Beer Prices & Cost of Living Adjustment
As I have detected no correlation whatsoever between living in Washington DC and actually obtaining a job in Washington DC, I decided to extend my holiday visit in Oklahoma by a week.
This afforded me the opportunity to spend quality time with friends and tornadoes, to hit on girls less immediately put-off by my “career” as a standup comedian (if the IRS is reading this, in FY 2011 I made about the same amount of money performing standup comedy as I did from Barnes & Noble and iTunes gift certificates on my birthday) and to rediscover how insanely cheap the cost of living in my home state is compared to the major cities I presently enjoy dumping traschans of personal debt into.
If you travel a lot you it’s a good idea to pick a couple of common food items to familiarize yourself with, so you can spot-check cost of living differences when visiting a new country or region. Many tourists use Big Macs, because McDonald’s sports franchises in every conceivable location, including alternate universes and that new planet we discovered last month.
Personally, I use “beer” as a financial reference point, as I eschew fast food but nonetheless socialize at disreputable bars frequently. Hence, I can walk into a pub in Edinburgh, ask how much a pint of Tenents is, and rapidly deduce that the base-level cost of alcohol in town is about $4.50 or so at its absolute cheapest. Guesses about food and lodging prices can be further extrapolated from there.
In Washington, should you order a Yuengling at a hole-in-the-wall (for instance, the Pour House is a popular bar amongst Hill staffers despite the fact its basement has all the aesthetic charm and lingering odors of Hitler’s bunker), a pint will run roughly $4.00.
Last week, after family Christmas activities subsided, I joined friends for a yuletide night cap at a tavern in Edmond which serves Coors Light at $1.50 per glass. And that’s not even a special or during happy hour or anything. $1.50 for beer!
For my British readership, this means that drinking beer in Oklahoma has a ratio of roughly one pound sterling to the pint. That’s a slightly unsettling realization on my end, because my Scottish friends insist they will eventually visit, and under such economic circumstances would invariably drink themselves to death before we had time to properly welcome them to our state with complimentary hand guns.
Not to worry– Oklahoma caps her brewskies at 3.2% alcohol content due to clumps of Puritanical voters scattered throughout the state who refuse to finally just frigging die. I do not think it’s possible to induce an alcohol coma from light beer. I’m not sure it would even affect a Scotsman; in fact lager that watery may well sober them up.
The likelihood of approaching booze-related hospitalization is further mitigated by the variety of spiteful laws the aforementioned teetotalers have erected over the last half century to try and stop me personally from enjoying a good stiff drink when I feel like it. These laws include forbidding liquor stores to operate on Sundays or on any national holiday during which you might want to visit a liquor store. Such as the Fourth of July. When we celebrate freedom.
While Oklahoma no longer has dry counties (counties which prohibit the sale of any liquor due to legalized hatred of non-boring people, or in the case of Arkansas, counties governed by bootlegging crime syndicates) we do maintain a few eloquently labeled “moist counties.” In Stillwater, for instance, bars cannot legally operate on Sundays, but can throughout the rest of the week. Hence the term “moist county.” Any other use of the term probably refers to Oklahoma State University, and is wholly undeserved. It’s a fine school with an upstanding student body and thriving Baptist Student Union.
My apologies; I wandered off from my main point, which is that the Red States are outrageously cheap, and the bits on the coasts are vindictively expensive.
If you feel like playing around with figures, you can waste some time at the office by dabbling with CNN’s Cost of Living Calculator. If you live in an expensive city, and, like me, moved there from a state with more cows than people, you will find that the math is more depressing than you already thought math naturally was.
For instance, when factoring in housing, healthcare, groceries and utilities, someone with an annual salary of $100k in Washington DC has the same disposable income as someone in Tulsa, Oklahoma earning a meager $63k.
Moving to Tulsa becomes an even better deal if you cross-reference it with America’s Most Obese Cities.
Corpus Christi, Texas reigns supreme in corpulence. A varicose, pot-bellied whale washed ashore on the Gulf of Mexico. $100k in Washington DC is equate to $65k in Corpus Christi, which is more expensive than Tulsa and with a ton more fat people. (Here “ton” can be used figuratively or literally given the prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes in Corpus Christi, Texas.)
Tulsa is ranked only 31st fattest, and still costs less to live in than the Lone Star State’s bulging cellulite metropolis. Just for good measure I’m going to claim that Tulsa is merely “big boned” and probably slimmer than No. 31. Maybe 40th or so.
What’s the biggest factor in cost of living differences? Housing.
We’ll get into that later this week, upon my return to the District.