But seriously, food being expensive is not the same as not doing food right. The few times I've been in the US, I've always been disappointed about the food available in supermarkets. It's hard to find stuff such as good milk or butter.
But seriously, food being expensive is not the same as not doing food right. The few times I've been in the US, I've always been disappointed about the food available in supermarkets. It's hard to find stuff such as good milk or butter.
I've travelled around Europe, food is very cheap in Central, Southern and Eastern Europe. It's basically Scandinavia that's expensive.
> Danes spend more than twice the percentage of their annual income on food than the their fellow Americans. Also the purchasing power of a US citizen is about 25% higher than that of a Danish citizen.
Source? I'm actually really curious.
In Scandinavia it's actually relatively "cheaper" to locals compared to central/eastern Europe, while Danes spend ~12% of their annual income on food Poles spend over 20%. That's because the price of many food products is actually relatively similar in most countries within the EU including local production but there is a pretty high disparity as far as annual income goes.
>Source? I'm actually really curious.
http://www.imf.org/external/ns/cs.aspx?id=28
Generate a report with the PPP rating.
US PPP is 55K Denmark is 45K, if you care about take home wage then the US is also higher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_take-... Overall the US has cheaper housing, transportation, food and local services combined with considerably lower tax burden than Europe.
Ex: http://www.hrsa.gov/ruralhealth/ yes these things are not intended as a food subsidy but low population areas have higher costs for many things which would otherwise raise food prices. Economically only a fraction of rural aid lowers food prices, but the net effect is significant.
The US spends about 20 bln $....
Still nobody tops Japan per capita in direct subsides as they have USD$46.5 billion in subsidies, and a population of ~126 million.
PS: It's really hard to get a single subsidy number as laws are designed so things can be presented in many different ways. AKA, US calls something specific an income tax while excluding social security.
Purchasing power is more evenly distributed, though, i.e. the poorest have better purchasing power.
By OECD purchasing power comparison, Denmark is 26 % more expensive than U.S. And workers have, on average, 15 % lower wages in Denmark.
http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=CPL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w...
This is a common misconception, the poor in the US are as rich or richer than the middle class in the EU.
https://mises.org/blog/poor-us-are-richer-middle-class-much-...
Also, while you sort of mention it, I think using averages when the distribution is clearly skewed is a really bad practice. It doesn't help us develop intuition on how things are for most people.
So, the cost comparison may be apt although this page, which compare cost of living between San Francisco and Denmark suggests that groceries in San Francisco are way more expensive (nearly 60%), although restaurants are cheaper (16%).
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
Not sure how reliable a source this is though.
But even if you are right, that doesn't mean a good should be so expensive ... just because it CAN be expensive.
Also, its easy for Danes to distort the cultivation practices abroad by encouraging low yield practices to entertain their organic fetish. But that reduced yield forces additional open space to be brought under cultivation ... reducing wild habitat.
There are ways of doing agriculture sustainably, with a mix of traditional practices and a measured and scientific use of fertilizer and pesticide. Just because pesticide and fertilizer can be abused, does not mean they are abusive by nature.