Quote:
Originally Posted by Heavyd
That's certainly true and we have to pay +50% income tax and a load of other BS taxes 
On the other hand they will sell much less of BW than in the USA. If the BW would cost 3000 I could have said yes give me the BW. But it costs almost 6000 so I think no friggin way give me the HK. And that's also with all other options.
A friend of mine bought real estate in Florida as an investment and to rent out. A house in excellent condition with x sleeping rooms, x bath rooms, swimming pool for a price where you can buy house, tear it down and build it up and still have no swimming pool over here 
Also if I watch Fast 'n Loud, Kindig Custom, Fantomworks, ... on National Geographic or Discovery channel and see what they can do and for what price, we can only dream about it.
But not only cars, I think most goods are cheaper in the US. |
Yeah, its a market size thing....think of it as "quantity" discount
I was thinking of moving to Germany a number of years ago so my German friend happened to be at my house here in NY and we sat down with a calculator to compare notes. Like you, he first said at the end of a year, his taxes were nearly 50% and I just looked at him like he was talking crazy. After we compared notes we found that our "all inclusive" year end costs were nearly the same. Germany categorizes things differently than the US but we all have just about the same things we have to pay for. We were both surprised at the results. I'm not talking about the cost of things like cars, houses, food, clothing, etc, but we did include the taxes on those items. We considered all things taxable, health insurance, utilities (water, gas, electric, sewage, etc), car registration, car inspection, car insurance, house/property insurance, land and school tax, income tax, pension, etc.
Overall, if I were to live there it would cost me more to live in the same manner to which I do here, not significantly more, but more due to housing mostly and any disposable income luxury item, like a BMW, Mercedes, etc. However, the one thing that is a bit hard to put into dollars and cents is the quality of living. My wife and I have been traveling to Europe since the wall came down and have always thought Europe had a higher life quality than the US. That's gotta be worth something if its of value to you.