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Originally Posted by Anthony
No it isn't. At TL 3, average wealth/average status has cost of living at 86% of income, which is insane for a single wage earner.
To the degree status-based CoL makes any sense at all, it's about demonstrating that you have the wealth appropriate to your status, plus ordinary patronage and useful employees. All of these things scale strongly on the average income of the society. There is a minimum viable cost that is less variable, but it doesn't really have anything to do with status.
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I'm not sure why you bring up the fact that the cost for mantaining Status doesn't change with TL here? That might be a problem, but that does not have much to do with what I claimed (which was that cost of living should represent the minimum needed to mantain status in a certain setting).
Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl
No one is stopping a GM from adjusting COL and prices for local conditions, but GURPS uses the US $ for a benchmark, so it is valid to translate GURPS $ into 2018 $. In a developing nation though, the money saved in prices are usually made up in the cost of keeping servants to maintain security and the cost of private schools. For example, in India, a Status 0 individual will spend as much as in the USA, but they will have a few servants and will spend a small fortune on private schools.
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GURPS $ being roughly equal to the value of USD at some time in the past is does not at all mean that cost of living assumes modern USA as the setting. There is a very weak connection between those facts. Especially for a game system which is supposed to be generic.