The US Dollar is still the base-currency of most of the planet, including Europe, Japan and Britain. Although many countris also keep reserves of the Euro, Pound and Yen, they will have more in dollars.

I do believee if I was earning an English wage and living in India, and you were earning a USA wage for the same job and living in India then I would be better off. This is because English people are paid more because English everything costs an obscene amount, and because the pound is worth more than the dollar. But that is the only context in which is makes a diffference.

A US wage in the USA is fine. a British wage in Britain will get you less, this is why rich Brits can afford second homes in other countries... because they cost a fraction of the price of their own home.

Also theres the tax. We do pay much higher tax. But then we get a lot more back too. I would be better off taking my money to USA and living there. Until I get ill. Then I'd be broke. I wish every country had free health care for all. I understand why a huge and poor country like India cannot. I still cannot understand why USA does not... Every American I meet is such a warm person who cares about others... it seems an ideal culture to be implimenting free health care.

I do not think England people are paid enough more to matter. Maybe 5-8 percent according to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country

UK 13,797-22,368
USA 12,168

Although the Euro is not in England and Europe is a little different.

I see the inflation that occurred during the changeover to the Euro will take 10-20 years to equalize.

I spent a couple of months living in England and the cost is generally double for staple products like Bread, shirts, clothes, general things. I was in Bristol for half that time and do understand that England is inflated like New York.

I spent one month in Barcelona, one month in Switzerland, two months in the Baltic States. About one month in Germany.

I can buy double my daily needs in the USA compared to Europe.

I think minimum wage is not a useful indicator of actual earnings in the UK, because even many unqualified 16 year olds earn more than minimum wage . In my gap year, I was earning £10 an hour, or £19,500 a year (that's about $39,000). At the moment, I earn £7.38 an hour for one job, and about £8.50 for the other (but I work very few hours because i'm a student). very few employers pay minimum wage unless you are an apprentice. It is the minimum, not the average.

I argue that staple products can therefore cost more because we earn more. (They also include 17.5% VAT)

The other thing to consider is that most countries in Europe are old or ancient, and also small. This means that land prices are very very expensive. Unfortunately, London has been occupied at least since the Roman occupation of Britain. Fortunately, it had a nice big fire in 1666 that destroyed most of the older buildings. But London buildings do tend to date from centuries past, meaning they are all no more than 3 floors high. If you could build a new capital city today, you could build everything higher, in more sensible lay-outs for modern transport etc. and maybe the cost of land would be lower. The same is true of most urban areas in Europe- everything is old, there's nowhere to build, so costs are artificially high.

In the USA, you have huge amounts of space, a small (compared to land size) population, and don't have thousands of years of buildings to clear out of the way.

And land price is one of the major things that effects inflation and the cost of goods within a country.