>I disagree. Food is much cheaper in many countries. While in Central America I regularly bought food off the economy instead from the government stores because it was so much cheaper. A meal at a good restaurant cost less than half what it would cost in the U.S. Medicines were at least 4 times cheaper as well. A nice apartment cost less than half what it would cost here and there were many. The cost of living was not anything like it is here. Now Germany and the rest of Europe was a different story. Giving my U.S. salary, I was lucky because at the time the dollar was strong. I was paid in U.S. dollars and my apartment cost about the same in Germany as it would here but since the exchange rate at the time was 2.5 to 1, it cost me so much less.

During my trip home, I was curious to see how will this ratio turn out. Having some experience with the value of foreign money in semi- and under-developed countries, I expected some proportion. Knowing that the average salary in Serbia is about $330/month (though, the ratio calculation may be thrown off by the fact that there it's the net after-tax salary, not the gross, that is counted), I expected the prices of everything to be about 5 times lower than here. Not so; most of the things were really cheap but by only a factor of 2 to 3. The food, however, is almost the same as here; gasoline is more expensive but taxi fare is cheaper (about $1 for 2 miles - and the distances of your average trip are much shorter), and a beer on a terrace downtown is about $1.20.

IOW, if I made there a salary comparable with what I make here, I'd be hard pressed to make ends meet. Here, I still can pay college tuition (used to pay two of those at the same time for a few years), rent for the daughters and rapidly pay off the mortgage, and still don't feel too tight with money. Though, it may be that a decade of heavy training under Miloshevich gave us the necessary financial discipline :).