Re: CHAT: The [+foreign] attribute

John Cowan wrote:
>
>Christophe Grandsire scripsit:
>
> >  The only true way of comparing countries' wealth is
> > the richness per inhabitant, a relative notion that really allows to
>make
> > meaningful comparisons.
>
>Indeed.  This leads to the Heinlein Index, which I believe we discussed
>some years ago.  It is the answer to the question:
>
>         For how many minutes must a journeyman carpenter [that is,
>         neither an apprentice nor a master] labor in order to be
>         able to buy one additional kilogram of the local standard bread?
>
>2000 data, the most recent I can easily find, shows the median hourly wage
>of a
>journeyman carpenter as USD 17.28, and a loaf of bread (approx. 1 lb =
>1/2.2 kg)
>costing USD 2.50.  That leads to a current HI of about 19.
>
>The neat thing about the HI is that it represents the *marginal* relative
>value of labor, and thus neatly compensates for not only the varying cost
>of living, but the varying *standard* of living.  We all have to eat,
>though some of us live in caves and others in high-rises.
This sounds alot like the BigMac Index, which's the length of time a
medianly-paid inhabitant of a given country has to work in order to earn
enought money to buy one BigMac.

I don't have any statistics at hand, sadly.

                                                   Andreas

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