Column:

The high cost of an easy living

By John Hendel

Published Feb. 6, 2007

LONDON - Three weeks in, I'm beginning to feel some pain. Specifically around my wallet. Apparently, London is the most expensive city in the world, and everything is twice the value it would be in the United States.

In terms of dollars, you're lucky if you can buy a meal that's $8 to $10. A monthly pass for the London Underground costs about $180, and I have friends that have blown 30 pounds ($60) on a casual night out. It can be rough, no doubt, and believe me, I've never felt more poor.

This sharply contrasts with my previous experience abroad. When I studied in Cuernavaca, Mexico, everything was insanely, ridiculously cheap. In Mexico, you can spend $2 and get four little Coronas, but you'd need about $5 to get even one in London. Of course, the minimum wage in Mexico is $5 a day; not even my professors earned more. It almost hurts my mind to consider that. This all led me to the sad thought that money actually matters.

Sure that thought should be obvious to me — I'm American. The great dollar dictates everything in the United States, according to popular belief. Our salesmen die for it in Arthur Miller plays. The green dream across the harbor comes with dollar signs attached. Americans put in an inordinate amount of working hours a week and labor like machines. Hooray, consumerism, right?

What I've noticed is that consumerism and the hunger for money is universal. I rode a bus on my first real day in London, and I remember the impressive sight of Piccadilly Circus coming into view. The statue of Eros marks its center, but the lights catch your eye first. Billboard after billboard lines the sky in the center of this famous part of London.

The most interactive and flashy billboard belonged to McDonald's. Its big inviting letters claimed you could earn yourself some McRespect if you work a McJob. Lovely. The advertisement practically seemed like a mockery of itself. In any case, I guess it's a surefire way to gain a few pounds.

Chain stores dominate London and countless people work menial jobs to survive. A man will stand in an elevator for hours at Tower Bridge saying two words to each passenger or wait to hand you a towel in the bathroom to earn his living.

This hunger was more pronounced in Mexico. If you try to climbs the pyramids at Teotihuacán, you should expect intense vendors to walk up to you about every 10 seconds with some plastic sacrificial knife. This approach wasn't uncommon in the country. I remember one child vendor in Taxco telling my friend that if she didn't buy her product, the child vendor wouldn't be able to eat.

Whether it's London or Cuernavaca, there will be the random homeless individual trying to sleep on the sidewalk. The Guardian recently reported 29,804 people fell into debt in the past three months of 2006, more than in all of 1997. This marks a rising trend, in which more and more people find themselves in debt each year in the lavish city.

I'm generally a fan of capitalism, but its inevitable side effects bother me. I dislike the ruthless mentality, the consumerism and the poverty that results from the system. Sure, there will always be some who can't cut it for one reason or another, but I believe in a socialist blanket to help prevent what I consider humanitarian violations of conscience.

This machine's broken.