| While I do agree with you, that doesn't really impact salary all too much. Allow me to explain. Taxes, Housing, Transportation, and Insurance is what eats up most of your expenses anyway. Housing varies wildly across the world. Many parts of the US now cost > $3,000 /mo to rent a median home. Most of those homes are probably selling for ~$500k putting your mortgage at current interest rates in the same ballpark of $3k /mo. For somoene making $120k that is 1/3 of their income. For someone making the national average (around $70k) that is 1/2 their total income. Just to mention, those areas (Seattle, San Fran, NYC) where you see $250k-300k salaries, those people are paying much higher than these figures. Probably $5-6k in rent or buying modest homes that just happen to cost $1.25M-1.5M In the US you also can pay $1,000 (or more) /mo for health insurance. Most other parts of the world don't have this expense. As of 2024, the average price of a new car is now $47,000 in the USA. Now not everyone is buying a new car but the used car market swells based on this figure. Then you pay 15-30% in taxes on average for most people here. So You add all that up and probably 2/3-3/4 of your money is gone. I agree with you that things like clothing, consumer goods, software, meat, and oil are largely comparable globally now, but these goods only account for probably 10-20% of a person's monthly expenses. Not to mention retirement. Because all these costs are so high, it means I need to put a larger percent of my paycheck to retirement so I can survive a few years of not working before I die. When basics like healthcare and housing are as high as I outlined, it means more money needs to go to retirement, which is money that can't be spent on these basic goods that you mention. So yes, these goods you call out are in fact comparable around the world. But they only account for a relatively small portion of someone's expenses. The outstanding expenses are the most variable (housing, transportation, insurance, taxes). |
- Real Estate did take up a larger % of my budget, but it was nicer
- The globalized products are only a small % of the budget but they're relatively much cheaper so I can have more/better/both
Of course this doesn't mean expensive cities are perfect or even good. I later moved from Toronto to Alberta and it's night-and-day better. Of course the lifestyle is different and some might not like that.
There's a big qualitative angle so you can't really compare these things on a spreadsheet, but more after-tax dollars is almost always better.