How does your country compare in terms of average wages?

Here is a list of America’s lowest paying jobs, as of 2011. Our lowest paid job is also fast food cooks, who make $18,720.00 US. That works out to about AU$19784.42. Quite a big difference in salary between the US and AU!

What is the cost of living like in Australia?

I think it’s higher here. Certainly some things would be. I’ll do some research into say petrol/gas, electricity, housing, new cars? Any ideas on things we could compare?

Here you go. Some interesting sites.

This one lists a whole range of expenses and provides a comparison between the US and Aus.

This is advice for those considering emigrating. It confirms the earlier doc in that Aus is more expensive in terms of say grocery shopping and residential housing, it’s cheaper in terms of health care.

This is an interesting site. Shows the cost of things like rates, gas, and all sorts of things in Aus.

This is from 2012 but is a comparison between Canada and Aus.

Wow, 16 bucks for a pack of cigarettes? Does anyone smoke in Australia???

The easiest way to make the comparison would be to determine a “market basket” of goods that are common between the two places (fuel, electricity, specific food items, rent per square meter of living space, etc.) and then determine “How many hours of work would it take in either country to acquire those things?”

The problems you have are in comparing the value of AU$ vs. US$, then also comparing the different units of measure that each place uses to price goods. It’s also not clear what hours are worked in each place to come up with those average salaries, either. So the best way to make an apples-to-apples comparison is to determine what it costs each worker in terms of “his life” (hours of work) to acquire the same goods in each place.

I went and looked at the ABS explanation to the stats and the average for non-managerial workers (which all of these are) was 40 hours a week.

I just moved home from the us. I used to think the cost of living was more here, but now I think it’s six of one and half dozen of the other. There’s no tipping here. You don’t have to tip for anything. The cost of groceries is about the same- some things are way more and then some, strangely, are not. The cost of power and water ( in the pacific northwest), is outrageous. The cost of power is here also, don’t know about water. It is socialised, so your car registration is alot more. But you don’t have to carry car insurance other than that. And you don’t have to carry private medical insurance. I saw 10$ an hour jobs there that wanted bachelor’s degrees. That doesn’‘t happen here- so – I would say nowadays, the cost of living is probably the same. And sinful things like cigarets and booze are heavily taxed. We get around that by using pouch tobacco- it brings the price way, way down. Booze, if you buy a case on special is not that much more either. Plus if you are low income (under 50k) you get family assistance.

@augustlan, you asked about smoking rates. This doc shows how much smoking has reduced in Australia. Only 19% of Australians smoke now and that’s dropped 30% over 10 years. There was a National Heart Foundation doc but I don’t know how to link to it. It’s a pdf.

Smoking is strongly discouraged here. I think in all cities now, you can’t smoke in public places (shopping centres, cinemas, restaurants etc. etc.). You usually can’t smoke within so many feet of buildings. Plus the cost of cigarettes has gone up and up and that is a deterrent because people can’t afford to keep smoking. I think you can now get smoking cessation aids on Medicare (so at a subsidised rate).

Thank you @trailsillustrated. It’s hard for me to know what the difference is in terms of real buying power. You’ve just left the US so you would have a very good idea.

That’s an important point about welfare payments too. I’ll see if I can find any figures but families on low incomes are subsidised.

@Bellatrix centrelink’s website I think would have that information. I found, oddly that very good olive oil and grapeseed oil is far less here-giant tins!

It’s so hard to find any figures on that site unless you are applying for welfare. Probably deliberately difficult.

Let’s say the limit is AU$150,000 per year for a family before you lose the Family Tax Benefit B (one of a number of welfare payments). It’s more complicated than that but my brain isn’t functioning well tonight.

If you earn less than AU$62,000 pa, you can get another payment (Family Tax Benefit A)which is added to Family Tax Benefit B. Those receiving Family Tax Benefit A are likely to get rent relief and a health card. They may even get travel concessions so they can get so many free train tickets a year.

There are also baby bonuses when you have children and child care rebates.

If someone gets youth allowance, for instance my son, you lose I think part b. But you get concession rates on power, and you do get health card, and I’m hoping rent assistance lol.

You need a degree to work out what you’re eligible for. The Centrelink people used to be pretty good. They would walk you through it. Not that I’ve been in a Centrelink office for years.

They are still pretty good. They help you and sign you up for everything. But it’s still alot of rootin around. Wish I could say the same centrelink are my homeboys.

The saddest thing, I saw, in the us, was poor people doing it really hard. And I mean hard. And, you didn’t have a job and got hurt, well, you were just screwed. And I knew people that had a really, really hard time paying off the gap? or whatever it’s called- the part their insurance didn’t pay for something. And, there didn’t seem to be any council housing. Of course, the streets were chock full of homeless people.

The average income in Germany in 2010 was €42535 (before taxes).