Even Ozzies can be startled by Australian prices.
One named Neal wrote in an ozinamerica post this week that — when he returned for a visit recently after living in the United States — he was shocked by the costs of basics like food and housing.
“Yeah, right, dad,” had been his mental response to what he’d heard as whinging from his father, but then he returned home to a Sydney suburb and had a look for himself. “One thing I didn’t prepare myself for,” he wrote, “was the price of groceries. OMG!!”
Wondering about the possibility of price fixing between the two main grocery chains here, Coles and Woolworths, Neal concluded, “As much as I hate to say it (people in Australia) probably do need Wal Mart to keep healthy competition and inflation down.”
He was puzzled by signs in Woolworths stores proclaiming a “rollback” in prices, just as I was puzzled recently by a sign in a chain-store pharmacy labelling – proudly, it appeared – a shelf of razor blades as “budget busters.” (And they were surely expensive enough to bust my budget, well over $2 each.)
Although most of the Ozzies who replied agreed with Neal about prices, especially house prices, one named Katrina added, “As for the need for Wal Mart – NEVER!” Then she added 13 more exclamation points.
Neil commented on how much Brisbane and the Gold Coast have changed since he’d seen them last, noted that “Sydney hasn’t changed much, everyone is still wearing black,” and concluded with this comment about three-hundred-thousand dollar price tags for average homes: “Yikes, wish I had bought real estate instead of partying back in the 90’s.”
Wait, it gets worse, according to a writer called Rama: “I am from Canberra. In Canberra, the average price of a three-bedroom home in an average suburb, away from the city, is 500 K. Houses closer to the city go for 630 K.” A friend of his recently paid $740 thousand for a three-bedroom, one-bath house in posh suburb.
One bath! We are often amazed at how often expensive homes here have only one bath.
Not even Tasmania is immune to the cost run-ups, “truebluetas” wrote: “Tassie housing is insane also. In Hobart the most simple 3 bedrooms are in the high 300s.” His home in North Carolina is valued at half that, so he also wishes he’d invested here in the 90s.
Who doesn’t? Other than those who did, of course. We’re just glad we bought our small house in a Brisbane inner suburb in 2006, several years “too late.”
On the positive side, though, my wife and I spent some time this past week driving to various Brisbane suburbs to interview people for a study she’s doing and everywhere we went we found wonderful parks with great playground equipment and picnic areas (not to mention clean, well-maintained public toilets), the health care system covers everyone, and most working people have salary/benefits packages superior to those of folks doing similar jobs in the United States.
Thanks in part to the lingering effects of a declining union movement, pay increases for people in academic positions are more frequent and more generous here than what we experienced in the United States. And the Australia-wide minimum wage is much higher that of any state back home.
Those facts, alone, I suspect, are enough to keep Wal Mart, Inc., from being interested in trying to set up shot down under.
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