I was supposed to move to Sydney or Melbourne and live/work there for two years. Los Angeles is where I was living before I headed that way and spent 6 months in Eastern Europe then made a stopover to visit a friend in Bangkok - Nothing new though I've traveled a lot but had never been to Australia. Price wise, It went from HOLY SHIT things are cheap, to SHIT things are still pretty cheap, to FUUUUCK this is the most expensive place I've ever been when I got to Australia. It's all relative though. If you live and work there, you save more just due to the price of things. Even so, I just figured if it's more expensive in Sydney than NYC I'm going to fucking NYC. Here I am. No regrets at all. Aside from moving in with two of the dirtiest, yet cute, girls ever and their 3 lame ass cats.
On another note though, the governments are pretty well set up and definitely take care of you more there. Scandinavia, Canada, and Australia always top the most livable places to live and quality of life indexes....however, I've come to find this most likely means boring to me. As the saying goes: In the U.S. if you have money, you can get the best of everything. If you don't, the government will leave you on the street to die.