Quote:
Originally Posted by DemolitionRed
It is John Hopkins he works at, I just couldn’t remember the name (I know its famous in America!)
When the pound is stable, our minimum wage is twice that of yours but like you say, things are more expensive, especially real estate. Rents in London are upwards of a £thousand a month and that’s in the poorer boroughs. You can treble that for the same accommodation in a more upmarket area. Even two salaries on a minimum wage is going to struggle and will almost certainly not qualify for a mortgage.
Food is still relatively cheap here, at least compared to some other European countries but public transport is very expensive and so is parking if you happen to drive.
We think of our medical treatment as free, though we do pay for it through a small portion of our salaries. Prescriptions are £8.40 no matter what the medication and one prescription usually gives you a months supply. People with long term medical issues like diabetes are exempt from paying for prescriptions and if you are unemployed and claiming benefits, over 60 or under 16 (18 if you are still in full time education) you don’t pay for your prescriptions.
What we save in medical costs, you save in affordable mortgages or rent.
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2 x min wage will get you a small mortgage here "oop north" but usually only enough for a flat or small 2 bed house and not in the best areas. There are places near me where you could still get a 3-bed semi for £45k (needing a bit of work) but... frankly... not in areas where you would want to raise a child unless you want them to either be stabbed or become an addict.
Medical treatment I would say is essentially free, to be honest. It's paid for through our taxes but do you think for a second we will see a drop in income tax when they finally kill off the NHS? No. We'll be paying private insurance and NOT paying any less tax so for now, for all intents, it is basically free.
All prescriptions are free in Scotland for everyone, although I personally feel that this is a mistake, there are HUGE amounts of waste (people picking up a doctor's prescription "just incase" even though they don't need it, but it's free anyway, and it then just sits in a bathroom cabinet forever.)
Also you didn't mention the huge differences in fuel costs between the UK and the US! The US is something like $2.30 a gallon on average currently... the UK is currently paying $5.85 a gallon and that's at the current "extremely worrying lol" exchange rates with the weakening pound. It's "traditionally" more like $7+ a gallon.
Then again, maybe that starts to even out when you consider that everything here is all jammed together, so we tend not to be regularly driving quite as long distances as people in the US...
No real point to this post btw, just random thoughts I was having while reading yours
