[barry-cotter]

Beer costs about $0.50 a liter here in Shanghai. At 50L a day, $25 that’d be $750 a month. Doable in most of the first world.

If you want to know the realistic upper bound for local price of water see how much Coke costs. That’s not something the government much concerns itself with anywhere. Or look at the price of water in someplace like Gurgaon our Dubai, cities so hideously planned that drinking water and sewerage are transported by tanker.

Water can be provided for very low cost even with less than competent governments.

[dzonga]

in your average walmart, a gallon of coke, soda is cheaper than a gallon of water.

[pluto9]

I don't know why rumors like this persist when they're so easy to fact check. When I go on Walmart's website, a 2-liter (~half gallon) bottle of store-brand cola is $0.87 and a gallon of drinking water is $1.00.