Slashdot Mirror
Beer Is Cheaper In the US Than Anywhere Else In the World
derekmead writes "It's frustrating to drop $7 on a pint of beer in New York City, as it turns out, Americans have the cheapest beer on Earth. International bank UBS gathered data about the median wages and average retail prices of a 500mL (pint) beer in 150 countries. Those data were compiled to figure out how many minutes of work it takes the average worker of a country to earn enough money to buy a beer. It's funny that UBS analysts are spending time looking at beer, but considering that beer is beloved and nigh essential everywhere, it offers an interesting comparison between commodities and wages. For example, India tops the least, with the median worker having to work nearly an hour to afford a pint thanks to extremely low wages. In the U.S. however, where wages are relatively high and the cost of the average beer is quite low (thanks to those super-massive macrobreweries out there), it takes the median worker about five minutes of labor to afford a retail (store-, not bar-bought) pint. That's the shortest amount of time in the world, which means that, relatively speaking, beer is cheaper here than anywhere else." OK, UBS: Now please repeat the research with coffee.
Vodka is better than beer. It gives a nice warm kick and you don't need to go piss all the time. Many of the Russian vodkas all so have a nice little taste to them.
Besides, why do they compare the price of a pint? Where I live and travel, pint is always more expensive than 0,33l or 0,66l glass beer bottles. I don't know how it's in the US, but maybe it's that and they overlooked the fact?
...it's also worse than anywhere else in the world. No joke, people.
The quality of beer in the US is lower than anywhere else in the world.
a pint != 500mL
a pint == 568mL
How much time do I have to spend messing around on the Internet at work to be able to buy a decent microbrew at lunch?
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
It's fucking close to water.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
It considers abominations like Bud Light to be beer.
I am officially gone from
Most of the swill served in the US would not qualify as beer elsewhere in the world.
That hardly comes as a surprise given most "beer" sold in the US actually is cleverly disguised water.
Does that mean "Free as in beer" means less or more in the US than it does elsewhere in the world?
The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
Re: OK, UBS: Now please repeat the research with coffee.
I'd rather see it for bacon.
There is a big difference between a "40" of St Ides for 2 bucks, and a 5$ to 7$ pint of "micro-brew".
St. Louis produces millions of gallons of piss water alternatively known as "beer", but this doesn't mean that the rest of the world drinks this stuff and would classify it as "beer".
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Can anyone find a link to the study, rather than just the chart being tossed around? In particular, I wonder about countries not shown...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
'Nuff said.
If I were to sell a house for 500k in San Francisco, it might be called cheap, where if were to try to sell the same house in BFN, California, it would be laughably overpriced... but they're still both 500k. You can't say one is "cheaper" than the other. This might be an interesting fact about the US that was determined, but the fact is definitely -not-, "beer is cheaper in the US than anywhere else in the world".
Also that first sentence was interesting, as it turns out, it is as a great example of something we call a "runon sentence", a remarkably unreadable one.
That's all this proves.
that's the takeaway here.
I'll save you the time: "American beer sucks, har har har".
Really? You *all* think you're clever for saying that?
Anyway -- it's not even true. That is, it's a meaningless statement. America has an enormous range of native beers, of every style, strength, and flavor. It's true that our tastes run toward weaker beers, but it's just stupid to say popular = "American".
Tom Geller
They have been doing something similar using the price to Big Macs in various countries to analyze exchange rates: http://www.economist.com/search/apachesolr_search/big%20mac%20index
I guess economists do have a sense of humor . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Natty Light is cheaper than Guinness. More at 11.
Its true that the most popular American beers are low quality. But damn, if they aren't cheap. Compared to my usual favorites they taste like lightly flavored soda. (Hense the nickname "Barley Pop") Sip a Budweiser after a good IPA and you'll swear you just took a drink of Mt. Dew. (Not even remotely kidding. Try it)
Even then, there are some very reasonably priced good quality (And somewhat mass produced) brews here and I've got a feeling we'd still be near the top of the list. Even if you like "American" beer (Which is called American style pilsner) you can pick up brews made with high quality ingredients that taste much better. (Budweiser tastes like plastic to me)
But, I strongly suspect that there is a correlation between the availability of inexpensive mood altering substances, like alcohol, and the amount of bullshit that the average working person will be willing to endure.
Look at the prohibition era in the US; crime and criminality were rampant, and so was outright civil disobedience. Activism by juries in courtrooms were at stellar highs.
Now, we have "the cheapest beer in the world" (pun intended), and our citizenry is reluctant to raise a finger against even clearly horrendous civil liberty violations, like the recent "indefinate detainment" legislation.
I would like to see research comparing effective availability of alcohol and other drugs with the rates of political activism.
Mind you, its just a hunch.
The day the US will give lessons on how to make decent beer is the day they'll be able to make decent coffee.
In other words, not a chance in hell.
Beer sales in the U.S. are $100 billion per year. It's the sort of thing financial people take notice of.
It's a good thing beer is cheap. I need the money to pay for my iPhone.
Yeah, well, too bad US beer sucks raw eggs through a very thin straw.
They should have compared how long people have to work for a decent beer (in which case I would expect some European country to win, possibly Germany, the UK or Ireland).
Yes it's the cheapest for "near frozen gnat's piss" values of "beer".
Captcha is "standard", yeah, the "standard" is "not worth drinking".
in bulgaria you can get 3 litres of beer for about 2 USD
But you'll go to prison for an awfully long time if you possess this dried flower, leaves from that plant, this fungus or that cactus.
Of course only one of these will put you in that lovely 'don't give a fuck' state you need to get over the fact that you just finished a 70 hour work week at your two jobs and are still only scrimping by.
There's one purpose for alcohol, and Vodka tends to accomplish that faster and with less vomiting and hangovers. So I'll raise my glass, which is cheaper here than anywhere else, and toast Vodka's awesomeness.
There are at least three practical purposes. Add disinfectant to the list, also add fuel / fire starter when the proof gets above (80?). Obviously these are not the intended purposes but Vodka has been used in these ways when the circumstances warranted.
The following explanation has been attempted in many armies over many years:
"Sir, that is not a still. That is an apparatus creating field expedient disinfectant for the doctors/medics/corpsmen, sir."
Completely agree. The US has some of the best and worst beer in the world. I think what happens is that most places don't export there worst so imported beer always tastes better. With regards to the absolute worst, I have heard china makes really putrid beer with rice in the recipe, but have never been able to buy it.
Living in Colorado where the food stinks BUT.... ;)
BUT there are many micro breweries that have good and tasting beers.
So it is even
The question is not can you get swill cheaper in the States, but what does good real beer cost in each nation.
Strangely, the data from UK and Ireland seem to be missing. Anyway, normal Czech beer on average costs something like $0.60-$0.70, not $1.25 per 1/2 litre.
What were the results when you multiply by the average percentage of alcohol found in native beers?
According to the article the prices listed are for a beer bought via retail chanel.
I live in Mexico and I'm pretty sure that beer here is much more cheaper than the price listed in the study.
Not the best beer, of course, but you can get 700ml (more than a pint) of Corona beer for less than a dollar at many retailers.
American beer is only cheap compared to American wages. And that's only because American wages are high, it has nothing to do with beer.
enjoying an Orval (2.5€ btw) while typing this message. Do you guys really pay more than $5 for beer?
Of course it's cheaper. I drink Pabst from time to time and it is acceptable, especially for the price. But in most other countries people would take exception to tasting corn in their beer.
... and Vodka tends to accomplish that faster and with less vomiting and hangovers ...
To be honest the beer in Munich seems to do so as well compared to what I was used to in college in the US.
mfw the bartender tried to play it off by telling me "It costs more because it's a draft."
About half the cost of beer is taxes. And then a sales tax is applied to that price usually. So we tax tax. So the cost of beer minus taxes is incredibly reasonable.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
ah yes, because not all potential inclusions meet the arbitrary standard to define the concept, the whole idea is void.
It's stupid to think your pedantry is anything but meaningless rhetoric.
I suppose if we wanted to cater to you, we'd say something like "The common concept of the Watered-down Flavorless American beer" to be specific, but you know what?
The rest of us aren't shit for brains like you.
Inferior US pint is 473ml and Proper Sized UK pint is 568ml.
Beer isn't a standard thing. Not even close.
And that is why economists prefer the McDonalds Big Mac for currency comparisons. :-)
Seriously, economists do have a Big Mac Index.
It's not a joke idiot.
The average price is brought down by the preponderance of cheaply made, cheaply priced beers.
But Standard American Lager is a recognized type of Beer, like IPA or Pilsner Although not the only type of beer produced in the US (and one I prefer not to drink), it is the style most commonly associated with US beer. Do all American beers suck? Defintally not. Does the beer type closely associated with the US, bears the name America, and the top 3 brands, BudLite, Budwiser, and CoorLite, which account for 50.1% of the US market, suck? Depends on your taste.
But like it or not, and I am guessing you do not, this popular(in the US) style of beer is what is meant by American beer.
BJCP Standards for judging American Standard Lagers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_lager
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_in_the_United_States#Economy
It's all about what you consider to be beer.
In Germany it's ingredients are mandated by law, a very simple requirement the large US brewers could never meet for the present price.
But hey, when it in a free market makes the majority of drinkers happy, what's there to complain?
B.t.w, I'd rather have a Italian, Spanish, Chilean, South African or Australian wine, hmm, let's have a look in the cellar :)
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Well said.
I don't know where they got their figures for beer prices from. They say .5 l of beer in Germany is $ 1.9. That's a very high price for beer at convenience stores, maybe, but high quality beers go for at most € 0.7 ($ 0.9) around here, in supermarkets. There are brands going for as low as 23 Eurocents, some cans below even that. What do they mean by $ 1.9 retail?
There is no sig.
But is there a reason we should care?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The articles are low in details, but calculating taxation might change table.
As someone with a gluten allergy, Budweiser is my beer of choice, since it's made from rice and not wheat/barley. I know there are other alternatives (Red Bridge, a couple of imports as well) but for the price, they can't beat Budweiser.
I never have to go to a bar and wonder if they can cater to my odd allergy, since almost every bar in the US sells Bud, or Bud Lite. Now, most Bud drinkers don't give a hoot about what it is made out of, but that is something to consider.
Wait a moment...
They assume $1.90 as the average price for 500ml retail beer in Germany? Where did they get that number?
The majority of beers sell for less 1 Euro per 500ml bottle and if you go for discount store brands (which are NOT all bad!), you can get good beer for 40 Cents or less for a 500ml bottle. So how does that come out to $1.90?
I've been living in Denmark for quite some time, and I can tell you - no one beats the Danes when it comes to cheap shitty beer.
You can purchase a SUPER strong 8% beer in Denmark (Called Harboe) for half a dollar, 33cl.
And occasionally around Christmas, you can purchase a so called Christmas beer for 1 DKK (4-5 STRONG beers on ONE dollar), now tell me where in the world you can beat that.
I've been in USA a few months ago, your beer is tasty, but not super cheap. Drinking at the local bar in a SMALL town in Northern America set me back 8 USD per 50cl glass of beer, not exactly whoppingly cheap, it actually cost the same as drinking beer out in Copenhagen (which, is a relatively big city).
I bought a few brewskis at the gas-station near the motel I lived in the US, cost me 2-3 USD per bottle, not expensive, but still WAY more than even a luxury beer in Denmark.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Many beers use rice in their recipe. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budweiser_(Anheuser-Busch) : It is made with up to 30% rice in addition to hops and barley malt
Do understand that this is not the only brewery doing this. Many of the large breweries do this. Stella Artois also does this. Also many brewers don't, but then in Belgium we use cherries in the beer making process for some.
When people talk about beer, many think of beer only being allowed to be brewed according to the Reinheitsgebot which is not true. Others just think of pilsner.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
See also: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/06/purchasing-power-parity
When I was in Ethiopia beer was 32cents a bottle. It was pretty good microbrew stuff to. Sadly the average wage in their capital city was something like $7/month.
Figure the one time set up cost for a home brew: ~250 bucks.
Hops kit required: ~50bucks
Result: 5 gallons of GOLD. As it's difficult to guess the breakdown on the startup costs per batch, let's ignore it for a moment and focus on simply the cost of the materials to make a batch. At 10bucks/gallon for whatever quality you want, that's pretty damn spiffy ( of course, I'm ignoring labor too. Because it's a labor of LOVE ).
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Its f*ing close to water!
And lower quality/alcohol level
But then, TFS talks about beer in general, i. e., average beer you can get without any hassle (you might call it popular). The standard (US) American beer is esthetically weak compared to a standard, say, German beer. We (I'm Gerrman) have pissy beers, too, and even some quite popular ones are awful, but the German beer in general, with dozens of good big breweries (and even more great smaller ones), is very good. The Reinheitsgebot contributes to the tastiness, of course, but I've also enjoyed some foreign beers which were not brewed according to those regulations.
Not to mention the great beers of our neighbors (especially Czechia) and weizen, which does obviously not comply with the Reinheitsgebot, despite of its taste ... but weizen is definitely different than pils, therefore, we should not include it in an international beer discussion.
Cheers.
PS: The doubled R in my nationality was a typo initially, but I didn't fix it because some may like it. ;)
a pussy?
The pussy only tastes like piss for the first ten seconds.
Only if you drink Bud/Miller/Coors Light
I would argue that West Coast craft brews are the finest in the world
Especially the IPAs
You're an ignorant cunt if you disagree. Fuck off, cunts.
I suspect that the percentage of beer sold in the US that belongs to the sucky variety vindicates the joke.
Anyone can tell you that if you cross the border to Mexico for some college trip thing or something like people always do, the drinks are under half the price. They obviously must have adjusted the beer price for average gross income of the country or something because Mexico has us beat. They don't just mark it down to attract customers from the US, it seriously is cheaper everywhere, even southern Mexico.
I wonder if it's circular logic, that american beer sucks because american beer sucks and everyone says so. Or is some type of hipster sentiment "You like American beer? Bah! You don't know beer. My favorite beer? You've probably never heard of it, so I won't bother mentioning it."
"Give my people plenty of beer, good beer and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among them" - Queen Victoria
What's the difference of having sex in a kano and a budweiser.
It's both fucking close to water.
Even 20 years ago I starved my self so I could hang out at the pub and drink beer.
Now, if I want bottled craft beer $2 is on the cheap side. But for fresh beer made in a big copper tank, I'll gladly pay two bucks a pint and enjoy its cheapness.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
This is really measuring the wealth of countries, not the cheapness of beer since it measures the number of minutes worked to pay for a beer. Even the major European economies have per capita GDP's 20%-30% lower than the US when measure via PPP (Purchasing power parity).
The beer may be cheaper than the rest of the world on average.
The rest of the world wouldn't call what we drink beer.
... at least the big-name stuff is. The microbrew industry has normal strength beer. Canadians enjoy 5-6.5% in large-volume beer, and microbrews go up to 10% (@ Unibroue)... maybe higher. Tequilla, however, is far cheaper in (many parts of) the US than in Canada. No idea why. You also get Chimayo, which we don't >:(
If putting hops in it makes it better it was probably piss also. In fact why don't you just drink distilled water?
the real conversion WTF is that they used US dollars as the common comparison factor. the chart should show the cost of beers in hours need to work needed to buy one. the way that this data is presented does not allow for an apples to apples comparison whatsoever
Half liter of beer > USD$ 20 in Brazil?
Just checked it... a little more than one dollar (two quarter of a liter bottles).
Wait, did these guys drink beer while researching?
Then I moved here and discovered that there's more to American beer than Coors Light and Budweiser (the latter now only American insofar as you consider the US-based arm of a Belgian company to be American.)
The truth is that there are dozens of smaller breweries and hundreds of microbreweries, none of which have superbowl-size advertising budgets, but offer plenty of world class American beer. But, to the extent that your primary lens on American culture is nationally syndicated television (as mine was), you'll continue to be out of touch with reality.
Have them see how may hours do people have to work to afford different types of accommodation in the world. Or food for that matter. That should be really interesting.
I have never been to a place in the US where beer is as cheap as it is in Germany. I am not saying that the cheap stuff is the best quality, but their cheap beer is better than the average US beer, by far.
An alcohol based culture is a degenerate culture, but then others who say we get the dictators required to maintain the borders and the population of the nation. The measure of the success of which can be gauged by the the amount of alcohol that the population must consume to bare living under that yolk.
I know this "america is cheapest" is worked out based on wages, blah blah blah.
but Italy would be way up there on actually being cheapest.
1L of Peroni Nastro Azzurro was €1.49 when I went to Italy 2 years ago.... cheaper then bottled water!
and you know.... actually tastes like beer too....
I didn't know 1 euro converts to $2.48 these days.
Because in the Netherlands (fourth cheapest on the chart) the retail price, including VAT and alcohol taxes at one of the more expensive supermarkets of 500ml premium beer (Grolsch in this instance; also one of the more expensive 'normal' beers) is about € 1. That should be somewhere around $1.20-1.30... No way beer is on average twice that amount for half a liter!
Link to webshop of supermarket: http://webwinkel.ah.nl/process?search_parameter=grolsh&catacodestyle=AH&action=albert_noscript.modules.build
Minimum wage before state insurances and income tax in the Netherlands for everyone 23 and older is €1,456.20 on basis of a 40 hours week. This is about €1,230 after taxes.
http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/minimumloon/vraag-en-antwoord/hoe-hoog-is-het-minimumloon.html
40 hours = 2400 minutes. 1,230/2400 = 51.25 €cents / minute. Which would make a Dutch person on minimum wage work 1 minute and 57 seconds for his beer.
Where nerds pretend to be beer elitists.
American Microbrew is bloody gorgeous. I say that as a Brit (known for our ales) who frequents the states fairly frequently. But the thing is, it's in the frickin name! Microbrew. Not a lot of it is made, lots of small places make small amounts which add up to a reasonable amount across the country, but pales in comparison to the swill churned out by the rest. We have a similar problem over here, lots of nice ales everywhere, but the plebs are drinking the BUL lager. What can ya do?
Whereas Canada (at least Alberta) is probably the most EXPENSIVE place on earth for beer.
Are UBS trying to coin it's own rival to the McDonald's Index as promoted by The Economist?
Don't you mean "You can buy the cheapest pint of beer froth in the USA"?
Seriously, dudes, as a Brit, I like a decent head on a pint, but
a) there should be SOME beer underneath it!
b) It ought to last most of the way down the glass.
At least we have our priorities straight.
Here is one economic achievement that people of any political persuasion can applaud. Nobody can say the U.S. economy is a complete dud when its citizens have the most beer buying power in the world!
Except that none of these good native beers that you speak of would be cheap enough to classify as cheapest in the world.
American beer classifies as cheapest in the world because a large portion of your population are will to actually purchase the incredibly cheap, watered down crap that many of your big breweries do produce.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Clearly the cheapest beer in the world then would be moonshine that had a couple drops of beer accidentally spilled into it. Price? About five USD for a pint of 98-100% grain alcohol.
Do you crazy Americans have a lovely range of ciders at all? I only ask as when I see Americans talk of alcohol, cider doesn't ever seem to get a mention, it's always about the beer and how manly it is to drink beer and how patriotic you feel while drinking the manly American beer.
This is love-in-a-canoe coffee!
How's that?
It's fucking close to water.
Say the american beer sucks, and they *like* to drink german and austrian beer. Personally i don't drink any. But hey keep thinking your cheap beer is betetr than the rest of the world if you prefer.
On A trip to the U.S. a few years ago, I was suprised to find a local New Zealand Beer (Steinlager) for sale in the supermarket a few dollars cheaper than I could buy it here.
. .
"in the world"
Tons of Beer snobs. I wasn't disappointed. The level of US bashing was higher than expected. Then again, US bashing is the new cool thing to do on the internet. It seems to be how you prove you're legit now.
Do not try and pass off that chilled gnat's piss as beer, because it is not.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
"Give my people plenty of beer, good beer and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among them" - Queen Victoria
The inexpensive American "beer" that is used in this calculation uses maize and rice instead of barley as the main ingredient, grasses that happen to be heavily subsidised here and hardly used to make beer anywhere else. If you want to drink beer that is made of the same base ingredients as the real stuff then it will cost about 2x as much in the supermarket here as it does at a bar in Amsterdam. There are a lot of breweries in the US that make some really good beer, especially ones founded in the last two decades, but that stuff ain't cheap, at least not yet.
"American" lager (not the same as "made in the USA" lager) is a very light style of lager with adjuncts like corn and rice. Save the barley and hops, use lots of government subsidized cheap corn and you can make cheap beer. Check out Trader Joe's "Name Tag" lager - 6-pack/$2.99. http://www.traderjoes.com/fearless-flyer/article.asp?article_id=165 Website says "all-malt beer, with no rice, no corn – no fillers of any kind", but it reeks of corn.
In Germany I can get 1 litter of Hofbrau or Lowenbrau for 2-3 Euro. I come back to the states, and not only is Lowenbrau NOT HERE IN THE STATES, But Hofbrau is about $3.50 per 11.2oz. Sure, I can get piss water, aka miller, bud, icehouse, corona, etc. for a dollar and change for a 12oz, but this is PISS! Sam adams is still not as good as Hofbrau, and it costs more!
Where the F*CK are these MORONS at the economist getting their info from?? Beer in the states is EXPENSIVE!
Hell, I just ordered 48 bottles of Hofbrau Okt. fest bier for $160 today. That's what... $3.33 a fing beer! At least I was able to find some too, took 6 months of searching.
but it's just stupid to say popular = "American".
Fine!! But... if one would be to say "American" = unpopular, would it be correct then?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
- finding cheapest beer doesnt mean you can compare average wages only, you have to subtract mandatory spendings (at least). After then you can compare the result diveded by average retail beer price. :-)
- average quality of retail beer is substantially better in most Europe than in US, especially in Czech Republic, Germany, Belgium and so on. I would say beer from Czech Republic priced $0.25 will be equal quality like a beer priced $1 in US (basically both will be a shit).
- average retail price of beer in Czech Republic is $0.5 - $0.7, it is no way $1.25 (maybe in very fine restaurant, pls dont compare that few hotels in centre of Prague, where you will pay $5 or more).
- I am pretty sure that in Czech Republic is beer cheeper than in US, and what is more important, LOT better. Thats why we drink most beer per capita in the world (by high margin)
Beer Is Crapper In the US Than Anywhere Else In the World
There, fixed that for ya.
Really, its just not that good.
Now I understand the true meaning of the song "God Bless America"
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
I'm surprised that after several perusals I still fail to see any scandinavian countries on here.. considering the punitive taxes on alcohol and the relatively high wages, they'd make an interesting comparison, adn I'm surprised anyone would draw up such a chart without them. In Norway, for instance, the cheapest beer in the store is going to be about USD 3.50 per 500ml. I've been unable, in the course of my exhaustive 45 seconds of research, to find a figure for the median wage in Norway, but I'd be surprised if it doesn't score very high on the hours-of-labour/pint of beer chart.
an important point is that the very best beer in the world, at any given time, is the cold one in my hand.
I would ponder it.
This proves nothing but the fact that the bottom line is lower in the US than in most other developed countries. Yes, the cheapest beer is cheaper than anything you can get in other places, but it's also undrinkably crappy. If you want anything close in quality to what you'll get in those other countries, you'll pay more, not less. And it's the same with all other food & beverages. Before I came to the US, I was happy to learn from statistics that the cost of living is way lower than in my home country in Europe. After I arrived, I was dismayed to learn that this is only true if you eat intolerably bad stuff. After trying it for 2 months and failing to get my digestive system to adapt, I went back to my old standards of quality, and now I spend about twice as much money on food and drinks than in my home country.
(posting anonymously to avoid undoing moderation)
we don't mean less expensive.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Yes there is good American beer. But I disagree with the funny statistics:
the three runner ups were Czech Republic, Germany, and the Netherlands. I don't know about income to beer price in the Czech Republic. But at least in the Netherlands and Germany you can buy a half way decent beer for about the price of cheap beer in the US. And that's what counts for me when I look for a decent beer, not the average beer price
READ the submission before posting. If it doesn't make sense, add/remove/modify words until it does, ok?
The first sentence probably needs to start with the word "While."
India tops the LIST.
Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.
The prices between 'cheap' and 'craft microbrew' aren't that large. Around here even the cheap stuff averages out to more than $1/can for a 12-pack, while many of the craft microbrews are only $8 for a six-pack. The difference between $1.10 and $1.33 is not that huge.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
I am in India and I know it costs Rs.180~ (less than 3 US dollars) for a pint of either Carlsberg or a Heineken. It takes us longer to get a cold one because we have some of the lowest wages in the world.
That doesn't make the beer cheap, but it does say the something about our "job creators"
their beer is mostly water :D
Perhaps the reason that they're so cheap is that the US is serving short measure?
... and today's pet project has
Yaaaaaaaayyyyyyy!!!!!
We're number one in something!
Hall hail Belgium beer! No doubt, the best beer in the world!
Not so the Ale across the room/house/town/ocean is always better than the yellow lager in hand. Besides good beer does not need to be ice cold.
When I was in Estonia about 14 years ago, you could buy 3 beers, recycle the 3 bottles and have enough to buy a 4th.
here in germany you can get a premium brand beer, like Beck's or Jever or similar for about 1,20€ at the gas-station at 4:00am ... thats about 1,55$ US ...
at every supermarket u can get a low-price-segment-brand of large well-known breweries for as low as 29 €-cent thats about 2,5 litre for the price the study gives.
So an unemployed person who recieves around 700€ to 800€ a month (up to 400€ for housing/rent ~360 € in cash) this means, assuming 160 hours of "work" per month, it's 15 beers per hour, or 4minutes of "work" per beer... and thats for the unemployed / social security users.
Acutally its quite difficult to find a beer with prices 1,90 € a bottle in a german retail-store. Öttinger (most drunk beer brand in germany) sells at 6,99 € a box (20x0,5 litres) or 0,34€ a bottle, while higher class brands seldom exceed 12 € a box or 0,60 €... hell, to attract poeple in the store discounters sometimes sell for 3,77€ a box, again (20x0,5), or 0,19€ a bottle see
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/a-671651.html (german version) the article states this causes mineral water to be actually more expensive than beer.
Wouldn't be surprised if someone mixed up a few numbers there at UBS... they are swiss, they mix up the numbers all the time, especially in UBS statements concerning germans doing some little tax-evasion/fraud in switzerland :-)
So... cheers
America being the cheapest place to get beer in my experience is because the beer is...well...cheap. I hated beer when I was in the USA. After I tried beer from England, Ireland, Germany, France and especially Belgium, it occurred to me that I hated American beer because it was bad (and cheap) beer. I also wonder if this is contributing to Americans being so overweight compared to the rest of the world...hmm....
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Seriously, where the hell is this coming from? I live in Toronto and I don't pay $7 for a pint. I drink Keith's & Sleeman's, maybe the occasional Labatt's, and I'm spending anywhere from $4-$6.50 or so depending on whether that particular beer is on special or not, like "Keith's Night" or whatever.
So the US has the cheapest beer (or "beer"), but the most expensive and slowest Internet. (http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/09/25/2126238/why-american-internet-service-is-slow-and-expensive). Hmmm.
In America, it is illegal to call anything beer that has a reasonable percentage of alcohol. Malt Liquor usually means that its fully fermented, though without anything in the way of quality or potability. Ales, stouts, lagers, &c. might be good enough to drink, if from the right brewer. I don't know what they have locally, but Mexico and Canada only seem to send us their own versions of tastelessness. (Except for the Guinness, although It seems like it tasted better when it came from Dublin.) The Japanese and the Germans manage to bottle up some darn good lagers and ship them here, I think that Budweiser could match them if they put taste ahead of profit, ROTFL.
I think its apples to oranges to compare foreign beers to ours, when our recipes rank price ahead of quality.
YMMV, go ahead and drink it if you can.
I got some Stone Ruination Ale and Black Diamond Rampage at Costco yesterday, not much cheaper than at a regular store, but they are good at moving inventory out before it gets stale, which is absolutely critical for beer. BTW, try Drake's I.P.A., if you can get it, lotsa hops and they seem to ship smaller, fresher, batches than most anyone else, I think they learned it from the coffee-roasting-for-costco gig that the former owners of the brewery had.
Beer is better everywhere else as well, only fair it cost a little more.
For starters, no one thinks you're cool just just because you drink coffee. When you proclaim hipster stuff like "I can't function without coffee, blah blah blah", all that happens is people look at you and wonder things like "what are you, 12?" So get of this thing that you thinks makes you as cool as James Dean just because you imbibe a liquid that is meant to be taken at DESSERT, because it doesn't. It is coffee, for heavens sake. Not exactly the sign of macho.
In America, it is illegal to call anything beer that has a reasonable percentage of alcohol.
This line says it all, and the bolded out part indeed. "reasonable" is a word that is of perspective alone. If you're going to attempt to make fun of something, at least use amounts, instead of personal perspectives.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
hey.. hey .. hey *taps shoulder, laughing* hey.. hey..
why is an american beer like making sex stuff in a canoe? it's fucking close to water! haha
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
International bank UBS gathered data about the median wages and average retail prices of a 500mL (pint) beer in 150 countries mua ban xe oto
Isn't that a good thing we like to call "competition"?
Economists have been using the big mac index for years - beer is no different