this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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I had this exact conversation several times with Americans while travelling for work in the USA.
Oil prices are up around the world and USA gas prices are actually really cheap compared to everywhere else.
In fact everything is pretty cheap compared to Europe and Australia.
But all they do is whinge and moan and blame Biden.
They have no friggen idea there's a whole wide world out there.
To be fair, you are probably not taking into account all the things Americans have to spend money on that are government services elsewhere. Healthcare alone takes a large chunk of American income. By the time people are spending money on groceries, there is often little or no money left.
I take your point but this was not the case for these people I was talking to. I pay their salaries and health insurance and they still take home 6 figures a year after all deductions.
Then they sit there complaining about gas prices and how Biden is running their lives when it's a worldwide thing and they have it better than 99% of the rest of humanity. Biden can't do shit about world wide issues.
The other day a guy i met from the D.C. area told me that low quality coffee costs 20$ a bag. Fucking pregrinded coffee for the filter machine. You can get the luxury beans for that money in Europe.
That's also completely untrue lol that guy is either lying or buying a huge bag of the expensive shit
I don’t generally buy that but Amazon lists coffee at half that price
Maybe at a more expensive convenience store, or he's like many idiots that shop somewhere like Whole Foods and because they're used to seeing some $70/bag organic free-range non-GMO gluten-free coffee grown in the Himalayas by a small sect of previously uncontacted monks, the "cheap stuff" is the $20 bag of stuff that's similarly overpriced.
The most I've ever paid for coffee in the US was $20/lb at a local artisan roaster, where they're blended and roasted right in the store. Usually my normal coffee is about $3-5/lb
The guy is from an immigrant family, and his parents until recently worked minimum wage. It is just that the cost of living in Washington D.C. got this outrageous.
Then sadly, knowing how a lot of my friends shopped when they were broke, I bet that it is something like a convenience store. Not saying that DC isn't expensive, I was literally just there visiting a friend who lives there, but I also live in an area with a CoL well above the national average and coffee still isn't $20 for cheap pre-ground stuff