*I completely disagree that all produce in Europe is from Spain*

I never claimed that all produce came from Spain, my claim
was that much of the high labour produce comes from cheap labour
countries. What most EU farmers do is get fat on EU subsidies.
The French are right at the front of the queue there.

Beef in Australia is not expensive, if you shop around for
value for money. What we have in Australia a a larger gap
between the farm price and the retail price, because Australians
are more likely to get sucked in to buying status, clearly they
can afford it. There is great value around for those who bother
to look and have some understanding of meat.

BTW, in my late teens I did actually live in Paris for a couple
of years, so I do understand their market a little bit better then
you might assume. Also their culture.

Food, like most other produced goods in Australia are prohibitively expensive due to too many hangers on whose cut is more than the producers'. It's an ar$e about system.

yabby regardless of cheap meat able to be found if you look hard in Australia, in Europe, and I was there last week, is cheap anyway.

I think we've been trained to expect more expensive meat here and just accept it.

I don't always want cheap cuts, and I like my steak aged, I dislike the "market" meat, which is not aged and is often colored artificially.

We should have meat so cheap you would never eat mince, but that's not the way it is, and it should be.

Yes, croissants are more popular in Paris and are cheap, but red meat is not so popular and is cheap .. so how do we reconcile that?

The point is we get told how cheap it is here, and it is not .. gourmet butchers or not, we still pay top dollar compared to the rest of the world.

*and I like my steak aged, I dislike the "market" meat, which is not aged and is often colored artificially.*

Ah RPG, so you want gourmet "aged" meat, which costs money to
produce, at a discount price! Hehe.

What say you go and buy some whole rumps etc and age it yourself?
Or find a good country butcher who still hangs his meat the old
fashioned way for a week or two. But he's not paying city rents
so could afford the space.

Aged meat is the new trend in Australian cities and restaurants,
yuppies are clearly happy to pay the price. Good on those who
are ripping them off :)

That has nothing to do with the price of everyday beef.

Croissants cost a dollar each at Coles, but yup, its not the
yuppy bakery in inner Sydney like where the author goes shopping
and pays 3 or 4 times as much.

Ah".. it's true then:

...Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures."

— Leon Trotsky

The expense of food is just mirrored in the extra that Australians pay for all sorts of goods, food, books, clothes, electronics, cars. The list goes on. At least with most non-food items, we can directly purchase from overseas. Look at the screams in the press about the GST free advantage claimed by some of the shops. When you look deeper, even adding on GST doesn't raise the overseas prices to anywhere near the price charged locally. Sounds to me like what ever the systemic problems are in the general retail industry apply equally to food.