sergio said:
I've been back in the US for over a month and I can tell you that you can live on less money here as far as food is concerned. There are constant specials in the supermarket, constant. Packages are substantially larger and prices are comparable or often much lower than what you pay in Argentina.
Lets hear it for an economy dependent on over consumption and a unhealthy reliance on cheap imports!
Seriously though, whilst the state of the supermarkets in argentina and the price of this and that is always a hot topic - I'm never sure why the largest, most rapaciously consumer economy in the world is used as a benchmark of what things should cost.
I'm back in the UK at the moment. Lots of things are cheaper. For example - milk. But then milk is sold for less than it costs the dairy farmers to produce. The supermarkets can bully the dairy farmers into accepting a price for their product that makes their model of business impossible. So they receive subsidies from the government, who support their industry with tax money. So you pay less at the point of sale, but then you part pay for the milk in taxes.
Another example... when we first moved to argentina and had to buy furniture I was staggered at how much everything cost. Where was flat pack, mass produced, no frills, self assembly IKEA stuff? Seemed crazy how much things cost, but then I'd taken a price benchmark from a business that can comfortably sell zillions of units and optimise their production and distribution model to dramatically lower their costs. You get cheap stuff, but so does everyone else, and everyone ends up owning the same stuff. Over in argentina, if you want a sofa - someone has to build you one, and you pay them for the labour and materials.
Guess my point is that whilst its annoying how expensive some things are in Argentina, its worth considering why they are so cheap elsewhere, and what the implications of having cheap goods are.
