Naive economics question for you, Twitter! I’ve been traveling in Scandinavia, where cost-of-living seems weirdly skewed: cheap-ish real estate, expensive meals and goods (relative to SF).
In other places I’ve traveled, these usually correlate, but not here. What gives?
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I don’t think “high tax welfare states” alone explain it: many things are >50% more expensive than in SF, but VAT and income tax differences wouldn’t explain that. And average rent is less than half SF’s. (c.f. numbeo.com/cost-of-living)
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If I were to guess: Government subsidized housing, lower population density, and relatively high wages in the service industry.
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Rental apartments are also often queue-based, and you have to wait several years to get an apartment in certain areas.
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Yes, in some cases! But even the domestic stuff is much higher priced here, relative to housing. And VAT isn’t high enough to account for it. 🤔
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Maybe, not a restaurant culture? They bring stuff from home. So less customers, more expensive meals.
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I would say higher wages in bars/restaurants/markets (strong unions plus 50-60% effective income tax rate), high taxes on e.g. alcohol, weak local agriculture so a lot of things are imported, less economies of scale because smaller population density.
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But there’s also a huge scale in real estate prices, so it’s hard to say in general if it’s cheap or not. E.g. in Helsinki one square meter of 2-3bd apartment can vary from 2k€ to 12k€ within 10km.
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Is it not possible SF real estate prices are just incredibly inflated relative to most places, making everywhere comparatively cheap. Housing scarcity is the one thing I see being complained about the most about SF.
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Hm, it’s possible yes, but the correlation is consistent with other places I visit in US and internationally, not just SF. Nordic countries appear to be an exception!
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