What will 1 hour of work at minimum wage buy in your country?

$8.05 an hour in my state.

To equate with the original poster:

2 pints of beer at my local pub = about the same here
2 bottles of wine at supermarket = only one bottle here (and that's fairly cheap wine)
78% of a pack of 20 cigarettes (15 cigarettes) = about a pack and a half here of a name brand
13 loaves of nasty white bread = about 4 loaves of really cheap bread (store brand)
5.4 litres of petrol = a little over 2 gallons of gas here (about 4 liters)
6 and a half McD's cheapest cheeseburgers = 8 of the same cheeseburgers here (on the dollar menu)
500 minutes & 1000 sms/texts, for a month, on prepay mobile phone = I have no idea, about prepay phones.
18 and a half 400g tins of cat food = about 8 cans of dog food here
13 pints (568ml cartons) of milk = about 2 gallons of milk here (16 pints)
1 whole chicken (large) ready to cook = about the same here (though meat really fluctuates)
Electricity for my home for a week, works out £6 - £7 maximum, that's me and my teenage son. = really depends on if you use AC or heating, but about the same here (though my electric bill is much higher)
Just over 2 days of gas for my home (heating/hot water/cooking) = in FL, we have no need for heaters.

a reply to: CranialSponge
Haha, brilliant answer

a reply to: Gazrok
Thanks for the full reply

So, we can buy the same at the pub, I can get more drunk on cheap wine but trade it (and bread or petrol) with you for smokes, my cat will be fatter than your dog, but you can pig out more at McD's than me. Regional variations are so interesting I think.

...jealous of the "in FL, we have no need for heaters" line, I bet your sea is warm as well, pretty damn cold in the Atlantic here even at the height of Summer!

a reply to: tigertatzen

Thanks for the update on the state's minimum wage.I drive a volvo stationwagon
and I only put premium gas in my car.I think it is running about 30-40 cents more
on the gallon,depending where you buy it at.Gas here today was at around $2.75.

I have been paying around $9.00 for my litter.If I made a mistake it wasn't intentional.

a reply to: mamabeth

Thanks for the update on the state's minimum wage.I drive a volvo stationwagon
and I only put premium gas in my car.I think it is running about 30-40 cents more
on the gallon,depending where you buy it at.Gas here today was at around $2.75.

I have been paying around $9.00 for my litter.If I made a mistake it wasn't intentional.

Let me just say, math is not my strong suit so I could very well have misunderstood or miscalculated...glad to hear the gas isn't really $4 per gallon! And your state may have set its own minimum wage...as long as it's at least the federal minimum, states can apparently set their own rate. I would hope they actually do...some states' cost of living is far too high to be supported by $7.25 an hour. It's no small wonder that so many people in this country are on welfare who probably wouldn't be if they didn't have to struggle so much.

a reply to: tigertatzen

I am so jealous of your gas/petrol prices, in metric/GBP£ terms for me it is 46 pence a litre for you compared to the £1.20 a litre at my local filling station.
To put it another way, when I drive home to visit my family (depending on how fast I go) it usually costs me £90 for the round trip. At your prices it would only be £35.
Or looking at in UK minimum wage terms, nearly 14 hours of work to pay for it at UK prices, but just over 5 hours of work at US prices.
I curse the UK government and it's 60% tax on petrol!

...jealous of the "in FL, we have no need for heaters" line, I bet your sea is warm as well, pretty damn cold in the Atlantic here even at the height of Summer!

Well, last winter there were at least a handful of days where I was tempted to turn on the heat. We actually have it, we simply have never had to USE it.

The ocean is pretty warm. We're pretty much on the Gulf of Mexico. It gets colder in winter of course, but not near as cold as the freshwater springs we have. Pretty much always swimmable.

a reply to: Gazrok

Haha, your 'cold' Winter ocean sounds like ours in the Summer!
I do a lot of cliff jumping here in the Summer, and a 3 quarter wetsuit is pretty much a necessity, not only for the impact hitting the water, but also because it is never ever warm sea!

...and that wetsuit at 25 quid will take 3.8 hours of work at UK minimum wage to buy

a reply to: grainofsand

Lol...well, I don't own a car and haven't in a very long time. Sometimes it's a pain to not have that convenience but when I think about how much money I'm not throwing away on gas, car insurance and maintenance, I realize how lucky I actually am. With your gas prices I cannot imagine how anyone can afford to drive anywhere! That is pure insanity!

a reply to: tigertatzen
Petrol tax is high here, I live top of a cliff hill and have the choice of 300 or so steep old limestone 'smugglers steps' to shops and civilisation, or a mile driving a one-way system round trip then paying to park. I always do the steps, keeps me fit as well, but if I can do something for free instead of giving the government 60% for the pleasure, I'll walk it every time.

a reply to: grainofsand

I use the transit system for lengthy trips but mostly I walk everywhere. It amazes me how many people will get in their car to drive a distance that could easily be walked...the act of stopping and accelerating actually uses more gas, so why people want to drive in traffic just to go to a store down the street when it would be faster, cheaper and easier to just walk is not a concept I can really understand. My housemate, for instance, will literally drive around a parking lot 20 times until a space opens up right in front of the store...yet he complains incessantly about how quickly his SUV consumes gas. It drives me batty, it really does.

a reply to: tigertatzen

Totally agree.
Say I get 40 miles to the UK gallon around town, that works out roughly 9 miles per litre, so my car trip avoiding the 300 steps of my hill costs about 15 pence. Not much of course but I do the steps at least 3 times a day, which would be £164 worth of fuel a year just nipping to the shops, the government would get £98 of it, and I would be fat.

Looking at it another way as per the OP, an hours work on minimum wage in the UK would get me up and down my hill 43 times, roughly two weeks of popping to the shops/civilisation.