What is the Current Japanese or Italian Cost of Living in RL and SL?

[Prokofy Neva]

This is somewhat hard to tell because not everybody knows what a consumer basket is, and old-fashioned but useful term, and it's actually an outdated concept now because of all kinds of new things and substitutions which you can read about. The consumer basket with its photo of a shopping car with milk and bread and snacks was a useful visual aid because "Consumer Price Index" or "Cost of Living Chart" can make people's eyes glaze over. It is changing rapidly, too:

After decades of behaving differently, Japanese consumers suddenly look a lot like their counterparts in Europe and the United States. Celebrated for their willingness to pay for quality and convenience and usually uninterested in cheaper products, Japanese consumers are now flocking to discount and online retailers. Sales of relatively affordable private-label foods have increased dramatically, and many consumers, despite small living spaces, are buying in bulk. Instead of eating out, people are entertaining at home. Workers are even packing their own lunches, sparking the nickname bento-danshi, or “box-lunch man.”

The only point of asking about real life costs of living is not to get numbers or comparisons but to understand that if for an SL user, the cost of RL living has risen with incomes declining as it has in the US, then the discretionary income for SL is far less. Or maybe not, given that sometimes poor people spend more on entertainment during a recession.

It's much harder to develop a hypothetical consumer basked for SL. I think even Lindens at the switches would not be able to easily give you this number. You could say that it is $2000 per month, the old stipend of $500/wk x 4 on premium accounts. Yes, the stipend is only $300 now, but more people buy Lindens, they are indeed cheaper than 2007 when they were at 266 and not 241 on the LindEx, and there is WAY more to buy now.

So let's go with $2000 for an average monthly log on. Too high? Rent of a 4096 on Mainland might be $1000 or $2000 on an island. Of course that premium that gave you that $300 also gave you a "free" home. Let's disregard the premium account cost itself for now, although you really can't, analyzing the economy. I just feel $2000 as a monthly consumer basket is not high. Because of mesh heads and all kinds of mesh clothing; because of gatchas, but not only; because of swords, clothing, vehicles, etc. But that's only US $8 a month. If anything, it's too low. $5000 might be more accurate.  I think many people spend US $250, even. We no longer have the publication of economic statistics breaking down expenditures by categories of "more than $1" or "more than $25" or "more than $5000" -- in Linden denominations. There was a tiny number at the $5000 mark; many at $25 but most at $1-24. The breakdown is what I think has not changed, even if the log-on numbers are less.

If YOU reading this don't spend that, that's not the point. We're talking average daily log-in frequent users. I don't spend that per day but I don't buy clothes and mesh heads. It's an average consumer basket we are estimating, not average forums poster consumer basket.

Yes, it's easy to tell that 500 yen equals US $5. And from actually outdated charts of world incomes, sadly tied to the cost of a NYC 'average' apartment cost of $3000 which is only pre-pandemic, the average has plummeted, sure, we can get an idea that the Japanese cost of living is slightly higher than in the US. Does that mean a US $5 monthly expenditure on SL for an outfit or a house is no longer possible?

But I don't need to hear from charts and graphs that are misleading. I need to hear from real people.

From real people in Japan in Italy, if you don't mind revealing that. If you do, that's fine, others don't. 

So, for example, is US $1.50 per month a lot of money for a rental? US $5.00? 

There are more poor people in Japan than we realize which weathered the tsunami, political upheavals, but did better with COVID AFAIK. But the population seems to have grown poorer. That's why this phenomenon of the "bento box" could appear in RL then in SL.

SL has top designers and many users from Japan. They really make up a significant part of the world So many that there are entire events just for Japanese creators, sometimes with English subtitles, sometimes not. I truly don't mind buying something advertised on twitter in Japanese with only a picture and buying it without a description, and if I go home and find out it's an octopus on a platter, that's fine. I just draw the line at a hamster on a platter, but usually they have them in cute hats and stuff.

There are many Italian designers in SL and they don't just make shoes, clothes, and purses as they do in RL. They make skins and surprise eggs and camping and garden gatchas! You may not realize some very popular gatcha sellers are Italian and they make their money almost all from gatchas and are about to suffer greatly.

I don't know how many Italians there are in SL (I can see there are a lot of Japanese from their welcome centers, events, stores, in my rentals, etc. etc.) LL doesn't tell you how many people from which country are logged on as they used to, either. BTW no, this site doesn't tell you, although it tells you the 50,000 concurrent is holding but the Linden dollar is devalued now selling at 242, not 240 before the gatcha policy.

It's just my sense that these two countries punch above their weight in the SL economy. It's hard to tell from Americans as there is such a wide spread across incomes and prices in different states. If I'm willing to travel 30 or 45 minutes to NJ (now I'm not) I will spend half on staples.

 

[Chie Salome]

The "bento guy" or 弁当男子 thing is certainly exoticized and blown out of proportion in the article.  It's a very minor media buzzword and not an actual trend.  I'd say 99% of single men would just buy pastries and rice balls (1.2 to 2 US$) or bentos (3 to 6$) or grab a quick bite at beef bowl/noodle stand (4 to 7$).  If they are too lazy/busy/desperate, they would stock up on instant ramen in their lockers.

But I agree that Japanese people in general are getting more frugal, as the median wage has been pretty stagnant and slightly declining for 20+ years.  Median lunch money is about 580 yen now, which used to be around 800 in the 90's.

Living in Tokyo now is WAY cheaper than, say, NY and SF Bay area.  1500 US$ per month would get you a pretty decent studio or 1 bedroom apartment in the central metropolitan area.  If you can withstand jam packed train commute, 800 will do.  You can have a complete meal with side dishes, soup and dessert for under 10 US$.  The same franchise charges 30 in NYC.  Sure, we still have the exorbitant fruits (10 US$ per single grape, 50 per one strawberry) but everyone I've given tours in Tokyo were amazed at how cheap everything was.

All the stagnation and decline is not because of disasters but a series of drastic socioeconomic "structural reforms" led by LDP at the beginning of the millennium.  Companies stopped paying livable wages and started filling positions as temp hires.  As a result, Gen X and below are not buying cars or houses, much less luxuries.  Economy is screwed and the politicians are wondering why we aren't pumping out babies. 

 

With all that said, people are still dumping A LOT of money on gachas in smart phone games.  Some even pay more than they earn.  As for SL, many of my recent Japanese friends seem to have no problem spending 20 to 50 US$ per month to pay tier and buy L$, saying it's cheaper than a night out or two.   Flickerites may spend much more.  Personally I'm squatting above my own shop which generates measly but sustainable income so practically paying zilch.

Also, younger Japanese people tend to do everything with their phones and not own PCs, much less gaming rigs that can run SL, meaning if they are already in SL, they are likely to be 30+, and/or have reasonable amount of disposable income.  Another thing is that many Japanese people are uncomfortable with, or even afraid of communicating in English, making mistakes and embarrassing themselves in public (I'm a weirdo). 

So if Japanese people are not renting from prominent SL landlords, it's not because they can't afford $5.  They would rather pay mediocre Japanese landlords $10 so they don't have to speak English.  Those who don't rent in those Japanese estates rent directly from LL and build high up for the same reason. 

One of my early friends rented from you in 2006.  Back then it was virtually impossible not to mingle with English speaking people and we enjoyed it.  The current set of Japanese residents tend to have a completely different mindset.  They can stay in the Japanese-speaking bubble from the start and never have to venture out except for business and shopping, and wish to remain that way.  Note how most if not all Japanese residents explicitly state "I can't speak English"  "Sorry no English"  "my English is poor" or something to that effect in their profile.

(whoa I can't believe I just wrote all this!)

[Velk Kerang]

5 minutes ago, Chie Salome said:

(whoa I can't believe I just wrote all this!)

You did good though. lol I wrote some long ones before, but I think ya'll got me beat. lol🤣😎

[Qie Niangao]

18 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

But I don't need to hear from charts and graphs that are misleading. I need to hear from real people.

Can't help there, but if you're ever looking for more macroeconomics charts and graphs (well, tables of numbers), there are new ones in the back of The Economist every week. And every six months, their not-entirely-joking "Big Mac Index".

[OptimoMaximo]

@Prokofy NevaI am Italian, and can only speak for my country. In the last 20 years, the cost of everything has risen about 30-40% while I can see that the average salary has remained the same from Lira-to-Euro conversion stage, if not lowered substantially with the introduction of temporary hires and part time jobs, more often than not combined together. The part time plague has started when the gov decided to apply a tax cut on the hiring, while then extra work time was discouraged by raising the rate on those extra hours. The loophole exploitation then took place, as the extra time tax was charged on the employees and the employers could request the extra hours for "emergency situations" which, useless to say, became the norm. So the employers would pay lesser taxes, imposing full time hours because short of staff (which wasn't hired to begin with in order to invoke the permanent emergency status) while the worker was paid the same, but with half their hours charged 20% more taxes on the base of being "luxury income".

Now needless to say that a lot of Italians seek blackmarket jobs because of this, and just rely on the citizenship income from unemployment status. Being robbed by your country to live over pennies just leads to that, if you consider the rentals market on top of that.

Many if not most Italian designers in SL just cash out without any tax declaration off of it. You have to get a fiscal status and number to do so legally, and the tax rate on that gets as high as 70% of the income that goes to the State (if you're lucky and frame your commercial activity correctly in accordance with your SL activity, it can go as low as 52% in taxes, but the fiscal system in Italy is so intricate that it is really difficult to achieve that). Otherwise, the State itself has no mean to frame such type of extra income in the papers that a regular citizen has to fill for their income statement, not even if it doesn't exceed a given threshold. This type of income is not even recognized as possible by the current regulations, so for what I know for myself, not declaring such income doesn't even trigger a check. I can tell because I did so myself between 2011 and 2015 and no papers were filed against me or anyone I know in italy. Then I opened my legal position with a fiscal number that I use now also for my SL related income. But by now, I should have received tons of notices, which never came. And after 5 years, even if the tax collection agency would file any papers for that period of time, those would be void. But I know for sure of at least 2 famous Italian content creators that, to this day, don't pay a penny in taxes because of this loophole.