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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 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
False, but you go on being ignorant.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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
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
...it's also worse than anywhere else in the world. No joke, people.
Well, there's BEER, as in Bud, Coors and various other mega brews, who use who knows what (Bud uses rice) in adjuncts, most of the money going into marketing is denied in going into product.
Then there are craft brewers who make Ales, Stouts, Porters, Lagers and so on with the finest barley, hops and water they can muster. You'll see them competing in the categories which really matter at the GABF Many of the small brewers can hold more than a candle to their European counterparts, who are under threat these days from cheap lagers from France (some people just want to get under the table and don't care how.) At least in Germany you are still guaranteed fair ales for your money, thanks to the Reinheitsgebot. A real pity the USA didn't take something like that onto the Constitution.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
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.
Absolutely wrong. There is an incredible variety of small breweries that make great beer and you can find many of them even at your average grocery store. Go to a specialty liqueur store and you can multiply that variety by 10 or more.
Before 1979 it was illegal to make beer in small batches (no joke) and this is where American beer got the bad reputation because only a handful of big companies were able to make beer (Bud, Coors, Miller....) and thanks to the government obtained control of the market and brought the quality way down. Since that was repealed there was an explosion of home brewing which then expanded into small business and microbreweries so that today there are over 1,400 breweries in the US making every possible type and flavor of beer imaginable.
I would actually go so far as to say that the American beer is now the best in the world as evidenced by the international competitions where the US beers dominate.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Better yet, just keep your vodka in the freezer and drink it straight.
Made beer in a bucket in a pit under our tent in Desert Storm. Only way to get temps down to reasonable levels. Wasn't bad (dark ale) but no easy way to filter it. And yeah, was a medical unit (Air Med-Evac).
I drank what? -- Socrates
Correction, there are over 2,000 micro and craft breweries in the US today and we're adding them at a bit over 200 net new breweries per year. That's 50% more than Germany and even on a per-capita basis we're projected to pass them by the end of the decade. It really is a good time to be a beer lover in America =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
As a european brewer, who has worked for the two largest breweries in my country, two of the smallest and who currently works with planning and installing two new microbreweries, I don't agree. If someone would ask me what's the most difficult beer to brew, I would say Budweiser (if I'm allowed to exclude lambics). Because making a beer that tastes virtually nothing isn't an easy thing to do. And to have every single bottle taste the same is even harder. American breweries have contributed ALOT to the quality aspect of the brewing industry. I don't drink beer with so little taste myself, but I appreciate the quality aspect of it.
Not really. We were set up about 10 miles south of Kuwait border, maybe 25 miles inland. This area wasn't movie desert; was just a field of dirt. There was a pile of dead goats nearby where the local Bedouin had slaughtered their herd before heading south when the shooting started. A unit of the 2nd Marine Division was in front of us and there was a Navy hospital set up south of us. Air Med-Evac worked with the Marine medics to treat and stabilize the wounded and fly them out on a C130 to hospital stations further back.
I'd seen Catch 22 and MASH and knew how war was supposed to work. I brought along beer making supplies and a Hawaiian shirt. My helmet cover had "Ours is not to reason why..." on it.
Our location in Saudi was really weird looking; smoke from the oil fires created a low ceiling of black smelly clouds that the sun couldn't get through and with the flat ground of the desert, it felt like being a bug trapped between two flat surfaces. If you've ever seen a winter in central North Dakota, you'll know what I mean. From our location we could see the big air-fuel bombs they were dropping on the Iraqi positions; you'd look north and see the dull red-orange glow of fires and then you'd see a small dot of light drop down from the clouds before going back up. Then there'd be a large flash of bright light and maybe 30 seconds later, the ground would rumble and shake. The scale of it all was almost overwhelming. For myself, it appeared to be a battle between the old gods and giants or maybe the attack on Minus Tirith in LotR. It also reminded me of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 and the firebombing of Dresden; something so overwhelming in szie it was... there's a word that I can't think of, where something isnt beautiful but still grabs your eyes and you can't look away. That's what I was seeing; something so far beyond human capability or scale yet here we were, shaking the earth and setting the sky on fire.
Wasn't until years later that I found out Tolkien had been in WWI and experienced artillery bombardments and Vonnegut had been in Dresdan.
After the bombing stopped, we moved north and started taking prisoners and trying to patch them up. Our 30 man unit had almost 5,000 Iraqis to care for. They were mostly farmers and such, sent to the front lines with barbed wire and landlines in front and behind them, with the Republican Guard shooting any that tried to leave. Until the bombing started. They got theirs on the road north.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Wow, the US can field 2651 individual beers? That is impressive. Thank you for the information, but I'm not sure it is saying what you want it to.
And you think Europe including places like germany can only field a couple hundred?
The point is, yes, of course the USA can produce some truly great beer. But there "world ranking" based on a contest held in San Diego where anyone foreign had to jump through some FDA hoops just to be allowed in, where 2/3rds of entrants were all american... where most countries didn't even field enough varieties to cover the categories, where the US fielded 10x more beers than other top beer nations, and up to 1000x more varieties than smal countries... the USA was almost BOUND to dominate the rankings unless it showed up with nothing but rank swill.
If america fields 2500 of its best, and germany fields 250 of its best... well... odds are pretty good that if both America and Germany are at the top of their games, America is going to dominate; purely on statistics... hell even if half the american entrants are garbage they'll still be holding a huge edge.