Cost of Living Index by Country 2024 – Numbeo
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Groceries and food (in general) was surprisingly more expensive in New Hampshire and Vermont than Calgary where I live (which is not a low COL area in Canada). I cannot understand how American fruit costs more in the US than they did back home (when including the exchange rate). I was not visiting a premium grocery store (it was a Price Chopper near a Tesla Charger near a small town in NH.)
This generally surprised me because the Canadian "online left" is organizing protests about the cost of food, while I don't see anything similar in the US.
Switch to the purchasing power index to get a more clear view of the relative wealth of people in the countries.
This seems reasonable, as luxury is not related to the cost of 'living'. However doing so they include more-than-necessary-to-live earnings but excludes more-than-necessary-to-live costs.
In other words, if you include Bruce Wayne's income, you should include batmobiles, too!
You're going to have a much different picture of this if you compare San Francisco and Montgomery, Alabama.
That doesn't seem that surprising? Where is the produce coming from? Typically California or Mexico. I could imagine the transport costs are lower to Calgary than Vermont.
It also depends on what stores - comparing mid-market to mid-market. Whole Foods in the US is way more expensive than Superstore in Canada.
And it also depends on the state. I almost always (there are exceptions) found US prices (New England, Midwest, and West Coast) to be the same or lower than Canada. Though the NE was the highest of all 3.
Incidentally, I found food prices in LA to be really cheap. Like, incredibly so given that it was supposed to be HCOL. Proximity to Mexico sure helps. Seattle in comparison is much more expensive, and variety isn’t as great.
Sure, things have recessed from the highs of 2022 / 2023, but the idea of a "groceries index" that does not reflect how is has changed to, ahem, shop for groceries is weird.
This makes it alright for comparing between countries in a single year, but I'm not sure exactly what you get out of comparing the same country within a year.
I would have expected the most desirable Western European nations to lead, but most of those are in the 20's. Those nations tend to have more regulation and much less space to develop, yet they've managed to keep their rents meaningfully lower despite having a comparable cost of living overall.
> Rent Index: This index estimates the prices of renting apartments in a city compared to New York City. If the Rent Index is 80, it suggests that the average rental prices in that city are approximately 20% lower than those in New York City.
If people prioritise the size of their home more then it stands to reason that they'll pay more as a percentage of income.
Not my experience but I think Amsterdam also has extremely high rents but I'm not sure how it compares to the rest of the Netherlands.
I believe that they never fully recovered after Covid and tourism never bounced back. The YEN has also taken a beating so you can get more for your USD.
Also, it's hard to directly compare stuff on shelves to what we have here. For example, Japanese peaches are much more expensive than Ontario peaches - but they are also incomparably better. However, if you only look at the price on the label, you would be rightfully shocked at the price difference.
(They are very good though)
How long back does your 'always' go?
Japan has approximately the same local price level now that they had in the early 1990s. One USD also buys approximately the same number of Yen as it did in the early 1990s. But the USD had quite a lot inflation in the meantime.
Ie Japan has gotten a lot cheaper comparatively. It used to be a lot more expensive.
Tourism bounced back as soon as they opened the borders. The 2023 numbers were at 2016/2017 level despite them not opening their borders until late 2022 (meaning lower ski-season numbers), and removing covid checks in April 2023.
Feb 2024 was reported as having 7% more tourists than Feb 2019 (2019 having peak tourism numbers).
There are a LOT of tourists at the moment.
For years it has been 1 USD = 110 JPY.
Japan is also overrun by tourists right now.
There were air raid alerts when I was there and missile/rocket attacks but they do a good job protecting everyone. All in all it was a awesome time, am definitely going back this summer. It's a wonderful and very resilient country with beautiful people, once you visit you understand why they are fighting so hard to preserve it. The war has cost them dearly and it is sobering to see all the memorials dedicated to their dead Heroes.
I am glad to have gone and spend time and money there to support them. Everyone I met was incredibly grateful that I had come as a visitor, it's important to show that they are not alone. It felt like I was part of an incredibly important moment in History in their fight for survival. I encourage everyone to go and support them and their economy in some way.
Their cities are regularly hit by antiship missiles (russians are evil) and Iranian made/copied drones. They don't care about you and will kill you no matter what your passport is from.
Please reconsider or at least get a local guide.
You can of course use alternative calculations / weights, but without a principled way to do so, you can choose weights to come up with pretty much any outcome that you like.
For example, let’s say you have a fixed rate mortgage on the home you own and live in. If house prices skyrocket because supply is restricted, that inflation doesn’t affect you. Or let’s say you spend $200 per month on food out of a total budget of $4000. If food prices go up uniformly 20%, but nothing else changes for all the other stuff you buy (ie, you’re paying $40 more per month than you were before), you’re effective inflation rate is 1%.
The joke used to be how expensive Switzerland was...now I am looking at prices in Zurich for food, drinks, hotels and it's no different than what you'd pay in a big city in the US, maybe less.
A better indicator would be Kebob prices, but I just don’t remember those.
Whatever, for what I made in Switzerland, it didn't seem like a big deal, and you can live pretty well in Swiss with very deterministic costs, whereas in the states, tax and tips sneak up on you.
Groceries are about the same with the exception of beef which literally seems like it’s 2-3x us prices.
I think rent in Switzerland is way cheaper both in absolute terms and the value you get for your money. The housing stock is much better quality than the Bay Area. Having good public transit also makes it easier to live in a wider variety of places too.
and you can't compare in-n-out to a sit down place.
an average casual ramen place is like $22 a bowl now here. add an egg (yes, they don't include it anymore) and it's $25. then add one drink or something and you're at $30. Then tax is $33 and tip is another $6-7. That's $40 for a ramen and a drink.
If you get 2 drinks, an appetizer and 2 sandwiches yes, it's about $40 pp. But if you just get two sandwiches it's much closer to 20-25PP.
Similar story here: https://coconutspaloalto.com/menu.html
These are two restaurants in some of the most expensive real estate and highest income area in California if not the whole US. Meanwhile the Indian place was as I said, 40km outside Basel (the town was amusingly called Frick).
(by the way I checked Ramen Nagi, also in Palo Alto and has lines out the door every day. Regular bowl is 15.25, an egg is 2.75. So I think your baseline is a bit high.)
I'm in San Francisco. Not sure if you've been to a sit down place recently but trying to argue a sit down meal is $25pp inclusive of tax and tip is ridiculous.
The most recent full service restaurant we went to in SF was Sam Wo (https://www.yelp.com/biz/sam-wo-restaurant-san-francisco-3), that was definitely under 25PP I think even with drinks).
I mean, sure, if you go to trendy restaurant of the week it's going to be super expensive. But there are plenty of places you can eat out in SF for ~$15 a person out the door. I don't feel like that's true in Zurich.
In fact, writing this comment made me remember when I went to Hiltl Sihlpost. That's definitely not a full service restaurant, but it was 30 francs for a plate of entirely vegetarian food! Reflecting more, I think what's missing in Zurich is the equivalent of low end Bay Area restaurants.
In practice that’s often not the case. Long term contracts, futures, FDI commitments, etc is all USD bound over time.
Hell even the shtty VPS I bought from Eastern Europe is a recurring fixed USD per year so they’re carrying the US inflation effect as margin squeeze (and I fully expect them to renege on that at some point)
when living in a cheaper country to live compared to a more expensive one, there is a very different split between rent and other expense in terms of having a comparable standard of living.
One example I can remember, comparing a pretty default Thai place in the US to one of the more premium Thai restaurants here in Adelaide: AU: Pad Thai chicken AU$23, Kao Pad chicken AU$19. US: Pad Thai chicken + tax and tip AU$32, house fried rice AU$32.
Yes, there's cheaper and more expensive, but that was a 'special occasion' restaurant versus a place we just stopped in adjacent a Walmart carpark.
They seem to have both data sets there