Our sister bloggers over at Shanghaist have a fun post up about The Economist Intelligence Unit’s new EIU Worldwide Cost of Living for 2007. No doubt familiar to HR managers throughout D.C., the WCOL is gathered thusly:

The survey gathers detailed information on the cost of more than 160 items–from food, toiletries and clothing to domestic help, transport and utility bills–in every city. More than 50,000 individual prices are collected in each survey round and surveys are updated each June and December. A cost-of-living index is calculated from the price data to express the difference in the cost of living between any two cities.

New York City is used as the baseline against which all other cities are compared. Where does Washington, D.C. fit into the picture? A kind commenter on the Shanghaist post brought the entire list from behind the subscriber wall: 44, bitches! That’s two spots up from last year, when we were the 46th most expensive city for ex-pats to live in. Take that, Adelaide, Australia.

Of course the reason most North American cities are relatively cheaper compared to the rest of the world is the weak dollar. Must be hellish to try to live in Oslo.

Shanghaiist also showed us how cities where an -ist or -est sites exist stack up against each other. Torontoist is like, totally peeved with us right now.