[vacri]

Don't move to Australia then. Software prices are routinely jacked up for us. At least with conversion to the euro, there's a large amount of laziness in it. With Australian software, we're often paying 50% more to double the price. At one stage it was cheaper to buy Photoshop by flying across the Pacific ocean, buying a copy in the US, and flying back to Australia.

[maccard]

Every time I see this I feel compelled to point out that Europe gets it worse than you, despite your complaints.

Say 100 AUD for a game. That's roughly 70 euro (which is the cost of a new PS4 game in Ireland). The median household income in Australia is 66k (AUD) or 47000 euro. The only source I can find for a median income in ireland states it at around 27000 euro. The purchasing power of an Australian in that case is far higher than an Irish person for instance.

[vacri]

Median income isn't the whole story. Disposable income is a better story (particularly for entertainment), and Ireland in US$24k, Australia $31k. In Germany (the most populous European country that no-one questions is in Europe) it's US$30k. France is US$29.5k. (stats from OECD). Norway, with the same size population as Ireland, is more than Australia at US$32k. Australia isn't really as far ahead of Europe as you paint it. Picking one of the poorest countries in Western Europe and using that as the baseline isn't really playing fair.

These links have the country's median household disposable income listed in the first paragraph.

  http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/ireland/
  http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/australia/
  http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/germany/
  http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/france/
  http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/fill-in-the-blank-here-or-just-click-on-a-flower/