And in terms of minimum wage…in Australia the minimum wage rose to AUD $21.38 per hour from the 1st July.
So one hour of work would get you almost nine maxicards to send or six $3.40-$3.50 stamps to use to send on a random postcard, to the USA or Germany (and you’d still have to pay to buy the actual postcard).
I had one before I went to the post office, for courage.
I do send a lot of maxis, and the pre-paid cards are a good deal at around $2.20 but I generally don’t send those to people who mention stamps because they don’t have any haha
I get around that by buying cheap old stamps on eBay and whacking them on the back too. Or even just using a five cent platypus in addition to the prepaid. It’s still a nice stamp. I have also stuck cancelled stamps on the back of a prepaid card too (ones I have received in the mail and have subsequently steamed off). It spins the clerks out at the counter though…when I go to get the card cancelled. I often have to explain why there are cancelled stamps on the back. 
If I send a naked card in the US, it costs one stick of gum. If I send internationally, I will pay for one item at Dollar Tree, maybe a hairbrush, or a pair of flipflops (thongs depending on your country).
12 international postcards for one hour of work? Wow!
In France it’s only 6.5! The price of stamp is increasong by 10% every year, but not the minimum wage unfortunately…
I found this comparison interesting, so I tried to make a list of some countries and I tried to calculate. Here is what I found. Here is the number of international stamps (I have priced the farthest destinations when there were different prices) that can be bought by any minimum wage with his monthly salary in each country. I did not put some steps like Switzerland or Finland, because they do not have a minimum wage. If you see some mistake, please tell me, it wasn’t always easy to find the figures.
Albania: 320
Argentina: 71
Armenia: 170
Australia: 928
Belarus: 216
Belgium: 718
Brazil: 425
Bulgaria: 323
Canada: 897
Chile: 648
:china: China: 224 (minimum wage is set locally, so I took the lowest minimum wage. But if I took the highest minimum wage, it would have been 484)
Croatia: 557
Czech Republic: 360
Estonia: 344
France: 972
French Polynesia: 1,136
Germany: 1,736
Greece: 774
Hong Kong: 1,290
Hungary: 287
India: 249
Indonesia: 170 (for the province with the lowest minimum wage. It’s 427 for the province with the highest minimum wage)
Iran: 950
Ireland: 798
Israel: 768
Japan: 2,603
Latvia: 500
Lithuania: 768 (973 until last year, but prices increased in 2022)
Luxembourg: 1,612
Macau: 1,109
Malaysia: 1,222
Malta: 633
North Macedonia: 615
Mexico: 351
Moldova: 252
Montenegro: 562
Netherlands: 1,113
New Zealand: 1,277
Philippines: 775
Poland: 376
Portugal: 783
Romania: 354
Russia: 246 (379 in Moscow)
Serbia: 681
Slovakia: 404
Slovenia: 716
South Africa: 579
South Korea: 6,176
Spain: 536
Sri Lanka: 179
Taiwan: 2,104
Turkey: 275
Ukraine: I found different figures, so I think I should better ask to some Ukrainian postcrossers… Maybe @pollymart? That would be very kind of you 
United Kingdom: 1,013
United States: 897
So, among the countries I listed, it seems that Germany (1,736), Taiwan (2,104), Japan (2,603) and South Korea (6176!!) are the best countries to be a Postcrosser, while it’s much more expansive in Belarus (216), Armenia (170) and Argentina (71).
@Aguaroble
Thank you for your efforts. This is a very interesting statistic. In Iran, this number is exactly 950.
Thank you, it’s edited!
Thanks for the question! 
Send 1 postcard costs 1 dollar, send an envelope (up to 50g.) 1.5 dollars. For $1 you can buy a kilo of sugar or 10 eggs + 1/2 bread or 5 rolls of cheap toilet paper.
In Ukraine, the minimum monthly wage is 6,500 UAH. If translated into hours, about 39 UAH per hour. 1 stamp per hour
I consider postcrossing to be an expensive pleasure for us.
yes!
wow, what a great way to put things into perspective! Thank you for your efforts!
In Romania, after tax you’d be left with a 1524 RON minimum wage (gross minimum wage is 2550 RON this year). Most cards I send are with 6.5 RON postage - for some overseas countries, or even for some closer ones, but with small traffic, I must use 10 RON instead. So that would be 152 to 234 cards a month.
Gas would be 7.5 RON per liter. I could buy 2 bags of sugar (1 kg each) instead of a stamp - but sugar is bad for you, m’kay? :))
Thank you @lamelemon!
But actually, I always took the minimum wage before tax, and as for the postage tarif, I always took the tarif for the most expansive destination, but if it was cheaper not to send in “priority mail”, I chose this tarif. When I went to the Romanian Postal Service website, it was written that it was 6.5 RON for the most expansive destination, but 10 RON for priority letters specifically. That’s why I took 6.5 RON.
But does anyone know why there aren’t that much South Korean postcrossers? And a lot of Belarusian postcrossers?
I mean, around 230,000 postcards have been sent from South Korea (51,300,000 inhabitants, so one postcard for around 223 inhabitants)
Arnd around 2,600,000 postcards have been sent from Belarus (9,400,000 inhabitants, so one postcard for less than 4 inhabitants)
If you compare it to the minimum wage, a Belarusian stamp for abroad is equivalent to (6176/216=28.6) Korean stamps…
I’m not sure this is accurate. I haven’t checked when I bought stamps in person but online I only pay 5% tax when I order directly from Canada Post. BC has a combined tax rate of 12%. So I think stamps are only charged GST.
So an international stamp would be $2.71 * 1.05 = $2.85
That means in BC one stamp is about 2 liters of gas or two stamps is about one venti pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks.
I am not sure why I didn’t realise this, but took a look at the last receipt I have from Canada Post, and stamps in Ontario have 13% HST (Harmonized Sales Taxes, as we don’t technically have GST in Ontario with HST - that is a topic for another day haha). So a Postcrosser in Ontario will typically pay CAD $3.06 for international mail or CAD $1.47 to the USA. Although, a way to avoid paying taxes is to bring in a stack of postcards to the postal counter and as long as you have more than $5 in purchases, and sending at the time of purchase (many of the agency staff don’t realise this and you will have to insist - I have never tried to send several postcards at one time, as I buy my stamps ahead of time and want to make my postcards pretty).
Gas in Ottawa is selling for around $1.40 per liter. A medium cup of coffee at Tim Hortons is $2.15. Bus fare is $3.70 with tap card or $3.75 with cash. Also, minimum wage in Ontario is $15 (rising to $15.50 in October).
Slightly off topic so hiding it:
It’s frustrating that a federal service ends up charging differently across the country this way. 
My stamps ship from Ottawa, which I find amusing. We have a head office (I think?) in Richmond so I thought they’d come from there.
It might be worth it for you to order online to see if they’ll only charge 5% regardless of where you are? I’m not too sure how that works. It’s not a huge difference but it could add up.
Off topic, so hiding:
Unfortunately, the way the tax laws work is that we have to pay taxes based on delivery address. I work for a retailer, and it can get confusing with shipping items and the taxes involved from a store to the customer in a different province (i.e. Customer places order online, It is shipped from a store in New Brunswick (15% HST) to a customer living in Gatineau, QC (14.275% QST/GST)). So the customer pays 14.275% QST/GST rather than the 15% HST).
The receipt I have is actually the one from a online order with Canada Post. I think the reason they ship everything from Ottawa is that I believe all postage stamps are printed in Ottawa by the Canadian Bank Note Company (same company that prints up our passports, and bank notes / currency). It is all convoluted and confusing when it comes to taxation stuff, and why we do the things we do. Haha
Yes, I know, but 1,113 is the amount of stamps you can buy with the mimimum wage
