those costs are insane, the us one because it's so high and the oz one for being so low. i think about 20% of our total tax revenue goes to care (health and elderly). for me that's something like €3500.
sweden is so sparsely populated that some places have more empty houses than people. population density is about a quarter that of spain. the big cities are closer to the rest of europe, with homes going for three to four times the price of something an hour away and the rent queue being dominated by people who have been there since the 90s.
i bought a 70ish sqm apartment for about €100k two-ish hours from stockholm. in the city that would probably go for 5-20x the cost (depending on area) and have at least double the monthly cost.
us software salaries are insanely high compared to the rest of the world, because the cost of living in SV is insanely high.
with a €60k a year salary i'm in the 90th percentile of earners in my country and it took me about two years to have enough to finance my own three-bedroom apartment on one income.
still not gonna buy from them after that whole business where they tried to fire a guy because he broke his leg. but yeah the amount of stuff is larger.
amazon is bottom-of-the-barrel in sweden. our local alternatives feel like they're 10+ years ahead, and that's after amazon played catch-up for the better part of two years. when they launched they had just machine-translated everything and the results were insane.
the 1 is the premium model though. the 10 is where it's at.