ok, this is weird... in beer prices, cost of living in Boston and State College is comparable
The current median (asking) price for houses in State College is about 60% of that in Boston right now.
But, Yuengling beer six-pack in PA is about 25% cheaper than Sam Adams, typically.
So the median house price in State College is about 42,000 Yuengling six packs, compared to about 48,000 six packs of Sam Adams for a house in Boston.
That is weird.
Hm, rather worryingly, I get Santa Cruz median house price to be closer to 72,000 six packs of Anchor Steam (since Lighthouse seems to be out of business...)
But it is only about 2,000 cases of Le Cigare Volant (2003)! Maybe there is hope yet.
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I bet if you looked real hard, you could find a retailer selling Sam Adams in State College.
I bet I have no need to look hard to know where to buy Sam Adams in State College.
I wanted to compare local to local, not some fancy big city imported beer!
If you need more data, Ann Arbor's median house price is about 28,000 six packs of Bell's Oberon. Better beer than State College or Boston. Better town than State College?
Who would want to find Sam Adams when you have Yuengling? Seriously, I live near Boston, and Yuengling seems to be sold in New York, but not New England. Very sad.
But who would like to drink those beers anyways?
I am sorry to say that the year that I spent in the US the only beer I could drink was from the microbreweries and Leinenkugels.
Give me a belgian beer any time and I am a happy man :-)
Those are actually drinkable beers.
Yuengling is a light german style lager, nothing special, but perfectly decent.
Sam Adams has some drinkable lines, would hold its own in Europe, and Anchor Steam is quite distinctive and very drinkable.
I didn't know Boston locales well enough to list any microbrews, and their prices are hard to find, my favourite Bay Area microbrewery is apparently out of business and the State College ones are mediocre or bad - better off with a reliable session lager like Yuengling.
Even more curiously: in a person's lifetime, they could just about drink one bottle of Le Cigare Volant per day, each day, and get through roughly 2000 cased.
Or they could buy a median house in Santa Cruz.
Hm, decisions, decisions...
In the UK you couldn't use beer as a numeraire for anything much, the geographical variation is too great, at least as far as pub prices go. You can easily spend £3.20 a pint in London; you can still get a pint of good real ale in West Yorkshire well under £2.
Bulk beer, though, costs the same in whichever Tesco you walk into, being a highly tradable good. A pint of beer in a pub, however, is a service and therefore only weakly substitutable. In fact, come to think of it, pubs are a product-service system; as well as the actual beer there are quite a few other things you're buying, all of which are site- and time-specific.
same here - location, location, location
but six pack prices are relatively robust for same product, with a little bit of transport cost and figuring you buy at a regular shop, not some overpriced downtown deli type place
so comparing mid-size regional brewers who do decent but not high end beers and compare retail six packs at major outlets
voila, a sensible price index showing broadly comparable costs, except for beer being overpriced in Michigan and housing overpriced in the Bay Area
perfect economic indicator, since it confirms my prejudices!
I was really struck with how expensive pints were in the UK. I was paying California prices in Durham for ok ales at some generic pub. God help me in London.
Steinn, you should ask for a trip to Seabright. The atmosphere is only ok, but the beer is pretty good. They only sell in 22oz bottles, though, so you cannot use the six-pack metric. The median Santa Cruz home (January median purchase price) is 200,000 bottles of Resolution Red if you purchase it at Shopper's Corner. I am sure that exceeds Seabright's yearly output.