The obvious error in your math is the food prices you’re using:

“I can attest that the cost of food given that runs easily to $1000/month for a single person. 1500+ in most places.”

No it doesn’t. I have no idea how normal single person could would up $1500 a month eating out unless you are downing a whole bottle of wine with every meal and/or morbidly obese. Living in Chicago, there are plenty of places a person can eat for less than $15 a meal. Try $500 a month for food and his expenses fall into line.

I find the comments about Europe being cheaper than America mindblowing. I make the (market exchange rate) equivalent of 22,000 pounds in a major U.S. city, and that’s enough to rent a 1000 sq. ft. apartment, drive a new BMW convertible, eat out more or less as much as I want, take multiple overseas trips each year, play golf every weekend, and still sock away over 10,000 dollars in savings.

Bullshit. I don’t believe you. Name your city and itemize these expenses. $100/sf is very cheap in the US, few major cities allow it in neighborhoods that aren’t dangerous. So that means a 1,000sf apartment would cost at least $600/month. Multiple overseas trips is a few thousand a year unless they are paid for on expense accounts. Federal and payroll taxes alone will eat at least 15-20% of that salary, in some states/cities the burden is much higher. Eating out as often as you want? I can attest that the cost of food given that runs easily to $1000/month for a single person. 1500+ in most places. Golf every weekend? Perhaps you have a cheaper option for that than I’m aware of (I don’t golf), but my understanding is that one typically pays $30 for 18 holes even at the cheapest public courses. A country club membership is much more.

I did a search on carmax for new BMW convertibles near me. I put a max price of $30k. It produced one car: a used ‘02 with 37k miles for $29,995.

Let’s give you huge benefit of the doubt and suppose you got that convertible for $30k new. Your implication is that you can be regularly driving a new-ish car, so I think it’s reasonable to expense it over 6 years, giving a capital cost of a bit over 6k a year at 6% discount rate.

So with very generous assumptions about car, apartment and food costs, we’ve already got to around $30k dollars on a take home salary of about $36k. We’ve spent no money on utilities, phone, computer, internet, tv, books, any other entertainment, clothes, furniture, housewares, gifts, gas, insurance, random miscellaneous expenses, and even if that’s somehow all zero, I still can’t see where that 10k is coming from unless you’re not paying taxes. Maybe you bought that new BMW and condo out of previous savings and aren’t counting the capital costs?

Either you’ve found some obscure “major US city” where the cost of living is hugely lower than everywhere else I know, or there’s something wrong with your accounting somewhere.

Or you know some trick that I don’t, and would really like to hear about, because I don’t find I can do all those things easily, and I make quite a bit more than £22k at market rates (admittedly not in the cheapest area of the country).

A nice table of international figures is here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060508212456/http://www.bast.de/htdocs/fachthemen/irtad/english/we2.html

(archive.org is certainly handy)

One of the things I noticed there is that the death rate for U.S. drivers ages 15-25 (26.2 / 100,000 population) is dramatically higher than Australia’s (15.5 / 100,000), and I’m guessing that’s mainly a difference in the amount of driving teenagers do.

But, in general, the death rate per kilometer in the U.S. is right about the European average (and if you look up the figures for individual states, the same north-south pattern holds—death rates in the northeastern U.S. are like those in northern Europe, while those in the southern states are like southern Europe).

So the higher death rate in the U.S. derives from driving farther. I guess the question is whether it’s a good thing that Americans ‘can’ drive more or a bad thing that they ‘have to’ drive more. Because, of course, you can reduce your risk of accidental death by never flying, by never skiing or mountain biking or sailing or swimming or …

Of course Portland (or the Wilamette Valley in general) is a veggie paradise (add fruit and especially berries). Have been surprised that it far surpasses the San Francisco area in quality, but Rome was better. However, in Italy produce was more seasonal than in Oregon, and Rome was even more seasonal. My other observation about Rome was that even the produce that wasn’t grown in Rome (bananas from the Ivory Coast) was better than anything I’d had in California. On the other hand, the “oranges” we got out of season in Italy didn’t exactly make my wife forget her youth in the Inland Empire.

Now $40k means just e30k, a drop of 36% compared to 2001. Not so good anymore, and when you do a comparison using products produced in dollar countries like the Dell monitor above, you’d think you are really better off in the Netherlands with current exchange rates.

Reality may be different, but the perspective on whether pay is better in the US has definitely changed in the Netherlands.

As noted above in this thread, availability of real estate is one difference that would seem likely to create differences in lifestyle. My wife and I recently purchased a 2000 sq ft newly constructed house on a two acre lot in the woods. We’ve got a 30 year mortgage with a low fixed interest rate. In the evenings, we get to watch the deer and listen to the owls and treefrogs. In the morning, we drive 20 minutes to work.

We feel very fortunate, but our home and commute aren’t particularly unusual in our area. Based on comments here and elsewhere, I think its doubtful we could afford our house if it were in the UK. Don’t know about France or Germany.

Well OK, then, how about Londoners or Parisians? Is it an odd thing in those places to ride the subway to go out for dining or entertainment?

If you have a low margin service or retail business you want to locate it as close to as many customers as possible. Outside high density cities this means close to residential areas.

But that’s not inconsistent with people traveling for dining or entertainment. Even when you locate near certain residential areas a large fraction of your customers are coming from outside the neighborhood—especially in low-density areas, but even in dense cities as well.

Remember that all this is in response to your assertion that there must be a correlation between commute times and trip times to shopping centers etc. There is no such correlation, at least in Western Europe.

It wasn’t an assertion, it was a conjecture. A conjecture supported by familiarity with Americans and Europeans who do ‘commute’ for entertainment and recreation (both inside and outside dense areas).

In what way does the “American lifestyle” differ from the European, then? What do you think you’d have to give up, indoor plumbing and horse-free streets?

I don’t particularly care what the motivations of “many New Yorkers” may be. If you have a low margin service or retail business you want to locate it as close to as many customers as possible. Outside high density cities this means close to residential areas.

And have you ever heard of outlet malls?

Yes I have. They are primarily an Americanism.

Remember that all this is in response to your assertion that there must be a correlation between commute times and trip times to shopping centers etc. There is no such correlation, at least in Western Europe. There is a correlation between housing scarcity and commute times. Convenience stores, restaurants, movie theaters are located close to residential areas. Sure, in order to experience the delights of big city entertainment you have to travel to the big city, if you don’t live there already. You want to see a Broadway show, you pretty much have to go to Broadway. But buying groceries, getting a bite to eat or catching a movie are things you can do with a 5 min ride in more or less any European urban area, and I suspect, almost any US one as well.

How could they be otherwise? Don’t many New Yorkers ride the subway in for a night on the town and ride it back out again?

Why would you find it surprising that people would be willing to travel some to dine, or take in a concert or a play or a movie, or go for a hike in the woods?

And have you ever heard of outlet malls?

jroth: To me, the question “would you be willing to work 20% less per year and live the Euro-lifestyle?” is a no-brainer (family ties and baseball keep me here, alas), but I know it isn’t for all.

But would you be willing to commute an extra half an hour a day to get those benefits? (Half an hour a day is something on the order of 100+ extra hours a year or 2 1/2 weeks of vacation).

Personally, I’d rather work 20% less and live the American lifestyle—is that one of my choices?

The one bit of David Copperfield that I vividly recall is where David & Dora set up home on Highgate Hill, and are woken before dawn every morning by the people walking down the hill to work in the City. It’s 4+ miles to the Bank from the top of Highgate Hill, so the commute to work would be about 90 minutes. God only knows how long the uphill commute back would take.