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Beer Is Cheaper In the US Than Anywhere Else In the World
derekmead writes "It's frustrating to drop $7 on a pint of beer in New York City, as it turns out, Americans have the cheapest beer on Earth. International bank UBS gathered data about the median wages and average retail prices of a 500mL (pint) beer in 150 countries. Those data were compiled to figure out how many minutes of work it takes the average worker of a country to earn enough money to buy a beer. It's funny that UBS analysts are spending time looking at beer, but considering that beer is beloved and nigh essential everywhere, it offers an interesting comparison between commodities and wages. For example, India tops the least, with the median worker having to work nearly an hour to afford a pint thanks to extremely low wages. In the U.S. however, where wages are relatively high and the cost of the average beer is quite low (thanks to those super-massive macrobreweries out there), it takes the median worker about five minutes of labor to afford a retail (store-, not bar-bought) pint. That's the shortest amount of time in the world, which means that, relatively speaking, beer is cheaper here than anywhere else." OK, UBS: Now please repeat the research with coffee.
...it's also worse than anywhere else in the world. No joke, people.
a pint != 500mL
a pint == 568mL
It's fucking close to water.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
It considers abominations like Bud Light to be beer.
I am officially gone from
The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
There is a big difference between a "40" of St Ides for 2 bucks, and a 5$ 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.
False, but you go on being ignorant.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
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
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.
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.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Vodka is a proof that Satan wants you not to remember being happy under the table. Sincerely Yours, Ben Franklin
Ezekiel 23:20
i agree with you, but our placement on this list is definitely due at least partly to our low-quality beers.
the funny thing is i can buy 9% craft beer for less than 2.5x the unit price of a big-brand pisswater (3.5%) beer, and it tastes 10x better as well, but that doesn't show up on this chart. i bet we'd also be close to the top for consumer purchasing power of high-quality beer (however that's defined), but not #1.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Not everyone likes distilled liquors such as Vodka. I have no stomach for it and do not enjoy it in the slightest.
Beer on the other hand I enjoy greatly. I stick to mainly micro and craft brews. I don't drink my beer to get drunk, I drink it because I enjoy the many many different flavor profiles possible with different types of beers and ingredients used. You sound like the typical youth of today, the only way to drink is in excess and the only reason to drink is to get drunk. Grow up and mature a bit, the world doesn't need more irresponsible alcoholics.
Vodka is better than beer.
I'm surprised to hear you say that VodkaGuy...I had you pegged as more of a wine-drinking-guy.
The basic sleazeware produced in a drunken fury by a bunch of UCBerkeley grad students was still the core of BIND. --PV
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's only one kind of person who thinks there is but a single use for alcohol.
An alcoholic.
Have fun with your "less" vomiting and hangovers. I'll stick with no puking and more pleasure, or perhaps choose alternatives that don't cause a blatant poisoning effect on my body.
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."
What were the results when you multiply by the average percentage of alcohol found in native beers?
No offense, but I love German beer and they have a high quality generally but.... the American beer scene has a lot more variety and a bigger willingness to be innovative. German beer, not so much.
We are in a better position now than anytime since Prohibition and probably before too.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
See Beer Advocate. American beer isn't all crappy lager in cans... we have an incredibly vibrant craft beer and homebrewing scene. I drink the former and make the latter myself, and these lips shall never meet swill! Mostly because it's cheaper to brew up a quick ten gallon batch of pale ale than to buy a vomit-inducing Budweiser. I guess it speaks to the power of marketing that folks outside of (or even inside!) the US think so lowly of our beer.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
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.
That would eliminate all wheat beers and a great many really good beers.
Many breweries claim to comply, but really don't. I have even seen such claims on wheat beer bottles. Since Reinheitsgebot clearly only allows Water, Barley and Hops, they cannot comply. Yeast was added later as it was unknown at the time.
Weird opinion - the US is near the tops in terms of food quality in the world, based on my experience. And has a far superior amount of diversity in its high quality fine dining options to most countries I've visited in Europe and the Americas. Try eating your way around New York, San Francisco (and throughout the bay area), Napa and Sonoma Counties in California, Charleston in South Carolina, or any of the foodie meccas around the US.
Don't even bother trying to drink any beer unless it is brewed to the Bavarian Purity Law standard of 1516. Lots of smaller breweries in the U.S. and Canada have beer that complies.
What a load of bullshit. The more people ignore this outdated law, the more interesting beers are created.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
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!
569ml is the proper unit of measurement for beer =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
You know, the kind that doesn't have to have a shitload of preservatives in it to make sure it's still "fresh" in 6 months.
In the UK, the Budweiser "Fresh Beer Tastes Better" adverts were banned by the Advertising Standards Agency, because "fresh" beer quite demonstrably does *not* taste better. Anyone who has made homebrew will tell you this...
Better yet, just keep your vodka in the freezer and drink it straight.
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).
Scotch (or even a decent bourbon) does the same thing and actually has some complexity. Vodka is too sterile and lifeless for me... it's good in drinks but I can't imagine drinking it straight.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
Mass produced beer has become increasingly bad all around the world. But also the beer culture has gone downhill. That is why people still buy bad beer. I haven't seen the chart of the top 10 most sold beers of the world but I wil hazard a guess I wouldn't drink it.
Let me explain how a beer garden in Germany(Munich area) works:
You go there on a sunny afternoon. Next to the place were they actually sell the beer you will find shelves of mugs. The 1 liter variety. You take a mug and go to a big basin filled with clear water were you rinse the mug. There will also be little brushes. Use them.
With your mug you go to the end of the queue. When it is your turn, tell them what you want. Don't be fancy, they only have two barrels. Say "Ein Helles, bitte". Pay in cash. No plastic. Don't rely on them having change. Find a nice bench under a chestnut tree and enjoy your beer.
And have a nice lunch.
You have brought lunch, have you?
If you go to a beer garden they only expect you to buy the beer there. You can bring your own food. Otherwise you might find everything to be a bit expensive.
Everything is trees and wood and wasps and rabbits frolicking on the green. There might even be fucking butterflies and flowers and shit.
Me and a couple of mates once went to the Hirschgarten on a Sunday morning and went home when they closed it. I drank 9 liters of beer, ate 2 chickens, a couple of those giant pretzels with a cartload of Obatzta(a Bavarian cheese specialty) and a Steckerlfisch(a mackerel). All in all I spent 200 Euros on food over the course of 12 hours and felt like I got my money's worth. Best Sunday ever. YMMV.
20 minutes into the future
Here on Slashdot, we should all be drinking rum since rum is what pirates drink and everyone knows nerds love pirates.
And ninjas. But sake is nasty, i'll stick to the rum myself.
No, because of the name clash between Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch) and Budweiser (Budvar), Anheuser-Busch is not allowed to sell a beer called "Budweiser" in Germany (and in some other european countries).
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.
I think that you're just bad at picking restaurants.
I've been to Australia (Victoria and the NT), and I've been to Argentina (Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata), Canada (Ontario, New Brunswick and PEI), and I'm from the US, where I've visited (NY, ME, NH, MA, RI, CT, NJ, PA, DE, MD, WV, VA, NC, SC, TN, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA, TX, NM, CO, UT, AZ, CA, NV, OR, WA, ID, MT, WY, NE, IA, IL, IN, and OH).
I've had a good meal in practically every city I've been to. Smaller towns are a bit more hit-or-miss. If it's a hamlet or smaller with just one restaurant, then maybe you'll get lucky.
However, as a rule of thumb, it is best to stay away from a place that has an expensive menu (such as a $25 burger), but is empty. Instead, look for the seedy-looking place that has a line coming round the back and where the waiters make you point at the menu because they can't understand you.
When Budvar registered the Budweiser brand in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1895, they were the first to do so. And Budvar is incorporated in Budweis (as it was called then), and thus they had a natural right to describe their beer as being "from Budweis" or "being Budweiser". Anheuser-Busch didn't intervene, though they had the Budweiser brand registered in the U.S. since 1860. No one even thought in 1895, that this could lead to any problems, Anheuser-Busch selling their beer in North America, and Budvar serving the European market. It wasn't until the 1920ies before Anheuser-Busch Budweiser even reached Europe.
Even today, it's still possible to have the same trademark for the same product class registered to different entities in different countries.