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Comment by criley2 | Hacker News Reader

In the American south where cost of living is known to be low, I can get store brand white bread for $0.99 (~$1.06 AUD). I can get fancy pants processed bread that is brown with lots of labels like "NATURAL" for $3.00. Store-fresh bread is $2 - $4 at grocery stores.

I can't imagine junk white costing $4. That's outrageous, but then again, maybe it's like that in some American regions with a crazy cost of living.

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My sister migrated to regional Australia and it's hella expensive.

Bananas in Arizona are $0.57/lb and they were $12/k when I lived there. Apparently there was a banana shortage at the time but the usual price was still 4-5x what I would normally pay.

Clothing is also very expensive. Every time my sister comes back to the states she brings two gigantic duffel bags and stocks up on clothing.

The prices on anything else you want/need to buy like electronics, computers, cars, or bicycles are insane compared to the USA. Or even Japan, which isn't a country known for bargain prices.

I do think there is a bit of frontier pricing happening. Everything seemed cheaper in Melbourne than her town.

That said, she gets paid $95K for a part time job with full benefits. She had a similar job in the states that was full time and it paid $34,000 with minimal benefits.

It actually depends, I used to live in the melbourne suburb as a grad student, I used to pay 800$/mo for 1 bedroom apartment. Now I am living in the US (in northern VA, DC area) I pay 1200$/mo for the same standard of accommodation. In fact, the melbourne accommodation was better, w.r.t. the condition of the apartment and the degree of accessibility to the public amenities. The suburb where I am living now (in the NVA/DC) is literally a ghost town, where the melbourne suburb was very alive.

"That said, she gets paid $95K for a part time job with full benefits. She had a similar job in the states that was full time and it paid $34,000 with minimal benefits."

And there you have it.

If you want to live in a society with high pay, good benefits, free Medicare, compulsory pension contributed to by your employer, etc -- then be prepared to pay.

Also, there is nothing stopping you from importing cheap clothing, goods, books, whatever from overseas.

Not everyone in Australia has the ability to earn $95K. There are the rare exceptions where you can get an unskilled mining job in a remote area, but that's every bogan's dream. Actually landing such a job is another matter.

That said, the minimum wage at $16.37/hr is much hire than other countries. In Melbourne at least, you'd probably gobble that up pretty quickly on living expenses.

The US is a little special, as it's got a strong agricultural industry (like Australia), and subsidises food like crazy (like the EU). While Australia has some of the most efficient food production in the world, it has very low subsidies. The US has both efficient food production, and crazy subsidies, so food is dirt cheap. Plus, Australia has fairly high minimum wages, so eating out is quite expensive.

Conversely, I've heard from people who lived in America that the food is terrible. Bread that last a week or two before going stale, etc.

Junk white isn't $4. Mass-produced 'artisan' bread is.

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