I have been looking at this diagram of some price differences between Australia, New Zealand, Canada, USA and UK which I thought was quite interesting. A couple of comments from me - I thought Big MAc would be the cheapest in USA but it looks like they are cheapest in the UK. American seem to get their Jack Daniels very cheap.
A lot of price variation has to do with taxes, with VAT running at 20% in the UK at the moment it can easily add up very quickly to large differences in prices.
Value Added Tax? Whoa! I just bought a loaf of bread the other day and it was $3.99, my heart nearly skipped a beat. And the fresh meats at the deli these days are astronomical.
That is very interesting. In Canada, alcohol has a very high taxation level. I am sure to buy whatever my duty free allowance limits are whenever I cross the line to visit the States. I am lucky, the Thousand Islands border is less than an hour away and the wife and I often 'weekend' in the US.
In Australia we have the Goods and Services (GST) tax which is 10% and isn't put on most foods. I think New Zealand has a GST of 15% and I don't think that they don't exempt food. However they do exempt rent which Australia does not.
Well VAT in the UK isn't applied to most food stuffs, only food stuffs which are classed as luxury i.e. Chocolate, biscuits. But Petrol gets a double whammy with not only VAT but duty.
Yeah but the flipside is, once you’ve eaten so many burgers it makes you ill at least the NHS will treat you free of charge
All I can say is welcome to Rip Off Britain (aka ROB). Out of all those listed the worst is Petrol, don't need an IPad, can wear other trousers than jeans etc... But Petrol impacts everything. Those goods have to be transported to shops or delivered to your door etc.. so the higher cost of the fuel the higher cost of transportation which impacts the end user price.
This is true, I only learned to drive in 08 but I can still remember it being less than a pound a litre!
When I learned to drive several moons ago it was less than half of what it is today and diesel was cheaper than 4 star. Only if they want to use a Pro-Glide.
Yeah, same here. Although I don't live so closely to the border But the deals are so much better at the Duty Free. I think the advantage might be bigger for Canadians rather than vice versa. I always did think our prices on electronics were way out there though, and I'm surprised that it doesn't show as more expensive on that chart. The iPad for instance is likely the standard model without 3G, because here if you buy an iPad with 3G and sign up with the service, the price shoots way up, mostly because mobile access fees are pretty high here.
I am not sure being manufactured locally is neccessarily the reason for lower prices. I copied the diagram from an article that was complaining that Australian-produced Vegemite was dearer in Australia than it was Britain.
Some of it might be down to population size, after all the larger the population the more potential customers. After all if it has to be shipped to a specfic country it can be cheaper per unit to ship larger quantites.
It may only be cheaper here because it is only produced in one place. Adding transport fees adds to the cost in other places.