Comments by "Helmuth Schultes" (@helmuthschultes9243) on "Pics from Australia that Blow My Mind..." video.

  1. In 1975, 1976, my WEEKLY grocery shopping was done with AU$21.00 maximum, and some weeks even under AU$1700. That is including some Rump Steaks 2x, bread, milk, various vegetables and tinned goods, say 6 cans, 2 to 3 Coca-cola 2L bottles, fruit apples, bananas oranges/mandarins, peaches plus misc chocolate, candy, cookies. Definitely a small shopping trolley full, say 4 to 5 paper supermarket bags full. These days even $120.00 hardly is achieved for a less full supermarket trolley. Not unusual to end up spending $160.00 or more for 1 week for 1 person.
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  2. Even you can not buy those drinks for 99cents you have taxes added normally when paying. Here the tax is added to the total cost of retail item before displayed price is shown. That tax however is based on total sale cost, composed of US whole sale cost PLUS shipping, PLUS distributor margin, PLUS transport/warehouse cost, PLUS retailer markup, making final shop selling price, which then depending on food/drink ckass will get at 10% GST (goods and services tax, also often referred as a VAT in many countries). But keep in mind the retailer, distributor, warehouse truck transport, all have to pay quite decent wages to workers, much higher than I suspect than USA. Those wages are also hit with a tax on wages paid by the businesses. Each markup is built on top of all lower step prices. Those percentages added multiply the cost very quickly. The original US price easily goes up 500% by the time the consumer pays for it. Even the US retail, no tax 99cents in Australian currency is already pushing up to $1.75 depending on exchange rate at the time, in recent years from low of US$0.55 to US$0.80 per AU$1.00 but much time in 0.65 to 0.70 range recently.
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