David McWilliams knows a lot more about the economy than I do, and maybe I'm missing something, but he doesn't mention that there's quite a disproportionate tax on alcohol in Ireland which probably makes the pint index a little less accurate as an indicator of currency value than something less taxed, like, ironically, a big mac
Same in Norway and Sweden, which were mysteriously left off the chart in favour of smaller, cheaper countries like Latvia and Cyprus. Additionally, the price of a pint of beer in a pub depends not just on the cost to manufacture and import the beer, but on the price of the pub itself, so it will be higher in places with higher land values.
The article makes a pretty good point about supermarket prices in Northern Ireland being cheaper than in the twenty-six counties, but chooses a bad headline example to illustrate that point.
Indeed: places with higher beer tax and overall higher price levels such as Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Finland were "accidentally" not included on the chart.
So it looks like the author did some cherry-picking of data points.
It would be interesting to see the data as a heat map overlaid on a world map. And to see more countries included like this.
I also didn't see mentioned how the author arrived at one number to represent the price in each country. Guinness in the US can be 2-3x more expensive in some cities or neighborhoods than others.
A Big Mac is unfortunately quite a bad way to compare prices between countries, as prices of Western brands are often overpriced compared to their local equivalent in less developed countries.
Last year I was in India (Hyderabad), and a Starbucks coffee was more expensive than in the U.K., as there it’s seen as a luxury item for the upper class and Westerners.
I now live in Lithuania and when I first came around five years ago, two people could eat out in a restaurant for not much more than the price of a Big Mac (around 18Lt/€5).
Yeh he's completely glossed over this. Australia is also off the list, due to its very high alcohol tax. Paradoxially, Singapore is on the list despite having just as high, if not higher, alcohol tax.
Yes, this seems like a dubious idea. Tax on alcohol is all over the place, internationally. Average pricing of a basket of shopping in, say, Tesco might work better. And that is still cheaper in the UK, due to a combination of cheaper labour and better competition (and weak sterling, though that’s likely to be short-lived inflation in the UK ramps up).
Those look like 'pint in a bar' prices, not packaged.
In my experience, the North is a little more expensive in general, but not significantly. Specific things are different, you definitely want to buy diesel in the South, but even that spread is narrowing.
Liquor wise, the both the north and south are at ~$30 for a mass premium bottle of spirits (absolute), and I've seen the same in Germany for ~$14. There's a reason all the Irish come back from holidays with full trunks.
I've seen the same sort of economic weirdness with music gear right here in Australia. Gear from M-Audio and Rode - both Australian companies, costs me more to buy here than if I ordered it from US based resellers.
I am assuming that aside from currency variation, there may be the case that it is cheaper to ship direct from the factories in China to the US than to Australia.
Shipping cost difference will be marginal, spread across a container of goods. Less than $500 extra for the container.
You're paying a sales tax on products bought in Australia. You don't see that tax on American websites, and if purchasing from them you would be liable to pay import taxes.
