Ah, yes, that explains the big sucking sound. Data copped from UBS shows that Zurich is indeed the most expensive city for foreigners (of 72 cities in the survey--and "foreigners" means "us"). But in terms of local-wage purchasing power it is one of the cheapest. Tyler Durden got his knickers all in a twist last year when he figured out that a Big Mac at Zurich prices would cost $17.19 dollars. Exchange rates have moderated a bit since then, so maybe something like $14 (confession: I haven't bought a Big Mac here--nor, I think, in the US). Anyway, forget that: the UBS data shows that in local wage purchasing power terms, the the Zurich Big Mac is just about 1:1 with New York..
Fun Fact: Forget about what I said before--this is still a city where a person over 30 can commute by trolley car without counting his life a failure.
Fun Fact: Forget about what I said before--this is still a city where a person over 30 can commute by trolley car without counting his life a failure.
1 comment:
The Big Mac Standard has been used in finance for decades; I first ran across it in The Economist in the early-mid 1980s (1987, iirc), and that may not have been the first time they used it.
You know what you're getting, it's standardized across countries (more or less), and it's a complete meal and probably the baseline price for a "meal out" for working-class-with-some-spare-change.
As a benchmark, it's useful, even if you never buy one. (Most of us look at the prices there, and then baseline based on a burger and a beer at the local publican house. The ratio doesn't tend to skew.)
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