Sticker shock

When I first arrived in Australia I was astounded at how much things cost. At the time, the US Dollar was quite strong in comparison to the Australian Dollar, but even still the prices for everyday things seemed quite expensive.


After living here for 8 years, I guess I have become accustomed to the cost of living. This week, however, we've been hosting a visitor from the USA and she's been clearly surprised at how much certain items cost here. So for your reading pleasure and for the wannabe economist in me, I thought I'd price a small basket of goods here in Oz and compare them to the same or roughly equivalent items in the USA. This was an interesting exercise (well for my inner geek anyway, sorry to bore the rest of you). I've made a list below of the items I've compared. The price that appears in RED is the price of that item in Australia in Australian dollars. The price in GREEN is the Australian price converted to US Dollars (at the current conversion rate of 1 AUD =. 9524 USD). The price in BLUE is the American price in US Dollars.

Milk-light
$4.59/2 litres = $4.36
$2.79/half gallon

Milk-whole
$3.66/2 litres = $3.48
$2.79/half gallon


Bread-wholemeal
$4.73 = $4.50
$3.79


Cereal-All Bran
$3.88/12 oz = $3.69
$3.99/18 oz


Bananas
$2.99/kg = $2.84
$1.82/kg


Lettuce-iceberg
$1.25 each = $1.18
$1.79 each


McDonald's Big Mac
$3.95 = $3.75
$3.65


Petrol/Gasoline
$6.01/gallon = $5.71
$3.91/gallon

I guess the lesson here is I should buy more iceberg lettuce since it's such a bargain!