat%. Strangely, it’s often $3.99 for two gallons.
Bread is all over - 75 cents to six bucks or more, depends on brand and kind. I think I’m usually paying right around $3 for a loaf of sourdough.
I don’t buy jeans (Levi 501) until they’re on sale - they typically get down to $33-35, otherwise, they’re usually around $45-50. Sky’s the limit for the trendy stuff, but I don’t plan on buying anything that’s over $45 no matter whose name is on them.
I’ve been buying CDs and DVDs through Amazon for so long, I don’t have any idea what the local price is.
Average yearly income here is around $37,000, with around a quarter of all workers being paid at or close to minimum wage - currently $6.75 an hour in California.
Despite what you may hear about high-tech jobs, there’s still a lot of people stocking grocery stores, washing dishes, waiting tables and making your morning latte. In San Francisco itself, voters recently approved an increase in the minimum to $8.50, to take effect in about 2 months.
For western Massachusetts:
$1.33 per gallon for Gas
$2.00+/- per loaf of bread
$3.00+/- per gallon of milk
CD’s I don’t know. I haven’t bought one in ages.
DVD’s - depends on what you get. I just bought the extended Two Towers for $39 because I got $10 off with my Stop and Shop card. Regular stuff costs about $14.99
$5.10 is the lowest I can find for a pack of butts.
Sales Tax is 5%
I have no idea what the average salary is here but I know it’s lower here than in other parts of Mass due to the lower cost of living.
Petrol/Gasoline (unleaded): fluctuates but it is currently $1.79 a gallon where I live.
Milk (4 pints): I don’t drink milk but your price seems a little low.
Bread (large, ordinary sliced loaf): Your price is about equivalent.
Pair of jeans (high street, say Gap or equivalent): Same for the jeans.
CD (chart album): $10-$20 depending. Usually closer to 15-18.
McDonald’s Value Meal: The last time I ate at McDonald’s in the city it was just under $7 for a single quarter pounder value meal. Not superized and not the one with a double patty.
Our average wage is about the same at about $45k/year
So, are we getting ripped off? Well you are with gas. I wouldn’t buy CD’s over there either.
Any stuff that you think is very expensive over there? Real estate is very expensive in this city (Washington, DC) but gets cheaper as you go out into the burbs. A decent one bedroom apartment in a part of town where you won’t feel like you will be shot starts in the low $1000/mo and can go on up. With the $1000/mo apartment you will likely live in a very old place governed by slumlords. If you plan on buying a house, my neighborhood is currently selling 2 bedroom townhomes that are about 100 years old (and not in good condition) starting at about $400K and then just goes up. For the record, I don’t live in what is thought to be a good area.
Local restaurant sales tax is 10% but most everything else is 5%.
gas is about 1.45 for 87 octane
milk is $2.89 a gallon. however it is virtually always on sale for $2.29 or lower at most places. So i’ll say $2.20
Bread - generic store loaf (which you can taste rough kernels in the bread) 99 cents, a good loaf is about $2-2.99
CD - i have no idea.
McD - starts at about $3.50. super sized maybe $4.25 or so
Jeans - i buy cheap jeans at walmart & kmart. about $12 a pair for me.
My parents are both English, and I go there when I can (have been there about seven or eight times). Prices in England are almost always higher than in the US. It would be easy to find the prices of specific items, of course, on the web.
Prices in Canada are often lower than in the US (given curent exchange rates) but not on most electronic items or gasoline. Of course, taxes in Canada are generally higher so we still have less purchasing power. I know this is not what you asked, but Canadians always contribute to threads like this since we tend to be smug and self-righteous.
I thought the average family wage in the US was around $43,000, but could be wrong.
Regarding gasoline it’s important to point out that we still get much of our oil out of our own ground, and somehow this makes the retail price lower. At least, that’s how I’ve heard it explained, but that reasoning now seems false, because why wouldn’t our gas prices rise to the world level?
As I’m sure is also true of the UK, prices tend to run much higher in large cities. Salaries and wages also do, to an extent, but not as much. Most of your prices in the OP seemed the same or lower than what I pay in L.A., excepting of course petrol.
I spent a year in Germany when during a time when the dollar was very weak against the local currency. This was in 1977 to 1978, and the dollar was hovering between GDM 1:50 and 2:00. I was fearful of the high prices I would encounter, but I found many things to be cheaper than back home. For example, a pint of beer was only 90 pfennigs at the pub next door–~60 cents for a big glass of beer, I could live with that. Pubs and restaurants in general seemed to be very moderately priced.
Mid-Atlantic area: Oddly enough, around here, milk is cheaper at the convenience stores. I can get it for $1.89 a gallon at the Royal Farm store, but it’s $2.99 - 3.09 a gallon at the grocery stores.
Bread is all over the place. You can get basic no-frills store brand white bread for .69¢ a loaf, and it goes up from there. I buy the Italian-style white bread for my kids for sandwiches; it’s $1.89 a loaf. The fancy high-end bread is $4.00 a loaf and up.
Gas is about $1.49 for regular, $1.59 for middle grade and $1.69 for premium here. It varies a little depending on which station you choose.
Jeans: I just bought myself some jeans at Target that were $30, but the jeans for my daughter at the mall (at Express) were originally $50 (thankfully on sale 20% off!).
Pair of jeans (high street, say Gap or equivalent): I have specific jean needs, heh. I buy jeans that have legs so big you could hide a small nomadic tribe. $60
CD (chart album): $10-$18.
McDonald’s Value Meal: I’ve no idea. I always get a chicken sammich and a small fries - $2.
They tell me the average wage is $30,000/yr, but also that the poverty line for a two-income household is the same. My fiance makes about that much working in a paper factory, so it’d be strange if that was the average.
Sales tax is 6% in Michigan, no taxes on food (except in resaurants). We have National and State income taxes here, and some cities have city tax (Kalamazoo does, but Portage doesn’t. Thankfully, we live in Portage).
Oh, forgot DVDs. $10-$18. Unless you get things like The Entire Firt Season of [insert show], which is around $40. Or if you get Special Edition (like Two Towers box set, or whatever it’s called) $30 - $50.
r_k, if this helps, when I travel to England I try to put the price difference out of my head completely. I pretend (in my own little mind), that pounds are exactly the equivalent of dollars, and I forget about the whole exchange rate issue. In other words, where I would pay £13-14 for a cd in London, I pretend I’m paying $13-14 for it, and I leave it at that. That’s about what I would pay (in dollars) for one here in North Carolina. The only that doesn’t work out well on is Gas. What I have to pay for gas over there just astounds me.
You can pay an incredible range of prices for milk, even in the same store - different dairies cost different amounts of money. I’ve noticed that there is one dairy - Poinsettia - that I greatly prefer, but luckily it’s one of the cheaper ones. This is the first time in my entire life that I’ve had a dairy preference; I would’ve pshawed at the thought of such a thing six months ago. The milk I get is $2.50 to $3 a gallon, depending on which store I go to and whether I get Poinsettia Dairy or the store brand. If I wanted to get Foremost Dairy or Borden’s, for example - the more expensive brands around here - it’ll be $4 or even as high as $4.50. These prices are all for one gallon of milk in a plastic jug.
Bread is about a dollar.
A McDonald’s value meal is about $5.50 for one with chicken nuggets in it. I don’t eat hamburgers, so I can’t quote a specific price for those, but they are significantly cheaper than the chicken. $7.75 will get you a large french fry and a twenty-piece nugget, a common buy to split as dinner between myself and Gunslinger - we get our drinks at home.
DVDs cost between $15 and $25. CDs cost between $10 and $20 with $17 being a fairly common price.
Jeans from Old Navy cost $20-30, and are the most expensive jeans I purchase. Couldn’t tell you what they run anywhere else but Walmart ($12-20).
Packs of cigarettes can be had for $2-4 depending on brand. Cartons are in the $20-25 range.
Oh yes: cigarettes are about CDN $7.00 per pack of 20 here in British Columbia (that’s US $5.32, or GBP 3.04), about the most expensive in Canada: this is deliberate on the part of the provincial government. BC also has the lowest rate of smoking in the country, including amongst teenagers (Health Canada’s official figure for ages 15-19 is 20%), although a causal connection with the high pricing hasn’t been proven (but $70 bucks a carton must be convincing some people to give it up!)
I think many people in the U. S. drive gas hog vehicles, like large SUVs. The rental cars in Europe are usually tiny little things, like the Nissan Micra, which get better mileage, I imagine. So maybe the gas costs balance out a little.
Bread types vary. For example, wheat berry is over $3.00 USD.
Petrol: $1.58/gallon. I’ve seen it as low as $1.46/gallon in Bellingham.
Milk: I don’t know. I drink milk so seldom that I just by non-fat dry milk and mix it as I need it.
Bread: $1.09 for store brands, $2.49 to $2.99 for national brands.
Jeans, Levi’s 501s: $35-$40.
CD: Around $18.
DVDs: $9.99 - $29.99. Most seem to be either $14.99 or $19.99.
McDonald’s Big Mac Meal: $3.49.
Film Processing: It’s been a while since I’ve shot 35mm. B&W 16mm motion picture reversal film costs 0.18/foot. Video prep costs .04/foot. Telecine costs $175/hour (half-hour minimum).
So can any one tell me, I pay 58.9 cents per litre for gas, is that good? If I knew how many litres were in a gallon, I might be able to figure it out!
Also smokes here are about $10 a pack (25 in a pack) so I’m glad I don’t smoke!
