The Cost of Living

Fiction Portal EVE Lore Discussion
10

Thanks, everyone, for the replies. I understand no one has actually tried to express salaries and goods in ISK so far. Let me have a go at it. I am going to use Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) theory to calculate salaries in New Eden based on available commodity prices there and on Earth. As Big Mac Index is used to illustrate PPP of different currencies on Earth, I am going to use Vodka Index to compare Terran AUD and New Eden’s ISK.

TL;DR

An average planetside IT specialist’s annual salary in New Eden is just over 25,000 ISK. At the same time, bounty prizes for killing pirates on the first Seeker Investigation mission are 30,000 ISK. Given it takes just a few minutes to dispatch the pesky drones, even a beginner capsuleer is filthy rich compared to middle-class mortals, just as all of you suggested.

The Details

My calculations contain a lot of assumptions, and the main one is:

Salaries of average IT persons working on Earth and planetside in New Eden allow them to buy the same amount of vodka.

It’s an application of PPP theory where professional IT services are a currency and vodka is a commodity. I have also made the following assumptions:

  1. Spirits sold on New Eden markets are vodka.
  2. Net/gross volume proportion is the same for Earth’s wine boxes and for New Eden’s containers.
  3. Planetside alcohol is four times cheaper than alcohol sold on stations.
  4. Retail alcohol prices are four times higher than wholesale.

Then I combined these assumptions with facts from Earth and New Eden. Firstly, I calculated how many litres of vodka an average Australian IT person can buy:

  1. The cheapest vodka one can by at Dan Murphy’s is 30 AUD for 0.7 l.
  2. A litre of that vodka is 43 AUD.
  3. An average IT salary in 2016 according to SEEK is 100,000 AUD.
  4. Such person can buy 2333 litres of vodka.

Secondly, I determined the net to gross volume ratio for wine boxes on Earth:

  1. The volume of a 12-bottle wine box sold by Australia Post is 0.04 cubic metres.
  2. The volume of alcohol contained in that box is 0.009 cubic metres (12 0.75-litre bottles).
  3. Alcohol to total volume ratio is 0.23.

Thirdly, I worked out the price of a litre of vodka in New Eden

  1. The volume of a container with spirits is 0.2 cubic metres.
  2. The volume of vodka in that container is 46 litres.
  3. The price of a container with spirits on The Forge Regional Market is 500 ISK.
  4. The wholesale price of a litre of vodka on a station is 10.89 ISK.
  5. The wholesale planetside price of a litre of vodka is 2.72 ISK.
  6. The retail planetside price of a litre of vodka is 10.89 ISK.

Finally, I calculated the salary of an average planetside IT person in New Eden by multiplying the retail planetside price of a litre of vodka by 2333, which gave me roughly 25,000 ISK.

So, what do you think? Does it sound reasonable?

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