America is the Land of the Free and Home of the Cheap… Beer
Numbers and charts are usually boring things reserved for sales meetings and discussions about market influence and other corporate blah blah blah. But, today? Today the numbers and charts show that here in America, we are blessed with the cheapest beer on the planet.
Cue the patriotic background music.
We may not have the best healthcare system, the best schools, the best unemployment rate or even the lowest taxes, but in the US, we have something much better. We have easy access to affordable beer. And that’s a platform we can all get behind.
In honor of Oktoberfest, America’s favorite German holiday, the chartsters at The Economist wanted to find out how long a German citizen would have to work to earn enough money for a pint of their favorite dunkel or hefeweizen. Analysts at Swiss bank UBS calculated that a German citizen earning the median annual income works for seven minutes to make enough money for a pint of beer.
That doesn’t seem like too long to work for a delicious brew, but in America, we say it is. That’s because here, we only have to work for five minutes earning the median annual income in order to make enough money for one pint of our own tasty suds. Our beer is less expensive, our incomes are a bit higher and our taxes are lower.
If you have any beer-loving friends in India, you may want to encourage them to move, because in India, the average wage earner has to work for almost an hour to earn enough money to buy a brewski after a long day. Which is sad, because most of them have been working hard on the phones taking orders or helping people get their computers to work.
Here’s to you beer chart makers. We just spent five minutes posting this information and now we can afford to buy a beer and toast to your glorious discovery.