On Tuesday 25 December 2001 03:35, you wrote:
> Randall Randall wrote:
> > If you get twice as many
> > Australian dollars, but the Australian dollars are only worth half as
> > much as US Dollars (which must mean that you can only buy half
> > as much with an Australian dollar as with a US Dollar, all else being
> > equal), then you're making the same as you would in the US, right?
> >
> > If people in general are poorer there, then you might be able to live
> > better than you would in the US, but otherwise, it would seem to be
> > exactly the same. What am I missing?
>
> The crucial bit of info you're missing is this: You can buy a liter of milk
> in Melbourne for something like A$1.25 (the Aussies on the list can correct
> me if I've got the numbers wrong--but I know they're in the ball park). You
> can rent an apartment for under A$1000 per month. You can buy a new car for
> under A$20,000. And so forth.
Bizarrely, those prices seem to me to be over double what US prices were
for the minimum in each category when I was last there (and I'm not currently
far away; I get some Seattle channels on Vancouver cable).
E.g., two years ago I was renting an apartment that cost US$350/mo. I have
friends who have recently bought cars that were less than 10K USD before
finance charges and taxes. I'm not sure what milk costs these days.
So what you say seems to back up my intuition: that in general things should
cost twice as much in Australian dollars as they do in USD.
That doesn't seem to be the conclusion that you've drawn from this, though.
-- Randall Randall <wolfkin@freedomspace.net> Crypto key: www.freedomspace.net/~wolfkin/crypto.text On a visible but distant shore, a new image of man; The shape of his own future, now in his own hands.-- Johnny Clegg.
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