Round-the-world 'Beer Equivalence'

A supplement to Tuesday's post on my Beer Equivalence Index:     As well as being a useful way of monitoring - and restraining - your regular spending, the concept of 'beer equivalence' can also be applied to comparing the relative cost of living in different countries (just as with the better known 'Big Mac Index').     When I first arrived in Beijing in 2002, the usual cost of a beer in a cheap restaurant or a neighbourhood xiaomaibu store was 2 kuai (a few restaurants would charge 3 kuai, but could usually be haggled down if most of the competitors on their street were only asking 2; only places that were a little bit up themselves would dream of of trying to ask 4 or 5 kuai).  Moreover, most stores would give you (a rather generous!) 5 mao deposit back on your bottles.  There were even a few places that would charge only 1.50 or 1.60 kuai for a beer, but only give you a rather more miserly 3 or 4 mao back.  And I did hear tell of the odd restaurant that would only ask 1.50, effectively giving you the bottle deposit back - although I never encountered such a haven of generosity myself.  I gathered that the typical price for a crate of 24 beers back then was only about 30 kuai, of which 6 or 8 kuai was deposit on the plastic crate itself, and another 12 kuai, seemingly, the bottle deposits (and then a few fen more for the bottle caps!), meaning that the wholesale cost of a big 700ml bottle was only about 5 mao.  However, for the purposes of the BEI, I took 2 kuai per beer as my benchmark, because that was what I usually had to pay.   These days, I suppose, I might have to say 4 kuai is the baseline.  I don't think you can get a beer for 2 kuai anywhere now.  Even very cheap restaurants and xiaomaibu now charge at least 3 kuai.  Most of the places I drink seem to charge 4 kuai.  That's some fairly hefty inflation in only 7 years.  But never mind - this has still got to be one of the cheapest places in the world to drink - particularly given the abundant employment opportunities for foreigners.     In my first impecunious year here, my basic salary was a little over 2,000 beers per month; but I was usually able to double that with moonlighting.  Now, despite the cost of a basic beer almost doubling, I am usually able to make 4,000 to 5,000 beers per month, sometimes rather more.  (Of course, it would take me a few years at least to drink that much!  Hmm, I wonder if there's some value in a related index on how long it takes to earn a year's consumption of beer?)     I don't get out of China often enough to have a very clear sense of how much it costs to drink in the USA or the UK any more.  It seems a pint these days in Britain is usually something over £3 - although I'm mostly drinking in Oxford, London, or Edinburgh, which are all unusually expensive; and drinking premium brews at that.  A countrywide average for a decent draught beer might be something more like £2.50, perhaps.  Can I envisage earning £150,000 a year in Britain?  After tax?  Unfortunately not.   In America, I am likewise drinking on the east coast, mostly in super-expensive New York or DC.  You don't seem to be able to get a domestic draft for much less than 5 bucks anywhere now, not even in the sort of divey places I am drawn to.  Often, it's rather more.  And then you have to tip your bar staff.  What could I do to earn $360,000 dollars a year in the States?   That's why I'm in China.   But I am starting to feel that it's a kind of economic gravity well that's got me trapped here.  If I could find another country where the beer is cheap and the employment prospects are as varied, I would certainly consider a move.  I am conducting research.....