Free Republic

Which U.S. cities have the highest costs of living? The Council for Community and Economic Research recently measured the prices of common purchases in 307 urban areas to find the cost of the professional standard of living in each location. The index, its fifth edition, crunched more than 50,000 prices -- everything from grocery items to transportation to housing. The national average on the index is 100. Following is a look at each of the 10 most expensive cities in the United States.

Expensive living is yours for the taking if you're an ex-pat living in Tokyo, London and Moscow. Those three cities ranked as the most expensive in the world, according to the latest annual cost-of-living survey released Monday by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. The three least expensive cities were Asuncion, Paraguay; Montevideo, Uruguay; and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. [snip] The goods and services include the monthly rent for a two-bedroom luxury apartment unfurnished, the cost of a hamburger, the price of transportation and entertainment. For one month in that two-bedroom apartment in Tokyo, you'll drop a stunning $4,501. In Paris, you...