Recently I got a sponsorship email from a mate in Australia for Movember, and always one to help out a mate, I flicked about £20 in his direction. He emailed back and said “Wow?! 50 bucks?! That’s awesome man! Although that’s probably only the price of a cup of tea to you, isn’t it?”.
It made me stop and think exactly what 20 pounds was worth, and I did this in my normal unit of measure: Beer Opportunity Cost. It’s similar to The Big Mac Index, except in terms relevant to me that I can understand. So how much beer can 20 squid get me?
The price of pints varies wildly depending on where you go, from 1.70 at the Samuel Smith’s pub we go to after morris practise, to about 3.20 (I’m not sure exactly how much they are here – I’m usually mullered by the point I’ve agreed to set foot in the place) at our local, The Oxford Arms. So I settled on a median price of about 2.90 a pint. This means that – working from the British pint measure, 570mL – beer is roughly 5.08 per litre.
I then thought “I wonder just how that stacks up against Australia?”. When I was over in Adelaide in Novmeber last year, I remember (primarily due to my outrage) paying AUD$5.20 for a pint of Coopers Dark Ale. For want of any other figure of comparison (I know I was paying about 7 bucks a pint for James Squire Ales when in Melbourne, but lets keep it normal), I worked this back to $12.23/litre (given that the Adelaidean pint measure is 425mL), or – at the exchange rate of the day, 1GBP = 2.264AUD – £5.38 per litre!
So beer’s MORE BLOODY EXPENSIVE in Australia!
Seriously guys, buy the ticket…