Big Macs

Interesting article today from Agence France-Press, reprinted in the Canadian Cyberpress (sorry, as you might expect, the article is in French). Anyway, it says that the most expensive cities in the world are Oslo, London, Copenhagen, Zurich, and Tokyo. The authors of the "expense" study, UBS Bank of Switzerland, made some of their calculations based on the time it takes an average person to earn, after taxes, the price of a Big Mac. They did that, of course, just so that their dry, factual, very boring study would get reprinted in the popular press. What the study doesn't say is that, in most countries, pre-tax earnings will buy you decent health care, up to and including free open-heart surgery in most Scandinavian countries, which is probably what you'll need if you convert too much of your post-tax wages into Big Macs.