Comment by rdouble | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rdouble | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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