The "Big Mac" economic index

[Christophe]

We already talked about it here and there on the forums... here's more details on the Big Mac Index (and it's no April Fool's Day ...)

McDonald's restaurants are legion around the world. Suddenly “The Economist” imagined, thirty years ago, using the price of the Big Mac as an index of purchasing power. Here is the story in video.

Nowadays there are a lot of economic indicators, more or less useful, more or less reliable and more or less revealing of the disparities between countries (or regions, cities, etc.). Among them, there is one quite original: the Big Mac index. Yes, named after the McDonald's fast food chain's flagship sandwich. But what is American junk food doing in the midst of other tools such as the HDI, the IPH or the GDP?

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http://www.telerama.fr/monde/video-l-in ... 141701.php

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XdYbmova_s

[Obamot]

We must balance the Big Mac index with an essential point. It is not indicative of purchasing power but rather of the price that a certain golden youth is ready to pay to say that it has been at the macdo of the corner to afford a burger ...

It makes a BIG difference, because we see countries that are not far from the poverty line (working classes) and that are fairly well ranked in the index, and we understand then that it has nothing to do with the power of 'purchase, since de facto they have almost no!

Take it with tweezers so (even if I know that your goal was not to make it a panacea) ...