[lbrito]

Re: cost of living, I'm thinking more about things like housing and utilities.

Where I live (BC), power costs around CAD 0.085/kWh. In my home state in Brazil, the cost is CAD 0.25/kWh - 3 times higher. Natural gas is 20 times more expensive, although you'll only be using it for cooking. Basically any consumer good is as expensive or more expensive. Inflation is higher, credit is much more expensive. Housing is significantly cheaper than in large US/CA metros, but isn't exactly cheap: a nice apartment in my city rents goes for about 1500 CAD.

Like you said, its a big region. I don't know much about the rest of Latin America, but from the conversations I've had with people from other countries, they say yeah, we're on the same boat. Crime is also increasingly metastasizing as a problem in previously safer regions (Uruguay, Argentina, Equador).

[anticorporate]

This is exactly the kind of calculus I hope everyone does. For example, I can't say I'm jealous of much else about the cost of living in BC, but my electricity rates in North Carolina are more than double yours, much closer to Brazil's. Everywhere's a little different. My biggest expenses (taxes, housing, and health care) will probably go down in most of the places I'd consider moving to, but some things (like transportation, and consumer goods as you mention) I would expect to go up, especially since I spend less in those categories than most people I know to begin with.