Randall R wrote:
> 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
>
> E.g., two years ago I was renting an apartment that cost
> US$350/mo.
Where the heck *were* you??
And what kind of new car did your friend buy for under $10K?
>I'm not sure what milk costs these days.
It's around $1.50 per quart in central Texas.
> 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.
I was comparing metro areas with metro areas. Costs are lower in smaller
towns, both in Australia and in the US. In general, as Patrick W. has said,
an item that costs US$10 in the US would be A$10 in Australia. Certain items
are higher. Restaurant prices, for example, are a bit higher in $A than in
$US. I think this is mainly because salaries of waitpersons are higher in
Australia, where tipping is not as universal as it is in the States. Goods
imported from the US cost roughly twice as much in $A as in $US--for example
a Dell Inspiron computer is about US$1,000 in the US and about A$2,000 in
Australia. But other imported items, such as Japanese cars, seem
significantly less expensive in Australia--Japanese cars seem to cost in the
neighborhood of A$1.6 for each $1 US.
Barbara
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