The World's Most Expensive Cities 2010 | Hacker News Reader

The World's Most Expensive Cities 2010

finance.yahoo.com

14 pointssamratjp24 comments

Nagoya is not a terribly expensive city to live in if you live like a Japanese person. (The starting salary for engineers is about $2,200, and for a single young man that makes one comfortably middle class.)

If you live like a Western executive, though, it can be kind of pricy. (My friends and I sometimes talk -- mostly jokingly -- about the English tax: if you need somebody to explain things to you in English, you are almost certainly paying a premium over market for that service. On high-end apartments, for example, the difference between going to the place I know which markets itself as foreigner friendly and walking into the apartment service and asking for the comparable apartment next door is about 50%.)

That's monthly? I would make more as a postman in norway (working considerably less).

I was shocked at how low the salaries were in Japan when I lived there. The company subsidizes the train, which otherwise would be a major expense, but still...

Starting salary for an engineer in Jordan is 300JD (450USD/month) working 9 hours a day.

When I did a one year internship in Japan 13 years ago, I lived in a company dormitory, could eat breakfast and dinner in the dormitory cafeteria, and the company subsidized my train pass. They had a washing machine there, too. The cost of living in the dormitory was subsidized to such a degree, that I teased a coworker that he was paying more for a place to park his car than a place to park his body overnight.

With this system, the only really necessary expenses not covered are the culturally mandatory, after work drinking sessions.

The article would be better titled "Most Expensive Cities (if You Live Like an American)".

That's the only explanation for all the African cities. No doubt American food, and in particular, American brands, are very expensive there.

OTOH, if you're willing to eat native foods and buy native brands, I seriously doubt Louanda is all that expensive.

Does anyone have an actual LIST that I can look at AT ONCE and compare the entries, spot patterns, etc?

I can't even hover over the images/thumnails and get the name of the city! Even the URIs are numbers and not names, so I actually have to click through 50 pages!

EDIT:

Here y'all are: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings.jsp

Hah, that one is funny. The numbers for Stockholm look really weird. Groceries is at index 110, but rent at 27. This is true and a result of decades of political rent control, but what the numbers don't tell you is that it's impossible to actually get a decent apartment for rent. It's a completely dysfunctional market.

If they would have factored in the costs for buying an apartment or a house, it would look a lot more sane, and you would get numbers that are closer to what you would expect.

There's definitely significantly different methodology here since, Buenos Aires is one of the cheapest cities on the numbeo list and most expensive on the article.

Wait, what? The third most expensive city in the world is in West Africa, and has 57% of its population living in extreme poverty? What happened there?

Living with a high standard of living in a poor city is not necessarily inexpensive. While labour and land will be significantly cheaper, importing western luxuries will likely be quite expensive, since there's far less of a market for those kinds of goods. And that's not to mention potential for corruption, extreme tarrifs etc (but I know nothing of Angola in particular, so I'll stay away from jumping to conclusions there).

Oil happened there. It is the second largest producer of oil and is one of the largest supplier's of oil to China.

Luanda has been notably expensive for a long time, for western lifestyles anyway. I think the main issue there is that the western contingent is small and very corporate.

Isn't this a little like saying that NYC is the most expensive city in the world by isolating Tribeca and ignoring the Bronx?

Yes.

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/10/06/0622_most_expensive_...

"Note: Prices are for Manhattan only."

Ah, Zurich at no. 10, the place I've chosen to develop my startup. I probably should've taken my hard earned savings somewhere cheaper, but it's a great place to live and has a very good infrastructure.

Not accurate for me. If the average salary in XXX is $10,000 and the cost of a lunch is $50; then it's not quite expensive for the average person. But when your salary is $300 and the lunch is $10, it's really expensive.

Well at the very least it's useful if you're comparing job offers, in which case you know the salary, but not the cost of living. (Another thing to look up is taxes.)

This isn't really much use to anyone but US tourists if it won't take in to account purchasing power parity...

Lunch in Copenhagen for $36. Wonderful.

I live in Copenhagen, and I can assure you those are not average prices. I don't know where they got those numbers.

Well, the picture in the article is of D'angleterre, perhaps they ate their lunch there? :-)

The results remain valid if the lunch in NYC it is compared to was similar. High wages in scandinavia probably makes for a big price difference.

This is really interesting that most of the countries are on the list because of currency trends. Due to the weakening of the dollar or strengthening of the yen. Most of the top 10 comprises of Japanese cities and US has only one city in there. Goes to show how weak dollar has become

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