Iggy is cute. My dad has a Bearded Dragon lizard and that thing is so adorable. It also likes to sleep on your neck or upper arm while you're on the computer.
As for costs of stuff- do remember, Tao, that we don't get any help with health care or education. Not sure how it works in England, but it seems in many European countries you get a lot more bang for your buck in terms of taxes.
Here, it's not just the cost of those basics (food, shelter, housing) but health care (which we generally either pay for ourselves or pay premiums through our employer), higher education (most of us are saddled with huge student loans if we go to college), and high transportation costs (because our country, for the most part, has a thing against reliable public transportation). Stuff might still be cheaper here, but it's a quality issue.
When I was in France, things like food were more expensive, but the food was way better on average. In the groceries and bakeries and whatnot, food was fresher, easier to find organic, etc. You can get lots of things cheap in the US (Wal-Mart). But it isn't good stuff and you know it is cheap because it is made in China and the whole process is exploiting people. If you attempt to buy
good food (especially organic food), you are looking at a huge food bill.
Similarly, the cost of gas in France was crazy, but they had excellent public transportation. I had no problem getting anywhere quickly and efficiently (and safely)! Here in the good 'ole US, our train systems run slowly or not at all. Many metropolitan areas, like southern CA, have very inefficient public transportation- huge gaps in coverage, never on time, way too slow to use for commuting, etc. So you are forced into having a car there. Furthermore, you can't afford the housing anywhere near where the jobs are (great city planning, US!) so you have huge gas costs to get to work. You have to keep in mind that this is a nation that is HUGE. All our reasonably priced housing for the lower and middle class family is located in the center and south of the nation, while most of the jobs are located on the coasts. What a mess. It's getting harder for upper middle class dual income families to find jobs in the same location, too- so I personally know more than a few people who have dual households in two states. Mostly it's no more than two states away, but there are West Coast-East Coast couples and even NY-Londoners. In some ways, it's nice to have a huge landmass. In other ways... it causes some problems.
