Comments by "Helmuth Schultes" (@helmuthschultes9243) on "American Reacts to What No One Tells You about Australia.." video.

  1. Alcohol and tobacco products are heavily taxed in Australia, driving prices well above places like Germany. In case of smoking habit the price is set high to severely make smokers pay, and much encourage stopping smoking. In theory the tax helps pay medical costs for the illness results of smoking , keeping in mind that medical costs are mostly born by tax payers, with medical and medicine expenses reduced to virtually free. The long term costs of cancers and lung damage on general causing many years of expensive treatment and support. On alcohol consumption also has considerable social and medical costs and forcing higher prices does affect consumption. Not abolition but harder access is a result. Germany on the other hand makes especially beer, and quite an extent hard liquors virtually as accessible and similar cost to mineral water and soda pop. Of course for them compared to their low costs, our spirits and beer are regarded as super expensive. For many travellers they see the prices in relation to their home country income levels, not in relation to local typical/average wages. Again it is potentially mis interpreting prices. One other matter that comes up is the quality of say fruit and vegetables. Here fruit may be with some level of shape and surface imperfections, vegetables may be variable in shape or size. Back home many people are used to buying import goods only virtually none or very little produce from local farms. The lesser shape, colour, surface produce goes into food processing and canning systems, or direct farm community use. The export/import system deals only at premium level on the goods, under strict contracts, at bulk prices, often below local wholesale market prices of the producing country that actually becomes locked into the export trade for the country producing. For Europe fir example lots of produce comes from middle east on short distance shipping at very low cost. Even Australia exports much premium fruits, vegetables, meat to many countries around the world. That sadly is much longer shipping distances and thus higher shipping costs. While locally the 'sub' quality produce goes to local market. I have seen Australian fruit, apples, pears, bananas, oranges on sale in Indonesia, Singapore and Malasia, and even Japan. It looked absolute perfection shape, colour, skin perfection. Price there was two to three times what we pay locally. On the other hand, we regularly get flooded by California Oranges at prices more like local products wholesale, inspite of long shipping distance. Lots of juice is ex USA, beating out local producers own products. Almost impression that the bulk goods including various fruits and nuts, are dumped at below US prices on export channels. During this year with the Russian war, and restriction on Russia there have been many bloggers noting price changes in their supermarkets. Among that it became apparent that in many cases the standard prices on vegetables, bread, meat and many other goods are 10, 20 or more below our typical prices, and even with the international sanctions, many imported goods in Russia remain cheaper than our normal prices. That is not to say that the prices are now not unaffordable at their wage levels, in fact for their wages those low prices are what is affordable, any rise puts much out of reach of many families. A loaf of bread at 40 cents there, compared to $4 for us, is actually equivalent cost to wages. It is just as mentioned above, a mistake to judge local prices purely on price comparisons to at home when travelling in foreign places.
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